On Islands, Insularity, and Opium Poppies
Australia's Secret Pharmacy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4475979 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stewart Williams (0000-0002-9603-7013, University of Tasmania, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 290-310 |
| Publication date | 2010-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1068/d5608 |
| OpenAlex | W2002916671 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 27 |
Islands embody a contradictory geography. Although insularity has negative connotations, the related aspects of uniqueness, smallness, secrecy, security, isolation, and remoteness all have strategic roles in situating Australia's production of licit narcotics as an international success with poppy cultivation confined to the island state of Tasmania. Through the boundaries and dualisms inscribed in the discourses of islandness and drug rhetoric, the state's ultramodern manufacture of pharmaceuticals is contrasted with others elsewhere, including opium and illegal drug production. Their representations simplify the more intricate and challenging geopolitical realities that link this industry to transnational corporations, state and federal governments, their agencies, and various UN organisations. In a poststructural reading, the secrets of islands and drugs are suggested to comprise what Derrida terms aporia or impossible situations: Tasmania and its poppy industry are isolated from a global otherness yet entwine different peoples and places in connecting complex material practices both licit and illicit at multiple scales all around the world. However, these aporia also present new political and ethical openings with significance for island studies as well as for narcotics production and its regulation
Geopolitics · Opium · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · State (computer science · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Philippine History and Culture
Situating drugs and drug use geographically
Virtually Impossible
Envisioning the archipelago
Drugs, law, people, place and the state
Space, scale and jurisdiction in health service provision for drug users
Health geographies II
The geographies of cultural geography III
Legal Geography
Licit Narcotics Production in Australia
Matter beginning to matter
Traditional Ecologies of the Opium Poppy and Oral History in Rural Turkey
Dissemination
Innovative development strategies from Non-Sovereign Island jurisdictions? A global review of economic policy and governance practices
Studying Islands
A Phenomenology of Islands
Managing the hinterland beyond
Introduction
Geographical 'handicaps' and small states
Insularity, sovereignty and statehood
Small island developing states and their economic vulnerabilities
The Ballad Dance of the Faeroese
The challenge of hypothermia a six-proposition manifesto for small Island territories
The Determinants of Economic Growth in Small States
Isolation as disability and resource
The legal production of narcotic materials in Australia
Technologies of agency and performance
Comparing the Economic Performance of Dependent Territories and Sovereign Microstates
The Rhetoric of Drugs. An Interview
Derrida Enisled
| Citations per year | 0.73 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2019 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |