Dangerous Harvest Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes

Throughout history almost all traditional indigenous societies have used psychoactive substances derived from plants in religious and healing rituals. Once such plants are adopted by outsiders for profane use, the often impoverished peasant farmers who grow them are faced with a life of extreme poverty or are lured by the prospect of a very lucrative cash crop with a steady market. Before long, their cultural and physical landscape is drastically altered. The purpose of this book is to explore this issue from a variety of perspectives, ranging from opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan to peyote gardens in south Texas.

Michael K. Steinberg is Adjunct Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University and Cultural Biogeographer with the U.S.D.A.'s National Plant Data Center. Dr. Steinberg specializes in cultural and political ecology of indigenous peoples in Central America. His research has appeared in journals such as Geographical Review, Economic Botany, and The Professional Geographer. He is also the editor of Cultural and Physical Expositions, Geographical Studies in the Southern United States and Latin America, published by Geoscience Publications, and Forests, Fields, and Fish: Politicized Indigenous Landscapes. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in geography in 1999.