Du cannabis sous les cacaoyers : Épuisement du modèle pionnier et reproduction des « institutions de la frontière » en côte d'Ivoire forestière

Abstract

After being the scene of a huge cocoa boom based on the development of a large pioneer front that swept the forest part of the country from East to West, Côte d'Ivoire is now facing a deep economical, ecological, and political crisis. In many respects, this crisis responds to a crisis of the pioneer farming systems and; more specifically, to the crisis of the agrarian institutions that regulated the access to both land and labour factors as well as to the coffee and cocoa markets and constituted powerful tools for social regulation. The spread of cannabis cultivation and marihuana trafficking since the end of the 1980s must be considered in connection with this crisis of the pioneer farming systems and institutions. This paper shows how the spread of cannabis cultivation has been resting on those pioneer-specific institutions and is enabling their reproduction, as if the technological innovation (the introduction of a new product into the farming and marketing systems) were allowing the social adjustments that the ecological and economical crisis seemed to dictate to be postponed.