Between necessity and compulsion: opium poppy cultivation and the exigencies of survival in Badakhshan, Afghanistan

Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Badakhshan, a borderland province the northeast of Afghanistan, paper explores role that opium poppy cultivation has played marginal high-altitude economy. Framed by analytic ‘narco-frontiers’ and puzzle persistence small farmers uneven agrarian transitions, investigates diversity market non-market institutions operate across means production opium. Rather than seeing as vanguard an transition, it is suggested more rearguard action to ensure survival.