Ceremonies of drinking the psychoactive brew ayahuasca have flourished across the planet in recent decades. Emerging from Indigenous roots in the Amazon rainforest, the brew is now envisaged by many as the spiritual gateway to archaic and primordial worlds, with reports of healing, spiritual insight, and awe-inspiring visions placing ayahuasca among the burgeoning field of psychedelic medicines. Astonished and allured by descriptions of ayahuasca experiences, researchers in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy have attempted to define the shared properties of the visions. In this book, Alex Gearin challenges this simplified obsession with universal truth and explores the embodied practices of contemporary ayahuasca drinkers to reveal how the brew has conjured contradictory experiences across the globe. These range from urban disenchantment and capitalist mastery to competitive sorcery and ecological harmony, wherein the plant-induced visions embody different attitudes towards capitalist modernity.
Based upon ethnographic research among Shipibo healers in remote Peru, alternative medicine groups in urban Australia, and entrepreneurs and corporate managers in mainland China, Global Ayahuasca examines how the wondrous visions of ayahuasca are entangled within the social and economic realities that they illuminate, revealing different tensions, fears, and hopes of everyday modern life.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Colonial and Postcolonial Roots
2. Global Shamanic Tourism in Peru
3. Wonder and Healing on Retreat
4. Natural Medicine in Australia
5. Becoming Modern in China
6. Integration and Society
Conclusion: Visionary Contexts
Epilogue
References
Index
About the author
Alex K. Gearin is Assistant Professor at the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, The University of Hong Kong. He is the co-editor of
The World Ayahuasca Diaspora: Controversies and Reinventions.
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