THINKING ABOUT OPIUM AND THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE: QUESTIONS AND INSIGHTS FROM GLOBAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14456/acsr.2024.19Keywords:
Golden Triangle, Opium, Global Studies, Southeast Asia, Drug TradeAbstract
Opium has a complex history. The consumption of opium throughout history ranges from medicinal and ritual practice; to recreational and mass-production proportions. Opium cultivation, consequently, has also undergone shifts from being ‘legal’ to illegal, encouraged to banned. The illicit trade of opium, however, remains to be a global phenomenon. The ebbs and flows of the relationship between this intoxicant and human society, therefore, promise various vantage points to further nuance its complex history not only in terms of related policies, but to more ambitious projects of further thinking about global capitalism, globalization, and global governance. This paper reflects about the Golden Triangle, a region at the heart of mainland Southeast Asia, considered to be one of the major sources of opium in the global drug market. The discussion underscores the value of looking at the Golden Triangle from global studies perspectives. Here, the Golden Triangle is presented as a site of production (pertaining to the site opium poppy cultivation and in a sense pertaining to how it has been produced as a space), interaction (how the Golden Triangle could be seen as a commodity frontier where global capitalism asserts and exerts), negotiation (how the Golden Triangle figures in how ideas and discourses are encountered, contested); and also a window to see local-global dynamics as in the case of Myanmar. These reflections ultimately aim to ask how we can locate illicit commodities and illegal/criminal activities within and from the broader discussions of global studies.
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