Architecture of Grey Market: Field-Theoretic Analysis of Quasi-Legal Cannabis Market in Southwest Virginia.

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Expertise, Knowledge Production, and Authority

Abstract

In my doctoral dissertation, I conduct an ethnographic investigation of the emerging legal cannabis market in Southwest Virginia, United States. Legal cannabis remains in an experimental stage here, so knowledge about the future of the products, the technical expertise in manufacturing, the infrastructure, producers, and consumers is highly uncertain and contested. My current approach specifically focuses on creating a new synthesis between, on the one hand, field-theoretic approaches from economic sociology, most prominently by Neil Fligstein (2001), Fligstein & McAdam (2012), and, on the other hand, STS studies of markets by Michel Callon (2021). Drawing on Strategic Action Field, I conceptualize that the regional cannabis market is an emerging field in which growers, store owners, farm owners, advocates, and regulators engage over ongoing struggle over legitimacy, rule-making, and creating a stable conception of control. Simultaneously, drawing on Michel Callon’s Science and Technology Studies to market, I examine how cannabis is continually qualified and re-qualified through socio-technical devices – such as loophole exploitation to stay relevant in the loop, licensing frameworks, pricing mechanisms, lobbying efforts, and different business model experiments. Agents in this field are jockeying for position through these performative devices. These devices do not merely function as static options; they actively perform and come into being, which is shaping the cannabis market field. By synthesizing field theory and STS studies of the market, my research offers insights into the construction of a new market through strategic actions and socio-technical devices under conditions of uncertainty and regulatory ambiguities. My research has broader epistemic implications—how people make market arrangements amid uncertainty and regulatory ambivalence —helps us develop theories about good practices in organizing markets by examining grassroots processes—something society needs to consider in response to changing economic and social arrangements required by climate change, inequality, etc.

Author

• Dhritiman Barman, Virginia Tech