Introduction to Special Section on Cannabis

Seeking a More Ethical Future for Ethnobiology Publishing: A 40-Year Perspective from Journal of ethnobiology

“…Furthermore, to stay timely and relevant, we have strived to launch our special issues with well-planned strategies. For instance, the special section on "Ethnobiology and Cannabis" was launched at the time the federal Cannabis Act came into effect in Canada (Glover 2018), and the recent "Ethnobiology of Bats" special issue was published in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when misinformed public representations of bats as a threat to human health rapidly revived bats' negative stigma (Rocha et al 2021). Our 40th Anniversary issue exemplifies the growing Journal of Ethnobiology, we must continue to face questions head-on about the value of journal revenue to support initiatives like scholarships and awards versus the ethical benefits of OA (e.g., Brainard 2019;Fisher 2020).…”

“…Furthermore, to stay timely and relevant, we have strived to launch our special issues with well-planned strategies. For instance, the special section on “Ethnobiology and Cannabis” was launched at the time the federal Cannabis Act came into effect in Canada (Glover 2018), and the recent “Ethnobiology of Bats” special issue was published in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when misinformed public representations of bats as a threat to human health rapidly revived bats' negative stigma (Rocha et al 2021). Our 40th Anniversary issue exemplifies the growing relevance of our discipline and our journal, and features explorations of our place in global conversations around decolonizing knowledge-building processes (McAlvay et al 2021), the future of international conservation policy (Carino and Farhan Ferrari 2021), and in the context of the wide-ranging “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” movement (Fernández-Llamazares et al 2021).…”

Plantations Beyond Monocrops: Cannabis Ecologies From Colonial Angola to São Tomé

“…While the history of cannabis cultivation and consumption by subaltern peoples clearly demonstrates that plants cannot be reduced to commodities and people to labor, it is not easy to decipher the meaning of this specific plant/human relationship. It is possible to look at cannabis as part of the broad material culture sustaining practices of healing, supporting religious rites, but we can also see it as a stimulant enhancing laborers working capacity, thus contributing to maintain plantation labor relations (Duff 2016;Duvall 2019;Glover 2018). It is also conceivable that the significance of this plant-human relation is both and none of the above.…”