What is it about?
Smoking cannabis is an important spiritual practice in the Rastafari movement. This paper provides a multi-species ethnographic description of Rastafari smoking in England. Ritual cannabis smoking communicates knowledge of and dedication to Rastafari, and can open communicative channels between smokers and divine beings (including the plant 'herself').
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Why is it important?
This paper is important because it shows that when we look at smoking as a form of multispecies communication between ‘professional’ smokers and ‘plant teachers’ it recasts the role of agency in anthropological studies of smoking and contributes to our understanding of consciousness and intentionality in both humans and plants.
Perspectives
I hope that this paper will help bring spiritual/religious use into the UK cannabis debate.
Anna Waldstein
University of Kent
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Smoking as Communication in Rastafari: Reasonings with ‘Professional’ Smokers and ‘Plant Teachers’, Ethnos, June 2019, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2019.1627385.
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