I speak to Chris about his book “The African Roots of Marijuana” and what he learnt from the research.
The effects of colonialization and conservative Islam on attitudes towards cannabis from the 19th century through to mid 20th century and the internationalization of cannabis prohibtion.
As always with th cannabis plant there’s layers of culture, complexity and diversity that we will be unravelling for many years yet.
Associate Professor-Geography and Environmental Studies
Associate Professor Chris Duvall received an appointment with the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at The University of New Mexico in 2008. As a biogeographer, Duvall’s research relates to how humans represent and depict their environment, as well as human-plant interaction. Most recently his research has focused on cannabis and other plants that enslaved people in western Central Africa used medicinally. His academic interests include cultural and historical ecology, African diaspora, food geography, and science studies. Duvall’s discuss how the social constructions of human difference affect access to and use of environmental resources, human-environment interactions involved in illicit drug commerce, and the environmental meanings of food, among other topics.
Education
- PhD in Geography, University of Wisconsin (2006)
- MS in Environmental Studies, San José State University (2000)
- BA in History, University of California (1994)
Thanks to its best-known use, any mention of cannabis tends to bring up jokes about the munchies or debates about marijuana and legalized drug use. But this not-so-innocent flowering plant was one of the first to be domesticated by humans, and it has been used in spiritual, therapeutic, and even punitive applications ever since―in addition to its more recreational purpose. Despite all the hoopla surrounding cannabis, however, we actually understand relatively little about it in the human and ecological past. In Cannabis, Chris Duvall explores the botanical and cultural history of one of our most widely distributed crops, presenting an even-handed look at this heady little plant.
Providing a global historical geography of cannabis, Duvall discusses the manufacture of hemp and its role in rope-making, clothing, and paper, as well as cannabis’s use as oil and fuel. His focus, though, is on its most prevalent use: as a psychoactive drug. Without advocating for either the prohibition or legalization of the drug, Duvall analyzes a wide range of works to offer a better understanding of both stances and, moreover, the diversity of human-cannabis relationships across the world. In doing so, he corrects the overly simplistic portrayals of cannabis that have dominated discourse on the subject, arguing that we need to understand the big picture in order to improve how the plant is managed worldwide. Richly illustrated and highly accessible, Cannabis is an essential read to understand the rapidly evolving debate over the legalization of marijuana in the United States and other countries.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780233418?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
Pages: 360
Illustrations: 40 illustrations
Published: June 2019
After arriving from South Asia approximately a thousand years ago, cannabis quickly spread throughout the African continent. European accounts of cannabis in Africa—often fictionalized and reliant upon racial stereotypes—shaped widespread myths about the plant and were used to depict the continent as a cultural backwater and Africans as predisposed to drug use. These myths continue to influence contemporary thinking about cannabis. In The African Roots of Marijuana, Chris S. Duvall corrects common misconceptions while providing an authoritative history of cannabis as it flowed into, throughout, and out of Africa. Duvall shows how preexisting smoking cultures in Africa transformed the plant into a fast-acting and easily dosed drug and how it later became linked with global capitalism and the slave trade. People often used cannabis to cope with oppressive working conditions under colonialism, as a recreational drug, and in religious and political movements. This expansive look at Africa’s importance to the development of human knowledge about marijuana will challenge everything readers thought they knew about one of the world’s most ubiquitous plants.
“This timely and compelling book profoundly engages with the contemporary interest in medical marijuana and the revision underway in the racial stereotyping of drug users. As the only work that situates Africa and its peoples at the center of a human and environmental narrative that unfolds across the Atlantic world, The African Roots of Marijuana offers a history of cannabis unlike any other.” – Judith A. Carney, coauthor of In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World
“The history and geography of psychoactive cannabis has been written many times, but no other work prior to Chris S. Duvall’s The African Roots of Marijuana has explored the crucial importance of Africa and Africans in the story. Indeed, as in so many others areas of biocultural world history, Africans have been written continuously as recipients of knowledge and invention rather than innovators. With a focus on nineteenth-century published works, Duvall exposes forcefully and with felicitous prose the roots underlying the cannabis cultures that exist today.” – Robert A. Voeks, author of The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative
“The book should be purchased by every scholar and lay student with an interest in this topic.” – Richard Stoffle, International Journal of Intangible Heritage
“Offers a great example of why geographers, historians, and other professionally trained humanists need to keep writing about cannabis: these are the only people who can explain and contextualize the racist and colonialist assumptions baked into much of the most widely read literature on the plant. . . . The academic literature on cannabis may never be the same after The African Roots of Marijuana.” – Nick Johnson, Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society
“This book will be a worthwhile addition to any university library and is especially useful for law schools and for programs in criminology, criminal justice, sociology, and history. . . . Highly recommended. All readership levels.” – D. R. Kavish, Choice
“Essential reading for anyone with interests in African ethnobotany or cannabis history, and more broadly, will be of value to those interested in the history of nineteenth-century Africa or of slavery.” – Wendy L. Applequist, Economic Botany
“The book is richly detailed and reflects years of sustained effort. . . . All in all, this is an excellent piece of scholarship. It should interest anyone with a curiosity about the history of cannabis, Africa, or the geography of drugs.” – Barney Warf, Journal of Historical Geography
“Rumors that become published facts in high-end publications and prestigious medical journals are the mainstay of histories of marijuana. Chris S. Duvall, in a magnificently researched and clearly written book, sets right this historiography. . . . Duvall does a brilliant job in consulting available archaeological evidence, carefully studying the spread of words, and, most of all, drawing on sometimes little-studied European observers, especially Portuguese expeditions into the Central African interior. His judicious combination of all of these sources, combined with critical judgement, is convincing and a pleasure to read.” – David M. Gordon, International Journal of African Historical Studies
“The Africa Roots of Cannabis provides an important clarion call for scholars of intoxicants to take Africa and Africans seriously when telling the story of cannabis and cultures of pipe smoking in world history.” – David A. Guba Jr., Social History of Medicine
“The African Roots of Marijuana is a path-breaking work of scholarship. . . . This work represents a singular scholarly achievement, both in the history of cannabis globally and in its history on the African continent.” – Charles Ambler, Bulletin of the History of Medicine
“As African history remains on the fringe of some studies, Chris Duvall’s The African Roots of Marijuana provides a solid foundation for the agency of African people and the central function that the continent plays in the expansion of global transactions.”
– Paul Hoelscher, World History Connected
