Call for papers for the Dossier “Marijuana transactions and controversies”

The theme and title proposed for this dossier echo the name of the thematic session that the organizers of this proposal coordinated at the IX International Congress of the Brazilian Association of Multidisciplinary Drug Studies (ABRAMD) held in Brasília, from November 15 to 18, 2023. In addition, marijuana transactions and controversies are the subject of several papers that have been presented in the activities that the dossier's proponents organize in their professional associations, as well as at international scientific meetings. In 2023, at the 21st Congress of the Brazilian Society of Sociology (SBS), Marcílio Dantas Brandão was one of the coordinators of WG03 (Drugs and Sociability); while Frederico Policarpo and Florencia Corbelle coordinated WG49 (Drugs, Knowledge and Rights) at the XIV Mercosur Anthropology Meeting (RAM), and Symposium 63 (Collective actions, regulatory strategies and demands for legal access to marijuana in Latin America) at the VII Congress of the Latin American Anthropology Association (ALA) in Rosario (Argentina) the following year. In all these scientific meetings, the discussion of marijuana transactions and controversies has contributed to consolidating a field of interdisciplinary reflection that involves different scientific areas and professional practices such as public health, law, psychology, education, social assistance and public security based on human rights. We are aware that the complexity of the problem makes it crucial for various disciplines to approach the issue and we noticed that social scientists from different parts of the country are responding to this urgency through diverse studies.

Cannabis, popularly known in Brazil as marijuana, is the most widely used proscribed psychoactive substance in the world (UNODC, 2016); there is a great demand for the liberalization of its various uses. The Global Marijuana March, whose first edition took place in New York in 1998 (Brandão, 2017), is a global event that takes place in various cities around the world, demanding the legal regulation of transactions with marijuana and exerting strong social pressure on parliaments and executive powers, raising the Marijuana March Movement's status to that of prominent actor in international cannabis activism. Moreover, the social movement and cannabis activism, which is developing unevenly at the regional level (Fusero, Corda, 2016), has recently gained prominence in the professional fields of medicine and law due to the plant’s great therapeutic potential that has recently been rediscovered (Policarpo, 2020). However, resistance persist, some political actors are expressing their opposition to transactions with marijuana and there is also a great deal of controversy in the scientific fields in which the topic stands out.

In Brazil, studies focusing on marijuana attention cycles show that the controversies have been going on for about a century (Brandão, 2014a, 2014b, 2016) and anthropology has been one of the main fields in which this controversy developed. At the beginning of the last century, when the scholar of Afro-Brazilian customs, Manuel Querino (1916), contested the claims of Doctor Rodrigues Dória (1915) about marijuana in Brazil, this controversy entered the field of pre-institutionalized anthropology in our country. Since then, there have been many scholars of customs (such as Freyre, 1933, 1937 and 1960) and anthropologists with different backgrounds, such as Gilberto Velho in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, Edward MacRae and Júlio de Assis Simões in São Paulo in the following decade, Bruno Cavalcanti in Pernambuco in the same period and Luiz Mott -from Bahia- joining some fellow professionals to reinforce the importance of the subject within the already duly instituted Brazilian Anthropology Association (ABA). Thus, the debate on marijuana is an old acquaintance within this disciplinary field and is still quite frequent in our discussions, as evidenced by the influx of papers on the subject at recent ABA meetings. Therefore, anthropology has been an important collective actor in making marijuana transactions in contemporary Brazil a focus of investigation and action. In addition, in neighboring Latin American countries, contributions to this field of study have grown exponentially in recent years (Corbelle, 2018, 2023; Diaz, 2018, 2020; Romero, Aguilar Avendaño, 2020; among others), enriching the debate and fostering regional exchange. 

This dossier aims to bring together a significant sample of South American anthropological production on the subject. Given the turnout of anthropologists at the ABA, ABRAMD, RAM, ALA and even SBS meetings, we are confident that we will receive the submission of a significant volume of article proposals and, consequently, we will be able to produce a rich issue of Revista Antropolítica that is representative of the plurality of approaches to the subject. Due to the coordinators' background, we will prioritize works focusing on the study of mobilizations for changes in marijuana regulations. Nevertheless, we also encourage the submission of articles on any aspect involving transactions with cannabis. In this way, this dossier aims to deepen the debate on controversies related to the topic and contribute to the identification of convergences and the consolidation of a field of anthropological research that brings together scholars from different institutions who are developing work that is equally relevant to the production of knowledge about cannabis.

 

References:

BRANDÃO, Marcílio Dantas. O problema público da maconha no Brasil: anotações sobre quatro ciclos de atores, interesses e controvérsias. Dilemas, v. 7, p. 703-740, 2014a.

BRANDÃO, Marcílio Dantas. Ciclos de atenção à maconha no Brasil. Revista da Biologia, v. 13, p. 1-10, 2014.

BRANDÃO, Marcílio Dantas. Os ciclos de atenção à maconha e a emergência de um problema público no Brasil. In: MACRAE, Edward; ALVES, Wagner Coutinho. (Org.). Fumo de Angola: canabis, racismo, resistência cultural e espiritualidade. Salvador: EDUFBA, p. 103-132, 2016.

BRANDÃO, Marcílio Dantas. Dito, feito e percebido: controvérsias, performances e mudanças na arena da maconha. Tese [Doutorado em Sociologia / Doctorat en Sciences Sociales]. Recife/Paris: UFPE, EHESS, 2017.

CORBELLE, Florencia. El activismo político de los usuarios de drogas: de la clandestinidad al Congreso Nacional. Buenos Aires: Teseo Press, 2018.

CORBELLE, Florencia. Surgimento, desenvolvimento e consolidação do ativismo cannábico na Argentina, 20 anos de militância. In: POLICARPO, Frederico; VERÍSSIMO, Marcos; MOTTA, Yuri; MARTINS, Luana (org.). Maconha: erva boa para pensar. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Autografia, p. 89-126, 2023.

DIAZ, María Cecilia. Haciendo camino al andar: notas etnográficas sobre seminarios y jornadas de uso medicinal de cannabis en argentina (2015-2017). Revista Pensamiento Penal, 2018. Disponível em: https://www.pensamientopenal.com.ar/doctrina/46213-haciendo-camino-al-andar-notas-etnograficas-sobre-seminarios-y-jornadas-uso-medicinal. Acesso em: 29 set. 2023.

DIAZ, María Cecilia. Convertirse en especialista en cultivo y uso terapéutico de cannabis. Contextos, conocimientos y formas de asesoramiento entre activistas cannábicos en Argentina. Redes, Redes, v. 26, n. 50, p. 209-233, 2020.

DÓRIA, José Rodrigues da Costa. Os fumadores de maconha: effeitos e males do vício. Trabalho apresentado no II Pan American Scientif Congress, Washington, 27 dez. 1915.

FREYRE, Gilberto. Casa-grande e senzala. 48a ed. São Paulo: Global Editora, 2003. [1933]

FREYRE, Gilberto. Nordeste. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1937.

FREYRE, Gilberto. Sugestões em torno do Museu de Antropologia no Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais. Recife: Imprensa Universitária, 1960.

FUSERO, Mariano; CORDA, Alejandro. De la Punición a la Regulación: Políticas de cannabis en América Latina y el Caribe. Informe sobre políticas de drogas, 48. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2016.

GONGORA, Andrés. Farmacopea Política: una etnografía del antiprohibicionismo y de la lucha por la liberación de la marihuana en Colombia. Outros Tempos, v. 14, n. 24, p. 228-246, 2017.

POLICARPO, Frederico. Dignidade, doença e remédio. Uma análise da construção médico-jurídica da maconha medicinal. Antropolítica, v. 1, p. 143-166, 2020.

QUERINO, Manuel Raimundo. A raça africana e os seus costumes na Bahia. In: Annaes do 5o Congresso Brazileiro de Geografia, 1916. v.2. Salvador: Imprensa Official do Estado, 1916.

ROMERO, Lucía; AGUILAR AVENDAÑO, Oscar. Interacciones entre cultivadores, usuarios e investigadores en torno a los usos medicinales de cannabis en argentina. Redes, v. 26, n. 50, p. 235-263, 2020.

UNODC – United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime. World Drug Report 2016. Vienna: UNODC, 2016.

Considering evaluation criteria applied to scientific journals, up to 50% of the articles may be authored by doctoral students; the remaining articles must include at least one author with a doctoral degree. All submissions will undergo a blind review process by external referees, following the journal's policy. To reflect the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches across different empirical fields and topics, articles from Anthropology and Social Sciences will be given preference, provided they adhere to the criterion of externality to the UFF.

Organizers: Frederico Policarpo (UFF, RJ), Marcílio Dantas Brandão (Univasf / UFPE, PE) e Florencia Corbelle (ICA-UBA/CONICET, Argentina).

Deadline: July 07, 2025.

NOTE: As we have more than one open call, it is mandatory to indicate in the field 'Comments to editors' that the submission is for the Dossier “Marijuana transactions and controversies”.

Contributions can be sent until July 07, 2025 via the journal's electronic system: https://periodicos.uff.br/antropolitica/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions