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This chapter examines drug ethnography from a global perspective. Its subject is the impact of globalization on drug use and the conduct of contemporary drug ethnography. Framing the dynamic interface between macro-structural and micro-observable processes, behaviors, and relationships is a critical challenge for contemporary ethnography. The chapter assesses how ethnographers understand drug use in a rapidly globalizing world and the concepts and constructs they use in this process. As part of this examination, the chapter presents ethnographic research on and the contribution to understanding of (a) supply-side issues in the flow of drugs (i.e., trafficking), including drug markets and patterns of distribution; (b) demand-side issues that emerge from particular drug using populations and their social contexts; and (c) intermediate-level issues, including the impact of punitive anti-drug policies and the development of alternatives to the criminalization of drug use. This examination begins with several snapshots of contemporary drug ethnography in light of globalization. Case Studies in a Globalizing World Drugs are a truly global commodity, but not all parts of the world are equally affected by the flow of various drugs across national borders on their way from production, to refinement, to repackaging and shipment, and ultimately to the most lucrative terminal markets, where high demand and risk inflate prices to consumers and profits to distributors. At the same time, global transformations of other sorts, such as international labor migration, can reshape drug consumption patterns while workers are abroad and when (and if) they return home. Other global processes, such as transnational natural resource extraction , can reshape the physical environments and subsistence strategies of local 86 5 Drugs and Globalization From the Ground Up and the Sky Down populations and have an impact on motivations for and patterns of drug consumption . Expressions of these drug-related global restructurings can be seen in the following ethnographic cases: I Writing about illicit liquor consumption in Sri Lanka, Michele Gamburd noted that, traditionally, women worked in the domestic sphere and provided economically critical but unpaid household services for their families . The significant economic challenges that now face poor families, including the inability to make enough money to buy land and build a home, have led to the decision, at the family level, to respond to the call for housemaids in countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In 2005, for example, Gamburd reported that more than a million Sri Lankans participated in international labor migration, two-thirds of them women. Often, women were hired on two-year contracts and left behind their husbands and children. Women—for the first time—became household breadwinners and men became homemakers. Consequently, older gendered divisions of labor and social roles had been thrown into severe question. As a result, Gamburd asserted, many men turned to illicit alcohol consumption to self-medicate their damaged identities and diminished sense of self-worth. As explained by one of Gamburd’s key informants, “. . . I was home while my wife worked in the Middle East as a housemaid. I was drinking then. . . . [Men drink] because they have no job. They can’t help their kids. While their wives are abroad, the husband is doing the housework. Then this goes to his head and he gets confused and upset. . . . Then men drink and forget” (Gamburd 2008, 116) I Enrique Desmond Arias spent time across several years in an ethnographic study of violent drug trafficking gangs in three of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (shantytowns). During this period, wars raged among drug gangs over control of the cocaine that flowed from Colombia and over command of the favelas. One drug war that Arias described raged for seven years. Central to his research was the question “How can violence in the favelas remain so high? The answers lie in the political connections traffickers maintain with civic leaders, the police and politicians” (Arias 2006, 61–62). Writing about one of the favelas, Arias noted, “Violence remains at high levels in Santa Ana because of an active network that brings police, traffickers, policymakers , and civic leaders together in perverse and undemocratic ways. At its core, the illegal network that operates in Santa Ana links across from different sectors of state and society to perpetuate illegal activity” (2006, 128). Thus, he argued, politicians engage in exchanges with drug traffickers, allowing them to maintain their illicit operations, and the traffickers, in turn, provide certain benefits (e.g., some services) to favela residents in exchange for their voting support of the...

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