Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung

From 24-26 June 2024, convenors Philipp Wolfesberger and Camilo Forero hosted the interdisciplinary workshop “Entanglements of (Il)legality and Violence: Drug Trafficking and Drug Policies in the Americas” at ZiF. Now the results of the workshop are published in the open access volume “Drug Assemblages – Policies, Counternarratives, and Local Experiences”, edited by Philipp Wolfesberger.

In the shifting landscapes of global drug governance, power asymmetries shape drug economies as well as policy discourses. Through counternarratives and regional case studies of the Americas, this edited volume investigates how prohibition, securitization, and regulation intertwine in the production of violence and inequality. Bridging fresh interdisciplinary studies and critical policy analysis, the contributors provide conceptual and empirical insights toward more reflexive, context-sensitive, and emancipatory approaches to drug policies. (From the cover).

We are now looking forward to the long-term research group "Dimensions of Regulation: Conceptualizing the Popular in the Drugs/Violence Nexus", which Philipp Wolfesberger will convene at ZiF together with Estefanía Ciro Rodriguez, Alke Jenss and Oswaldo Zavala. The group is sceduled to start in June. 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. The researchers will 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. 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.

Design: Corinna Mehl