Stimulant Frontiers: Editorial Introduction

Abstract

Stimulants have, in their own ways, played a leading role in shaping today’s globalised world. Their world-shaping power stems from their double role: as “agents†that stimulate bodies, and as things that “rouse and incite†capital. In this issue of Commodity Frontiers, contributions center on the histories and presents of some of the leading stimulant crops and the sites and processes of their cultivation, expansion, and transformations. Contributors variously consider stimulants from the perspectives of bodies and capital, sometimes touching on their overlaps.