The Ganja Complex: Rastafari and Marijuana [Hardcover]

In The Ganja Complex Ansley Hamid skillfully welds together two decades of ethnographic research on marijuana in the Caribbean and the United States. Hamid juxtaposes an in-depth study of the spread of Rastafari in the 1970s with an examination of the rise of an international marijuana economy. This revisionist work departs radically from previous scholarship by identifying Rastafari, not as a messianic or millenarian cult, but as a participant in the essential functions of a community's overall economic life. It demonstrates how Rastafari has revitalized third-world economies using indigenous resources, capital, and talent, and documents the internationalization of the 5000-year-old Asian pattern of marijuana usecentered about worship of the Hindu god Shivathat is the ganja complex. Chapter 1 Use-Complexes and the Ganja Complex Chapter 2 Reviving the Ganja Complex: The Crisis of Caribbean African Youth in San Fernando, Trinidad in the 1960s. Chapter 3 How the Ganja Complex was Diffused Chapter 4 Religion and Ritual in the Ganja Complex Chapter 5 The Ganja Complex, Rastafari, Public Opinion, and Law Enforcement Chapter 6 The Ganja Complex in Brooklyn: The Rise and Fall of the Marijuana Complex and the Advent of Cocaine Chapter 7 The Ganja Complex versus Other Marijuana Use-Complexes: Ganja vs. Madi-juana Chapter 8 The Informal Economy Chapter 9 U.S.Caribbean Drug ConnectionsAnsley Hamid is Associate Professor of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York.