The Ganja Complex: Rastafari and Marijuana - Hardcover

Hamid, Ansley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0739103601 ISBN 13: 9780739103609

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2002

Synopsis

In The Ganja Complex Ansley Hamid skillfully welds together two decades of ethnographic research on marijuana in the Caribbean and the United States. Hamid juxtaposes an in-depth study of the spread of Rastafari in the 1970s with an examination of the rise of an international marijuana economy. This revisionist work departs radically from previous scholarship by identifying Rastafari, not as a messianic or millenarian cult, but as a participant in the essential functions of a community's overall economic life. It demonstrates how Rastafari has revitalized third-world economies using indigenous resources, capital, and talent, and documents the internationalization of the 5000-year-old Asian pattern of marijuana use-centered about worship of the Hindu god Shiva-that is the "ganja complex."

About this title

Synopsis:

This text welds together two decades of ethnographic research of marijuana in the Caribbean and the United States. Ansley Hamid juxtaposes an in-depth study of the spread of Rastafari in the 1970s with an examination of the rise of an international marijuana economy. This revisionist work emphasizes Rastafari as the "hearts and minds" behind both the Caribbean informal drug economy and the internationalisation of the "ganja complex".

About the Author:

Ansley Hamid is Associate Professor of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0739103601
• ISBN 13: 9780739103609
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 258