{"product_id":"ganja-matters-utathya-chattopadhyaya-9780520425699","title":"Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India","description":"\u003cb\u003eA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eGanja\u003c\/i\u003e is the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species \u003ci\u003eC\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eannabis sativa L\u003c\/i\u003e. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how ganja circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in the subcontinent. \u003ci\u003eGanja Matters \u003c\/i\u003efollows the perpetual incongruity between regulatory efforts to pursue the plant through botanical observation, colonial reportage, and excise statistics and the leisurely, devotional, and creative ganja pursuits among people. Utathya Chattopadhyaya offers a social history of ganja in a multispecies framework that reveals how the cannabis plant co-constituted histories of empire, gender, subalternity, and labor under British rule. Against the weight of the criminalization and \"drug-ness\" of cannabis, Chattopadhyaya puts the multidirectional and polysemic history of ganja as plant matter at the center of analysis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Utathya Chattopadhyaya\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0520425693\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780520425699\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of California Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/30\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback","brand":"Utathya Chattopadhyaya","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47965505880319,"sku":"9780520425699","price":34.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_a308f631-de12-4c83-808a-88701ac0851f.jpg?v=1767281026","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/ganja-matters-utathya-chattopadhyaya-9780520425699","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}