Publications
2013. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 36(2). pp.215-230.
Despite its ongoing federal illegality, marijuana production has become a licit, or socially accepted, feature of northern California’s real estate market. As such, marijuana is a key component of land values and the laundering of “illegal” wealth into legitimate circulation. By following land transaction practices, relations, and instruments, this article shows how formally equal property transactions become substantively unequal in light of the “il/legal” dynamics of marijuana land use. As marijuana becomes licit, prohibitionist policies have enabled the capture of ground rent by landed interests from the marijuana industry at a time when the price of marijuana is declining (in part due to its increasing licitness). The resulting “drug war rentier nexus,” a state–land–finance complex, is becoming a key, if obscured, component within marijuana’s contemporary political economy.
2015. Territory, Politics, Governance. 3(4). pp.387-406.
As governments worldwide justify the transformation of marijuana governance from one police power (law enforcement) to others (e.g. public health, zoning), the place of marijuana in lawful society is transforming rapidly. No venue in California is more central to this than land-use regulatory bodies, which decide how marijuana rights, practices, and relations become territorial. Land-use powers, as a declaration of the state’s police power, require a definitional rendering of ‘community’. This article analyses an episode of outdoor marijuana cultivation policy-making and the struggles over the definition of community in a conservative exurban California county. From debates on fences, property line setbacks, rental terms, and nuisance complaints to racial and economic anxieties and the roaming stigma of crime, marijuana advocates confronted a powerful logic of private property and the moral-aesthetic propriety it implies. Despite the subordination of advocates’ claims to the terms of private property, outlaw communities sustained their own forms of territorial governance, informal regulatory and enforcement powers, and understandings of community. This episode, which illuminates territorial production across illegal/legal lines, has implications for understandings of liberal rule of law, political possibility, and the practice of citizenship.
2017. The Illicit and Illegal in Regional and Urban Governance and Development: Corrupt Places.Francesco Chiodelli, Tim Hall, & Ray Hudson, Eds. Regions and Cities Series of Regional Studies Association. New York: Routledge.
The recent liberalization of California’s marijuana policy has increasingly made the plant an object of economic developmental visions. This formal interest in marijuana belies marijuana’s development—and underdevelopment—under prohibition. Analyzing the case of Humboldt County, this chapter traces how marijuana became an integral part of the county’s timber-based developmental regime and, since timber’s decline, a pivot around which a struggle between smart growth and rentierdevelopmental blocs over the county’s post-extractive development have circulated. In each developmental vision, the illegal both defined the limits of the formally developable and marked a mode of development (and governance) otherwise. See Table of Contents and Abstracts here. Download introduction here.
2018. Economy, Crime and Wrong in a Neoliberal Era. James Carrier, Ed. European Association of Social Anthropologists Series. New York: Berghahn Books.
US marijuana legalization breaks with prohibition in many ways. Despite celebrations of the “green rush” and market “emergence,” however, marijuana’s formation as a market has a longer history rooted in prohibition. Drawing from ethnographic research, this chapter argues that an expanded War on Drugs in the 1980s produced a field of intervention, “the marijuana economy,” that incited marketized subjectivities, discourses and practices in a neoliberal, if paradoxically illiberal, manner. Later, marijuana’s not-for-profit medicalization was also made legible in market terms. As marijuana enters formal market circulation, this chapter urges attention to its articulation with older market moralities and inequalities. See Table of Contents and download Introduction here.
2019. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 2(2): 229-251.
Over the past two decades, activists and market actors have successfully liberalized marijuana consumption and distribution in most US states. Given ongoing federal supply-side interdiction strategies, however, production has been another matter. This article traces the emergence of marijuana cultivation as an environmental matter. ‘‘The environment’’ increasingly constitutes a material-discursive social field into which actors (e.g. activists, law enforcement, producers, conservationists) can launch interventions into productive processes. The article traces three early, formative interventions in northern California: by federal agents to reclaim and protect public lands; by a county government to discipline and segregate compliant environmental citizens from recalcitrant, racialized ‘‘criminals’’; and by producers themselves to mobilize environmental discourses in regulatory debates. Amidst ideas of pollution, reclamation, stewardship, and sustainability, these projects revalorized marijuana production, articulating with and departing from entrenched systems of inequality and stigma. As marijuana production liberalizes, this article draws attention to the legacy of prohibition moralities in regulatory debates, the necessity of incorporating criminalized actors in civil regulation and knowledge formation, and the possibility for a liberation environmentality that exceeds the terms of exploitative, extractive relations that dominate contemporary agriculture, land use, and drug policy. Download final draft version here.
With Margiana Petersen-Rockney. 2019. Special Issue on Cannabis. California Agriculture. In Press.
Since California’s cannabis legalization, localities have played a central role in determining the regulatory terms of where, how and within what legal bounds cannabis cultivation occurs. Siskiyou County, a rural, conservative and majority white county in Northern California, chose not to recognize cannabis cultivation as agriculture. It drew up highly restrictive cannabis cultivation regulations, largely under the purview of law enforcement rather than civil agencies. Hmong-American cultivators, made highly visible through enforcement practices, policy forums and media discourses, have borne the brunt of this regulatory regime. Cannabis policy, especially in its ethnic-racial dimensions, has become symbolic of broader anxieties about cultural and agricultural change.We employed ethnographic methods to research the formation and enforcement of Siskiyou’s restrictive cannabis cultivation regulations, and their differential effects across local populations. We found that the county’s law enforcement–first regulatory approach blurred civil and criminal lines, made some cultivators more visible and vulnerable to enforcement, and promoted criminalizing approaches to cultivators, even among civil regulatory agencies. These developments hinder the ability of agencies (including the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife) to ameliorate negative social and ecological effects of cannabis cultivation through civil regulation, support and services. Download PDF version here or click link to left for online version. Also, here’s a link to the whole issue for those curious about cannabis in California.
2019. Special Issue: Rural Almanac. Journal for the Anthropology of North America. In Press.
Framed around the case of cannabis cultivation in northern California, this essay explores the social category of the rural outlaw. It argues that outlawry consists not only in those whose actions are illegalized but also in the conditions through which racial capitalism accumulates and dispossesses at its various frontiers. Cannabis, before and after its legalization, gets caught up in various dynamics through which outlawry can be assessed. To read the Special Issue introduction by Alex Blanchette and Marcel LaFlamme on “Rural Americas” click here. Click here to read the article.
2021. The Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Cannabis Research. Routledge. 36-43.
This chapter analyzes the dynamics unique to—and shared by—prohibition and legalization. First, it investigates how each regime works by looking at its effects.Second, it explains the role each policy regime plays in its political-economic context. Finally, it analyzes how prohibition’s dynamics are altered or rearticulated through and after legalization. The chapter relies on and underscores the importance of ethnographic approaches in understanding the continuities and discontinuities between prohibition and legalization. Download the chapter proofs here and check out the whole Handbook here.
2021. With Chris Dillis (lead), Hekia Bodwitch, Jennifer Carah, Mary Power, and Nathan Sayre. The Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Cannabis Research. Routledge. 221-230.
Recent changes in legal status of cannabis cultivation in California are increasing regulation of production in the state, and raising questions about whether legalization will result in the industrialization of the cannabis industry, following the example of US agriculture in general. In this chapter, we briefly review the characteristics of industrialized agriculture and contrast with current and past characteristics of the cannabis industry, including the social and environmental context of cannabis production prior to legalization. In 2018, with the adoption of recreational use legislation and the development of a cannabis cultivation licensing program through the California Department of Agriculture, a new opportunity arose for the cannabis industry to become a regulated agriculture sector and expand beyond its original clandestine modes of production. We present early evidence that industrialization is already under way in regions of California that are far from the historical epicenter of the illicit cannabis industry, yet subject to policies shaped by its legacy. We contemplate what industrialized cannabis agriculture might entail for socio-ecological dynamics in the future, including implications for freshwater resources-- which has become a familiar theme of discussions surrounding the environmental impacts of cannabis. We conclude by exploring obstacles to research and the urgent need for interdisciplinary, mixed-methods collaboration, particularly in the period prior to full industrialization and its likely impacts on ecology, industrial structure and regulation. Download a proof copy of the chapter here. Also, check out the entire collection here and here are thoughts on the collection by the handbook’s editor, Dominic Corva.
2020. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 38(4): 626-645.
As the post-1980s revanchist drug war transformed US cities, another spatial formation was materializing: exurbia. The final roost of suburban white flight, exurbia also formed via the spatial-racial dynamics of the drug war. The “exurban fortress” projected an imaginary of urban danger and rural security that: 1) solidified an anti-drug constituency among (older, white) property owners and disciplinarily transitioned racially marked and poor white residents from an industrial to postindustrial service economy; and 2) ameliorated key contradictions implicit to the production, consumption and governance of exurbia. Taking the case of Calaveras County, California, this article shows how cannabis prohibition politically stabilized spatial-racial meanings and capital accumulation during a period bookended by recessionary crises in housing reproduction (1992-2010). It also shows how medical cannabis activists reimagined the urban and rural in capacious ways, thus catalyzing a local political transformation. This case illuminates a neglected dimension of drug war geographies and their activist-driven transformation and urges attention to new bordering practices emerging from exurbian spatial imaginaries. Download the pre-publication PDF here or by clicking the title to the left.
2021. The War on Drugs: A History. Ed. David Farber. New York University Press.
Cannabis is often framed as an exception to the War on Drugs, a framing that currently assists with its extraction from prohibition regimes into legal status. This chapter challenges that cannabis exceptionalism by exploring how the global War on Drugs birthed US cannabis cultivation, one part of a global, illegalized modern peasantry. This global context more adequately frames the “exceptional” aspects of US cultivation, helps to make sense of current legalization politics, and suggests how to think through de-prohibition on a global scale equal to that of the sweeping, global War on Drugs. Check out the whole collection here. Download the proofs here.
2021. With Hekia Bodwitch, Eric Biber, Gordon Hickey & Van Butsic. Journal of Rural Studies. 86: 155-170.
Cannabis legalization is spreading rapidly. In California, as the plant transitions from an illegal drug to agri-cultural product, regulations have been implemented to manage its production and associated environmental impacts. Yet, at the early stages of this process, many of the state’s cannabis farmers continue to operate illicitly. This study examines why some cannabis farmers are engaging in the state’s licensing initiative while others are not. Through an anonymous survey of cannabis farmers in California, we analyzed socio-normative and cost- related factors influencing farmers’ decisions to participate in legal markets, or not. Approximately one third of the 362 cannabis farmers who completed the survey reported that they had never applied for a license. These non-compliant farmers were likely to be smaller cultivators who grew cannabis as part of a diversified livelihood strategy. Farmers’ non-compliance was primarily attributed to an inability to overcome barriers to participation. These included not only financial barriers but also administrative and psychological ones, all of which dispro-portionately affect farmers with fewer resources. Socio-normative factors, including pressure from neighbors and perspectives on the benefits of environmental regulations, were not found to motivate non-compliance. As a result, policy efforts to mitigate the administrative burdens of compliance, such as streamlining permitting processes, extending agricultural support services, and supporting farmer collectives, warrant further attention to enhance compliance, public safety, environmental outcomes, and rural development in cannabis cultivating communities. Reforms to promote compliance, particularly among smaller farmers, may prevent the kinds of industrial consolidation seen in agricultural and in other governmental efforts to regulate informal resource use and trade. Access the Page Proofs here. See Journal of Rural Studies for full publication info.
2021. With Chris Dillis, Theodore E. Grantham, Van Bustic, Eric Biber, Jennifer Carah, Phoebe Parker-Shames, Hekia Bodwitch. Land Use Policy. 105. 1-11.
The cannabis industry in California is attempting to transition from an international epicenter of unpermitted production to one of the world’s largest legal markets. This formalization process will likely establish new centers of production outside the state’s historical cannabis-producing regions, with implications for local communities and the environment. In this paper we analyzed how cultivation regulations and land characteristics correlate with the geographical development of permitted cannabis production centers in California. We used permit data from the first two years of California’s statewide cannabis regulatory program to document geographic variation in cannabis production and farm characteristics (prevalence of onsite residence, non-landowner farming, county zoning classifications, farm size). We also used multilevel regression models to analyze whether geospatial characteristics likely to be relevant to environmental regulations (size of parcel, average slope of parcel, density of stream network, land cover type) were associated with farm size (ha of cultivation) or the likelihood of a parcel being enrolled in the state program. We found that a small number of large farms represented the majority of the permitted statewide cultivation area, with the top 10% of largest farms comprising 60% of total acreage. The counties with the most growth in permitted cannabis cultivation area also had the highest rates of tenant (non-landowner) farming and lowest proportions of farms with permanent onsite residency. Farms in these counties were almost exclusively sited on parcels zoned for agriculture. On a statewide scale, parcel size was a reliably positive predictor of enrollment, while average slope and stream network density had reliably negative effects. The same relationships held in predicting farm size, together suggesting that the development of the newly-formalized cannabis industry in California may be responsive to environmental regulation. Our results suggest two divergent paths of industry development: one in which smaller farms, which often pre-date legalization, navigate regulations in more remote and rugged regions and a second comprising large farms, which are often newer and operate in areas more favorable to meeting environmental requirements of state and county policies. Access the full article here (proof version - contact me for published version for citations).
2021. With Hekia Bodwitch. Elementa: Journal of the Anthropocene. Special Issue: Commoning in Rural North America. 9(1): 00054. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2021.00054
Oddly, criminal prohibition can lead to “commoning,” when individuals, left unprotected by state and formal property rights, innovate collective systems to access, use, and benefit from illegalized resources. “Legalization” entails the conversion of these prohibited commons to legal property systems, bringing new freedoms and liberties as well as the dispossession of collectively generated assets (material, relational, and otherwise). This paradox of legalization is currently playing out among US states moving to legalize cannabis. Motivated by the failures of cannabis prohibition and its grievous harms, the question looms: how will states and markets grapple with the collectively-generated assets and relational systems generated under prohibition? Building from ethnographic research and survey data, this article argues for recognition of the commoning practices that produced the resources upon which the legal market is based. These practices illuminate ways that legalization may deliver not only markets and regulation, but also emancipatory justice in the wake of the War on Drugs. First, we document the commoning practices of cannabis cultivators, the collective benefits they generated under prohibition, and how legalization is affecting these practices and dynamics. Second, we explore strategies, like allotment and pricing systems, that build from prohibited commoning practices to achieve greater collective benefits and the emancipatory potential of legalization. This article is open access and can be accessed here.
2023. With Hekia Bodwitch, Eric Biber, Van Butsic, and Ted Grantham. Land Use Policy. 123: 106351.
As the largest polity worldwide to legalize cannabis, California has implemented uniquely high environmental and land use standards for cannabis agriculture. To date, however, regulations have suffered from low compliance rates, especially among smaller, “legacy” farms that existed prior to legalization. Meanwhile, both licensed and unlicensed farms are increasing in size, thus increasing environmental pressures. Is there a way to achieve environmental objectives, farmer compliance, and an equitable transition away from illegal markets? In the largest US survey of cannabis farmers to date, we found farmers are open to strong environmental protections yet face significant barriers in meeting regulatory requirements. We present this opinion article to suggest several strategies to ameliorate compliance barriers by reducing associated learning, financial, and psychological costs. Taken together, these strategies present an unprecedented opportunity to model a new kind of agriculture centered on small-farm production and environmental stewardship—a model that indicates new directions for agriculture beyond cannabis. Read the article free online.
2022. De Maconha À Cannabis: Entre Política, História, y Moralidades. Fraga P, Rosa L, Rezende D, Eds. Juiz de Fora: Editora UFJF.
This collection on cannabis in the Americas comes at an opportune moment. The shroud of prohibition is lifting in hitches and starts. Around the world, academics are prying open institutional spaces of inquiry and contemplating cannabis in new ways and with new purpose. Collectives of thinkers from Belgium to Thailand, Morocco to Canada, Spain to South Africa and the US to Brazil, are convening, collaborating, and questioning the orthodoxies that secured the ossified knowledge regime of global cannabis prohibition for a half century and longer. Of course, critical, contemplative voices have consistently challenged prohibition, but now, buoyed by the persistence of activists, patients, and criminalized peoples, these voices resonate differently, with expanding reverberations, as policymakers, industrial actors, and those who lived under prohibition, seek to understand and channel this historic transition. In this transformative, mercurial time for cannabis, new research is sorely needed—especially research that exposes prohibition’s faults and legacies, looks anew at the plant, and promotes a more just path forward. This collection offers just that.
Prefacio: De Maconha À Cannabis: Entre Política, História, y Moralidades
With Chris Dillis and Margiana Petersen-Rockney. Access PDF here. The licensed cannabis industry represents one of the top five most economically valued agricultural commodities in California, yet farming largely remains on remote, environmentally sensitive, “marginal” lands. Using mixed methods, this paper examines the determinants of this marginalization, their embedded elaboration, and their relation to historical policy regimes. We used Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) to determine the most important predictors of licensed cannabis industry development since the inception of a statewide licensing program in 2018 and to compare the distribution of licensed cannabis to other forms of rural agriculture, including vineyards and pasture, to understand landscape factors and environmental sensitivity of land uses. We found that a county's median income and the extent of traditional (non-cannabis) agriculture, as measured by the proportion of on-farm (non-cannabis) employment, were both negatively associated with its amount of licensed cannabis agriculture. Ethnographic data suggests that cannabis is often excluded from traditional agricultural areas, through formal local-level bans, restrictive zoning, high “prime” farmland values, and cultural exclusions from other powerful resource users. The resulting relegation to “marginal” lands foments conflicts with amenity land users and environmentalists, even as it partly supports “legacy” cultivators whose farms were established under prior policy regimes. Results suggest that cannabis is more likely to be grown under conditions that introduce regulatory hurdles, including farming on steeper slopes, with natural streams onsite, and without access to large groundwater aquifers for irrigation. Our findings suggest that failure to allow licensed cannabis farming in traditional agriculture regions has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein cannabis cultivation is largely relegated to environmentally sensitive areas where cultivation activity has an elevated tendency for environmental impacts. Journal of Environmental Management. Vol 355 (March). 2024.