Librería Samer Atenea
Librería Aciertas (Toledo)
Kálamo Books
Librería Perelló (Valencia)
Librería Elías (Asturias)
Donde los libros
Librería Kolima (Madrid)
Librería Proteo (Málaga)
Opium Consumption and Experience in India offers a 'cultural biography' of opium on the subcontinent. It spans the Raj and India after independence. The book examines the 'social lives' of opium in India, beginning as a commodity in the sixteenth century, exploring its social transformation and singularization in the eighteenth century, and chronicling its decline from the mid-nineteenth century to obsolescence and the new 'paths and diversions' of our own times. The book attempts to illuminate how opium came to occupy a central place in India’s 'cultures of consumption' and also in the socio-economic and political life of a people. How did opium become embedded in a social ethos where it not only served as a social lubricant but soon morphed into a narco-identity for the people of India? The identification of India as a land of 'great opium eaters' spawned the propaganda of a 'civilizing mission' that ushered in a new era of material exploitation and political domination. As Dr. Kour demonstrates, this had a significant impact on the development and regulation of opium and its use.
