Short Abstract:

This workshop invites paper submissions that deal with how drugs (psychoactive substances) move in and out of being common(s) through shifting placements in markets, legal frameworks, biomedicine, moral worlds, and user cultures.

Long Abstract:

The anthropology of drugs (Carrier & Gezon 2023) has given ample evidence how boundaries between (illicit) drugs, pharmaceuticals, and medicines have been historically and ethnographically contingent on cultural, legal, and economic developments. In this workshop we ask how questions of commoning and uncommoing have relevance for the anthropology of drugs and drug use culture. How do psychoactive substance become common in different settings and at different times? How do discourses and processes of decriminalization, medicalization, normalization make certain drugs common(s)? How do shifting trade routes, emerging music scenes, migration make certain drugs more common? The workshop is equally interested in opposite movements of drugs becoming “uncommon.” How do criminalization, eradication programs, moral panics, and public health campaign contribute to uncommoning of drugs? This workshop invites empirical and theoretical contributions about how people in the drug field (users, care givers, law enforcement, clinicians, vendors) navigate shifting legal, moral, and economic contexts. This includes ethnographies of drug use cultures in shifting legal, medical, and moral contexts. Ethnographies and other case studies of criminalization/decriminalization of drugs. Ethnographies of how some drugs become “common” in specific settings. Especially welcome are contributions about the commoning of knowledge about drugs in public health campaigns and harm reduction movements “from below” (van Schipstal et al 2016). Contributions in English and German are welcome.

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