Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The impact of intoxicating substances both licit and illicit has been integral to expressions of colonial power and the control of colonised populations, including in Caribbean societies. Historically, licensing laws and carceral institutions were used to discipline workers, and the ongoing criminalisation of certain drugs illustrates the transhistorical legacies that continue to haunt former British colonies like Guyana. Focusing on prisons and prisoners to explore the histories and lingering legacies of colonial drug policies in the country, despite a much‐changed international context, this article documents experiences of, and approaches to, the management and prohibition of psychoactive substances. It reveals connections and continuities between substance use, enslavement, labour, and incarceration, and their relationship both to what we conceptualise as ‘the colonial imaginary’ and ‘booty capitalism’ of the modern age. The article will show how now and in the past, the colonisers partook in extractive booty capitalism (Weber, 1930), while in order to survive, the colonised partook in booty capitalism of the streets (Wacquant, 2003).
DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12576
Authors: Tammy C. Ayres, Kellie Moss, Queenela Cameron
Institutions: University of Leicester, University of Guyana
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,300
Award: G3637581946
OpenAlex ID: W4402941392