Titel

June 2026 - October 2028

This research project studies how the boundaries between legality and illegality influence economic life, political power, and social relations. In recent years, the global drug prohibition regime has shown signs of change with the legalization of cannabis. Nevertheless, the Americas continue to experience high levels of violence attributed to drug trafficking and the soaring demand for other illegalized drugs. The research and network project focuses on the global dynamics of drug markets and the so-called “war on drugs.” It examines how policies of prohibition and militarization reproduce systems of inequality and violence across class, gender, and racial lines.

We analyze how securitarian narratives, political masculinity, and surveillance infrastructures have become embedded in everyday governance and social relations, extending far beyond border control and drug enforcement. Our central hypothesis is that regulation—rather than legality or illegality—offers a more productive framework for understanding the connections between psychoactive substance markets, violence, and state power. We seek to uncover how different actors and infrastructures sustain or resist these regulatory dynamics, including financial systems, local economies, and gendered social practices.

Drawing from political economy, state theory, cultural and media studies, and political sociology, the project situates drug-related economies within the wider dynamics of market accumulation and power formation. Hence, we apply “the Popular” not only as a framework for economic activities of an imagined working class or ‘peasants’ with little alternatives but ‘illegal’ crops, but also as a theoretical loophole of regulation that transcends the legality/illegality dichotomy. Bringing together four interrelated dimensions—narratives, masculinities, governance, and infrastructure—the project aims to develop new conceptual and methodological tools to understand and transform the violent legacies of prohibitionist policies. To this end, we employ a transdisciplinary design that unites academic and non-academic research.