Intoxicating Spaces: Global and Comparative Perspectives

Intoxicants are a prevailing and even defining feature of the modern world. Since the sixteenth century, cacao, caffeines, opiates, sugar, tobacco, and pharmaceuticals joined alcohols in transforming dietary and social habits, and becoming mainstays of modern global economies and nation states. The means by which these commodities have been produced, transported, and consumed, often within the exploitative contexts of colonialism and empire, is inherently and sometimes violently spatial: from the plantations and other agricultural settings where they were cultivated, to the international networks and systems through which they were trafficked, to the built, al fresco, and temporary environments ­in which they were retailed, exchanged, and enjoyed. This conference offers new perspectives on the relationship between intoxicants and spaces – social, material, and conceptual – since the sixteenth century, and on an international scale. It will explore the spatial dimensions and dynamics of production, traffic, and consumption; how transplantations and flows of intoxicants can help us understand the nature of the global; and how international comparisons can illuminate practices and experiences within local, regional, national, and continental contexts.