Abstract
The announcement in July 2013 that the British government was to ban the substance known globally as khat or qat caused much controversy both in the United Kingdom and in East Africa, where the substance is a major cash-crop for farmers in Kenya and Ethiopia. While there is great demand for khat among the many Somalis now living in the diaspora, there has also been growing concern over its use, and a concerted campaign from within and beyond the Somali community finally resulted in the ban. This is only the latest chapter of a story that illustrates well many of the ambiguities in the recent history of drug and alcohol use in Africa and elsewhere, especially that generated by the apparent conflict between concern for the well-being of consumers and concern for the revenue such substances can bring. 1
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Notes
L. Cassanelli, “Qat: Changes in the Production and Consumption of a Quasilegal Commodity,” in A. Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 ).
E. Gebissa, Leaf of Allah: Khat and Agricultural Transformation in Hararge, Ethiopia 1875–1991 ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 ), 15.
N. Carrier, Kenyan Khat: The Social Life of a Stimulant ( Leiden: Brill, 2007 ), 37–9.
A. Zaghloul, A. Abdalla, H. El-Gammal, and H. Moselhy, “The Consequences of Khat Use: A Review of Literature,” European Journal of Psychiatry, 17 (2003), 80.
See N. Carrier, “The Need for Speed: Contrasting Timeframes in the Social Life of Kenyan Mmiraa,” Africa, 75 (2005), 539–58.
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A. I. Al-Kholani, “Influence of Khat Chewing on Periodontal Tissues and Oral Hygiene Status among Yemenis,” Dental Research Journal, 7. 1 (2010), 1–6.
D. M. Anderson and N. Carrier, Khat: Social Harms and Legislation, a Literature Review (London: Home Office Occasional Paper 95, 2011 ).
See also, P. Hansen, “The Ambiguity of Khat in Somaliland,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 132 (2010), 590–9.
N. Carrier and L. Gezon, “Khat in the Western Indian Ocean: Regional Linkages and Disjunctures,” É tudes Oc é an Indien, 42–43 (2009), 274.
A. H. Neumann, Elephant-hunting in East Equatorial Africa (Bulawayo: Books of Zimbabwe Publishing, 1982 [1898]), 32–3.
W. A. Chanler, Through Jungle and Desert: Travels in Eastern Africa (London: MacMillan and Co., 1896), 190. See Willis, this volume, on alcohol being restricted to male elders in precolonial East Africa.
P. Goldsmith, “Symbiosis and Transformation in Kenya’s Meru District,” PhD dissertation (University of Florida, 1994 ), 26.
F. E. Bernard, East of Mount Kenya: Meru Agriculture in Transition (Munich: Weltforum Verlag, 1972), ch. 1.
N. Carrier and G. Klantschnig, Africa and the War on Drugs (London: Zed Book, 2012), 36. Also, see chapter by Laudati, this volume.
See H. Douglas and A. Hersi, “Khat and Islamic Legal Perspectives: Issues for Consideration,” Journal of Legal Pluralism, 42, 62 (2010), 95–114.
D. M. Anderson and N. Carrier, “Khat in Colonial Kenya: A History of Prohibition and Control,” Journal of African History, 50. 3 (2009), 383.
J. Willis, Potent Brews: A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850–1999 (Oxford: James Currey, 2002 ). See also Willis’s chapter in this volume.
N. Carrier, “Bundles of Choice: Variety and the Creation and Manipulation of Kenyan Khat’s Value,” Ethnos, 71. 1 (2006), 423.
See also A. O. A. Araru, “Flower of Paradise or Total Balaa?,” East Africa Alternatives (March/April 1999 ), 20–3.
N. Carrier, “‘Miraa Is Cool’: The Cultural Importance of Miraa (khat) for Tigania and Igembe Youth in Kenya,” Journal of African Cultural Studies, 17. 2 (2005), 201–18.
C. Githiora, “Sheng: Peer Language, Swahili Dialect or Emerging Creole?,” Journal of African Cultural Studies, 15. 2 (2002), 159–81.
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© 2014 Gernot Klantschnig, Neil Carrier, and Charles Ambler
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Carrier, N. (2014). A Respectable Chew?: Highs and Lows in the History of Kenyan Khat. In: Klantschnig, G., Carrier, N., Ambler, C. (eds) Drugs in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321916_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321916_6
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