Apologies for the cross posting.
American Association of Geographers 2018 Annual Conference, New Orleans
Producing Illicit Agricultures & Natures
Plants and humans have developed intimate relationships throughout human history, and the nature of those relationships has frequently been fraught with conflicting values and meanings. As such, we seek to examine a wide breadth of topics in this session that explore (il)licit natures and agricultures, from sacred plants – like Mama Coca and peyote – to the global War on Drugs, from re-legalized hemp and taboo tobacco to agricultural trade embargoes and blockades–and all the political ecologies therein. We recognize that illicit plants maintain long histories as foodstuffs, medicines, cultural signifiers and commodities, and we ground our session in the lived realities of planting and harvesting crops deemed illicit. We are primarily interested in the experiences of growers themselves, though we welcome research on the broader dynamics entangling law officials, police, processors, distributers, consumers, public health, alternative medicine, and the military and prison industrial complexes and their roles in (re)producing illicit agricultures and natures. We welcome analyses that emphasize illicit crops (or the illegality of crops as such) analyzed from the perspective of agrarian viability, agrarian heritage, agrarian crisis, or agrarian change. We also welcome analyses of how the law itself is constructed, enforced, and manifested in farmer decisions and in agricultural fields themselves-and how this plays out via racialization and racism. Finally, we invite reflections on the methodological challenges of working at the fringes of licitness and how important potential research is foreclosed by the subject matter’s very illegality.
We are interested in illicit agricultures and natures in their varied manifestations across time and space, and, as such, we welcome paper ideas that address:
If you wish to present a paper in the scholarly session, please submit your 250-word abstract to Nicholas Padilla (Western Michigan University) (nicholas.padilla@wmich.edu), Garrett Graddy-Lovelace (American University School of International Service) (graddy@american.edu), or Gabriel Tamariz (Penn State University) (gabrieltamariz@psu.edu) by October 25th 2017.