This book demonstrates how culture matters for the understanding of cannabis use. It stems from the growing body of research on how users manoeuvre stigmatisation and celebrate the subcultural status of cannabis amid rapid transformation of the substance and its societal reception. The volume presents international studies that challenge the normalisation thesis and simplified views on patterns of use, as well as the Western bias in social research of cannabis.
Chapters in this book map the variability of cannabis cultures and markets on a global scale including digital, regulated and illicit markets in transformation. They study cannabis through stigmatisation, gender, social worlds, symbolic boundaries, subcultures, and identity work. The chapters address diverse themes, such as how Latvian, Polish, Nigerian or Mexican users negotiate mainstream conservative, and sometimes gendered societal reactions to cannabis - and how Nordic users’ identities are played out in more progressive contexts. Chapters also cover cannabis use by older people and small growers’ cultures in the US and the interconnections between the established cultures and their digital augmentation in Australia. Synthetic cannabis use is studied in New Zealand and the many contradictions of contemporary cannabis policies are highlighted throughout.
Taken together, this book offers an assortment of studies that provide a descriptive and conceptual snapshot of ongoing transitions of paradoxically stable cannabis cultures. It was originally published as a special issue of Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy.
Introduction: Culture matters! Changes in the global landscape of cannabis 1. Cannabis users and Homo Sovieticus: stigma, culture, and delegitimization in Riga, Latvia 2. Social worlds and symbolic boundaries of cannabis users in Poland 3.Cannabis subculture, community forming and socio-structural challenges in Nigeria 4. The green shift? Narratives of changing cannabis policies and identity-work among Norwegian adolescents 5. Comparisons in the making: youth accounts of cannabis use in Swedish addiction treatment 6. Cultural stigmatization and police corruption: cannabis, gender, and legalization in Mexico 7. The changing cannabis culture among older Americans: high hopes for chronic pain relief 8. The transforming landscape of cannabis in southwest Michigan: a case study of regulations and the role of small-scale growers 9. Beyond the dark web: navigating the risks of cannabis supply over the surface web 10. The co-production of shifting intoxications: synthetic cannabinoids, stigma, risk and harm 11. Cannabis criminology: inequality, coercion, and illusions of reform
Michał Wanke holds PhD in sociology from the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. He works at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Opole, Poland. He studies Polish and Turkish cannabis users’ social worlds in relation to globalised liberalisation trends. Sveinung Sandberg is Professor in the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, Norway. His research focuses on processes of marginalisation, violence, masculinity, illegal drugs, radicalization, and social movements as well as the role of life-stories in criminal trajectories and careers. Ruken Macit is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Harran University, Şanlıurfa, Türkiye. Her research interests are sociology of crime, drug use, addiction, and stigmatisation. Hakan Gülerce completed his MA and PhD at the Social Science Institute of Istanbul University, Turkey. His main works are on migration, modernity, and social movements. He is a researcher at the Research-based Analysis of European Youth Programmes. He is currently a faculty member at the Department of Sociology and the director of the Migration Policy Applications and Research Center at Harran University, Şanlıurfa, Türkiye.
