Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in Rural America
“In this brilliant ethnography, Garriott reveals that as the war on drugs extends from the inner city to rural Appalachia, suspicion and mistrust come to dominate small-town interactions. People one knows and everyday objects are quietly transformed into sources of danger and illegality by the state's desire to root out methamphetamine. A major contribution to law and society studies as well as to rural anthropology.”-Mariana Valverde,author ofLaw and Order: Images, Meanings, Myths“Reveals how addiction is remaking rural America despite four decades of a ‘war on drugs.’ Garriott explores the day-to-day costs of policing drugs in a society increasingly organized around the illicit and the high. Compassionate and relentless, he demonstrates the brutal reality of narcopolitics in the United States. Essential reading.”-Joseph Masco,The University of Chicago“This ethnography of methamphetamine is unusually gripping. The author's subtle and insightful analytic voice draws on the words, experiences, and emotions of residents of Baker County to detail the pathological embraces of ‘narcopolitics,’ the erosive relationships of narcotics-based governance through policing. As a study of how lives, laws, and morality interlock, this book provides a true-to-life mirror on the workings of the criminal justice system and its roles in American society and culture.”-Philip Parnell,Indiana University"Readers will gain insight into the significance of narcopolitics and its influence on the administration of justice in the United States."-Rashi K. Shukla,Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Book Review"This book is an important contribution to the anthropology of drug use...it conveys a real sense of the bleakness and intractability of the problem, as well as the ultimate failure of policy and practice to meet this challenge."-Gilbert Quintero,Anthropological Quarterly