The social life of cannabis. Public and collective disputes for rights

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5209/poso.78082
Keywords: collective action , public issues, dispute over rights, pro-cannabis rights, cannabis regulation, political conflicts

Abstract

This article is an analytical proposal to study political conflicts in general and pro-cannabis rights disputes in particular, from a sociological perspective of collective action, regulatory regimes and public problems. As a research process, it is part of a broader debate on the relationship between collective action and the exercise of disputed rights. Its main objective is to analyze the web of actors, contexts and interests surrounding the socio-political conflict over cannabis in Ecuador during the last decade. It examines tensions and public demands around this empirical phenomenon. Such disputes appear at different moments and are an opportunity to question a) the construction of citizenship and the struggle for rights, b) the mechanisms that activate the socio-political conflict and c) the ways in which public problems are forged. As a new proposal of sociological analysis, it enables the study of multiple political resolutions (regulatory, institutional and economic control) as well as some social determinations (criminalization and penalization) around cannabis in Latin America. The proposed analytical model is not restricted to investigating a specific cannabis organization or a particular type of cannabis consumer at a specific time, but rather analyzes the empirical phenomenon of cannabis from its networks of conflictive relationships around consumption, cultivation, and commercialization.

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Author Biography

Andrés Fernando Rodríguez Mera, PhD (C) Flacso Ecuador Departamento de Estudios Políticos

Doctoral candidate -PhD (c)- of Flacso Ecuador in Political Science. Master in Communication and Public Opinion. Teacher at university and pre-university level. Currently researching and working from the sociology of political conflicts, collective action and public problems of consumption, cultivation, regulation and commercialization of cannabis in Ecuador. He has carried out qualitative and quantitative research, as well as classic and virtual procedural ethnographies on cycling collectives in Quito. Speaker in the II International Congress of Social Sciences, Pedagogy and Social Health in the ITFIP Tolima-Colombia with the research "State reforms, cannabis organizations and emerging markets in Ecuador", in the VIII International Congress of Social Sciences in the University of Vienna with the lecture "Exercise of citizenship and expansion of rights. How do the cannabis consumers think and feel", in the II Congress of Studies of the Social Movements in the University Veracruzana with the lecture "Interactions between political practices and state orders: the experience of the cannabis organizations in Ecuador", in the I International Congress of the Network of Investigators in Communication of Ecuador with the study "Communication networks, collective action and organizations of cyclists of Quito" as well as in the academic Days Contemporary Ethnographic Practices organized by the Faculty of Social Communication of the Central University of Ecuador with the lecture "Communication and public space". He published the book "Cyberactivism and collective action. Una etnografía del pedal en Quito" (Cyberactivism and Collective Action. An Ethnography of Pedaling in Quito). He also worked as a radio producer for the radio program "Radio Transgresor Jatarishun" on Radio Universal, as well as in the radio program "Súbele el volumen al Pedal" on Flacso Radio. He occupied the position of editor for the sections "Traveling Memory" and "Mass Culture" in the magazine Aeromagazine.

 

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Published
2022-11-23
How to Cite
Rodríguez Mera A. F. (2022). The social life of cannabis. Public and collective disputes for rights. Política y Sociedad, 59(3), e78082. https://doi.org/10.5209/poso.78082
Issue
Vol. 59 No. 3 (2022): Monográfico: La Sociología de la Infancia revisitada: logros y retos después de dos décadas
Section
Miscelaneus

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