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Drug Wars

The Political Economy of Narcotics

By: Curtis Marez

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Paperback | 1 April 2004

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364 Pages

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22.8 x 14.9 x 2.0

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Inaugurated in 1984, America's "War on Drugs" is just the most recent skirmish in a standoff between global drug trafficking and state power. From Britain's nineteenth-century Opium Wars in China to the activities of Colombia's drug cartels and their suppression by U.S.-backed military forces today, conflicts over narcotics have justified imperial expansion, global capitalism, and state violence, even as they have also fueled the movement of goods and labor around the world.

In Drug Wars, cultural critic Curtis Marez examines two hundred years of writings, graphic works, films, and music that both demonize and celebrate the commerce in cocaine, marijuana, and opium, providing a bold interdisciplinary exploration of drugs in the popular imagination. Ranging from the writings of Sigmund Freud to pro-drug lord Mexican popular music, gangsta rap, and Brian De Palma's 1983 epic Scarface, Drug Wars moves from the representations and realities of the Opium Wars to the long history of drug and immigration enforcement on the U.S.-Mexican border, and to cocaine use and interdiction in South America, Middle Europe, and among American Indians. Throughout Marez juxtaposes official drug policy and propaganda with subversive images that challenge and sometimes even taunt government and legal efforts.

As Marez shows, despite the state's best efforts to use the media to obscure the hypocrisies and failures of its drug policies-be they lurid descriptions of Chinese opium dens in the English popular press or Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign-marginalized groups have consistently opposed the expansion of state power that drug traffic has historically supported.

Curtis Marez is assistant professorof critical studies at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Politics & Government International Relations Social Services & Welfare Social Welfare & Social Services Emergency Services Police & Security Services Society & Culture Social Issues & Processes Social Aspects of Illness & Addictions Social Aspects of Drug & Substance Abuse History

General & World History Central Government Central Government Policies

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Drug Wars	p. 1
Opium
The Globe in an Opium Bowl: The Opium Wars and British Empire in Asia	p. 39
Strange Bedfellows: Opium and the Political Economy of Sexuality	p. 70
Marijuana
Anarchy in the USA: The Mexican Revolution, Labor Radicalism, and the Criminalization of Marijuana	p. 105
LAPD, the Movie: Hollywood, the Police, and the Drug War against Mexican Immigrants	p. 146
La Cucaracha in Babylon: Mexican Music and Hollywood's Sonic War on Drugs	p. 185
Cocaine
Cocaine Colonialism: Indian Rebellion in South America and the History of Psychoanalysis	p. 225
Drug Wars Are Indian Wars: Frontier Drug Enforcement and the Ends of U.S. Empire	p. 247
Notes	p. 285
Index	p. 341
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Drug Wars

The Political Economy of Narcotics

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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