This thesis explores the moral life worlds of people who have been imprisoned in Mexico, while considering how they incorporate the fate of imprisonment into the story of their lives through cognitive, discursive, sensory, affective, recollective and imaginary processes. The midst of a war on drugs in Mexico confirms that structural factors like political premises and poverty, as well as class backgrounds and racial discrimination largely determine who goes to prison. However, this research is not only confined to a structural analysis, since prisoners also explain their imprisonment in relation to other contingent encounters and coincidences occurring in their every day life. As such, imprisonment seems for prisoners like an unimagined possibility and a latent daily risk. Using a variety of ethnographic methods and modes of representation, this research sheds light on how imprisonment is related to stories of love, treason, memories and hopes. I draw from prisoners and ex-prisoners’ personal sources of expression like their writings; I recur to eliciting their memories through their objects and crafts; I pay attention to the role of the gaze in crafting identities in prison; I also draw attention to prisoners and ex-prisoners’ expressions of feelings and emotions. I argue that such sources and sensorial realms and methods offer relevant insights into their existential experiences. They are also important devices to represent stories from below. Through inmates’ narratives and practices my work offers stories, explanations and effects of incarceration alternative to the official reasons legitimating incarceration. Central to my work is my film Time will Tell that documents the lives of three ex-prisoners and represents their every day duties, and the sensory and corporeal implications of the aftermath of imprisonment. Film has been a central piece of my ethnographic research since it allows audiences to engage with realms of experience that go beyond the one offered by language and text; so as to also help evoke – and not only illustrate- the whole of the journey out of prison as an ontological and sensuous experience.

This thesis is an anthropological exploration of the first legal Canadian Grow Cup (3 years after legalization (October 17, 2018)). It takes a sensory anthropology approach to 'knowing' from practical activity. This approach acknowledges that senses/sensing do not belong to one category, instead, "our sensory perception is inextricable from the cultural categories that we use to give meaning to sensory experiences in social and material interactions" (Pink 2015, 7). Taking this approach aims to address the current legal framework that reduces cannabis to its molecular compounds. The methodological approach is centred around an apprenticeship with an experienced home grower, whom I met online and who agreed to guide me throughout my participation in the grow cup. The organization of the thesis follows my movements through the apprenticeship situated both online and in my mentor's garden in West Ottawa, Ontario. Having to abide by winning criteria based on THC and Terpene metrics, this thesis offers arguments and critique of the current conjoint legal/ public health/ industry framework. The latter framework is in line with mainstream pharmacology, which advocates the need to use purified substances as they are considered more specific and safe. However, I critique this approach of 'knowing' cannabis through the cannabis cup as the "effects" and quality of whole derived cannabis products are quantified and standardized based on a percentage number associated with two out of 100+ molecular compounds. This creates a new phenomenon, shaping cultivation practices focused on single molecule percentage numbers. Therefore, I ask how does a skilled home grower know/sense cannabis, and how does the contest criteria constrain (or not) the home grower's ways of knowing/ sensing cannabis? Answering these questions aims to understand the sensorial ways of knowing cannabis. As such, this thesis does not deal with standardization or metrics directly. Instead, attention is oriented towards what escapes the contest-winning criteria and standardization, my curiosity resting in ways of 'knowing' directly from what is evoked through practical activity.