Leaf of paradise?: the intricate effects of khat in Madagascar
Abstract
Purpose
–Khat is a bushy plant whose leaves are chewed for a mild amphetamine effect. The purpose of this paper is to investigate khat's multiple effects, broadly defined to include impacts on producers, traders, and consumers, as well as on the biophysical environment, in northern Madagascar.
Design/methodology/approach
This primarily ethnographic study (conducted from 2004 to 2010), includes observation, semi-structured interviews, and orally administered questionnaires.
Findings
Khat's effects include strain on the household budgets of consumers, but increased earnings to producers and traders. In addition, there is some evidence of consumers’ strained primary social relationships, yet khat chewing is also positively linked with new forms of urban multiethnic identity.
Research limitations/implications
To evaluate a drug's overall effects, it is critical to understand it within wide-ranging political, economic, biological, and cultural contexts. Many studies of drugs focus on only one component. While this makes for more manageable research designs, it obscures the complex interplay of numerous factors. This impedes general understanding and furthermore makes it difficult to design broadly effective, multisector intervention strategies.
Originality/value
This analysis reveals the intricacy of khat's effects in Madagascar while programmatically proposing a model for doing research with policy implications on other psychotropic substances.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding for this research was provided by the National Geographic Society (Grant Number 7413.03), the National Science Foundation (Award Number BCS-0318640), a US Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, the University of West Georgia, and the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. Acknowledgment goes to Pamela Erickson and Merrill Singer for the guidance they provided in shaping this analysis. The author also wish to thank Louis-Philippe d’Arvisenet and Alex Totomarovariou for the intellectual and practical support they have provided her in Madagascar. The author thanks the many people who have shaped this research and her thinking about it. Any shortcomings remain her own.
Citation
L. Gezon, L. (2013), "Leaf of paradise?: the intricate effects of khat in Madagascar", Drugs and Alcohol Today, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 194-204. https://doi.org/10.1108/DAT-12-2012-0012
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited