Drugs, Politics, and Culture
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this anthropology course on mind-altering substances and their entanglement with global history and power. Readings cover the physiological and psychological effects of alcohol, LSD, cocaine, and ecstasy alongside the rise of a global trade in sugar, coffee, tea, nicotine, cocaine, and marijuana tied to colonialism and capitalism. Topics include drug use in traditional societies, the CIA's experiments with LSD as a mind-control tool, the drug's later role in 1960s counterculture, and the marketing of Prozac and Viagra as pharmaceutical products. The course closes by evaluating current American drug laws and asking why societies criminalize some substances while sanctioning others. Materials include the syllabus, readings list, and assignments as posted on MIT OpenCourseWare; there is no fee to access the materials and no certificate is offered.