Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2026 / Research Handbook on Drugs and Society / From opium to fentanyl: a global history
The Post-1950s Rise of Illegal Opium in Asia
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2022 / The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History.
Opium, the ancient narcotic, has fascinated the West where tastes for the exotic arose alongside British and French colonialism. The mystery of poppy origins is equaled by the opacity of the two largest illegal opium-producing regions that emerged after 1950: the so-called Golden Triangle, in Burma (Myanmar) in mainland Southeast Asia; and Golden Crescent, in Afghanistan, in Southwest Asia. Illegal opium production in these two regions developed as part of the deep historical, geographic, and political complexity that explain their remoteness, lawlessness, and protracted armed conflicts. As a result, scholars of various disciplines have long researched opium production, trade, consumption, and traditions. This chapter examines the causes and dynamics of illegal opium production, including how illegal opium production has benefited from the turmoil of Asian history and geopolitics, from synergies between war economies and drug economies, from underdevelopment and poverty, and from decades of failed often-counterproductive anti-drug policies.
The Golden Triangle: Regression then Reform?
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2021 / In: Transforming the War on Drugs. Warriors, Victims and Vulnerable Regions (ed. Idler & Garzon Vegara) / The Golden Triangle: Regression then Reform?
Territorial control and the scope and resilience of cannabis and other illegal drug crop cultivation
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2019 / EchoGéo.
As revealed by the examples of Morocco, northeast India, Afghanistan, Burma/Myanmar, and the United States of America, degrees of politico-territorial control or law-enforcement deficit by the state can explain, to some extent, the existence of large expanses of illegal drug cultivation. Causes of politico-territorial control deficit are many and non-exclusive. They include armed conflicts, corruption, loosely integrated territories, and lack of financial, human and material means of asserting state control. Large-scale illegal drug crop cultivation can take place according to three main scenarios: that of a full-fledged but inefficient war on drugs; that of toleration, for various motives, of illegal drug plant cultivation by the state (which can amount to negotiated but effective control); and that of the militarily-challenged state that cannot exert full control over its territory. The fact that total politico-territorial control by the state, no matter how powerful and resourceful, is deemed impossible, shows that the war on drugs is doomed to fail despite how many battles were won. Eventually, the very limits of the state’s politico-territorial control, when applied to counter-narcotics and law enforcement, implicitly question the illegality of a practice that is considered legitimate by many.
De la recherche de terrain sur la production agricole illégale de drogue
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2018 / L'espace politique.
Expliciter les conditions pratiques et les enjeux de la recherche de terrain portant sur la production illégale de drogue est nécessaire dès lors qu’il est le lieu par excellence de la collecte de données dites empiriques. En effet, de telles recherches sont clairement entravées par les difficultés et les dangers propres à l’objet et à la pratique du terrain en question, souvent du fait d’a priori. Ce texte est consacré à la conduite de ce type de recherche de terrain, à sa nature, sa préparation, son accès, et aussi à ses aléas et à ses risques, en abordant les questions méthodologiques, les stratégies et les techniques qui permettent de préparer et de mener de tels travaux de recherche, sans omettre les impératifs éthiques de l’après-terrain.
Illegal drug plant cultivation and armed conflicts. Case studies from Asia and Northern Africa
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2018 / Crisis and Conflict in the Agrarian World: An Evolving Dialectic.
In Asia and other continents, the internal peace of a number of countries has been affected, sometimes even conditioned, by the existence of illegal agricultural production and the ensuing illegal trade (Chouvy and Laniel, 2007). However, through loss of politico-territorial control, the armed conflicts that have afflicted certain states have made possible and even encouraged the development of such agricultural production and trafficking.