The Social Life of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel: A Global History
Zoom joining details: Topic: The Social Life of Hashish is Mandatory Palestine and Israel: A Global History (Haggai Ram) Time: Nov 30, 2021 14:15 London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/99134999749?pwd=TWhPbExmUDU1UGJKSG9rSVcxZ1diZz09 Meeting ID: 991 3499 9749 Passcode: 486354
After a century of prohibition, we are witnessing a dramatic shift in cannabis culture and policy around the world from a “killer weed” and a cause of racial degeneration to an accepted recreational drug and a “magic medicine.” In his lecture, Haggai Ram will examine this global shift of cannabis by focusing on the social history of the drug (i.e., hashish and marijuana) in Palestine-Israel from the late nineteenth century to the present. Ram will offer a vista into the political and cultural contexts within which cannabis became a “drug”; the underworlds of Jewish and Arab users and traffickers; the complex roles played by race, gender, and class in the construction of cannabis “addiction”; the place of the Zionist project in dispersing cannabis use and enforcing drug restrictions; and the normalization-cum-medicalization of this intoxicant in recent decades. In the process, he will demonstrate the extent to which the history of cannabis in Palestine-Israel offers a window through which one can explore broader political, economic, social, and cultural change.
Date: 30 November 2021, 14:15 (Tuesday, 8th week, Michaelmas 2021)
Venue: This event will now take place online via Zoom
Speaker: Dr Haggai Ram (Ben Gurion University of the Negev)
Organising department: Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
Organiser: Professor Yaacov Yadgar
Organiser contact email address: middle.east@area.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Yaacov Yadgar
Part of: Israel Studies Seminar - Oct 2017 – Mar 2023
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Stephen Minay