ABSTRACT

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive substance that has long been associated with indigenous Amazonian shamanic practices. The recent rise of the drink’s visibility in the media and popular culture, and its rapidly advancing inroads into international awareness, mean that the field of ayahuasca is quickly expanding. This expansion brings with it legal problems, economic inequalities, new forms of ritual and belief, cultural misunderstandings, and other controversies and reinventions.

In The World Ayahuasca Diaspora, leading scholars, including established academics and new voices in anthropology, religious studies, and law fuse case-study ethnographies with evaluations of relevant legal and anthropological knowledge. They explore how the substance has impacted indigenous communities, new urban religiosities, ritual healing, international drug policy, religious persecution, and recreational drug milieus. This unique book presents classic and contemporary issues in social science and the humanities, providing rich material on the bourgeoning expansion of ayahuasca use around the globe.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction

The shifting journey of ayahuasca in diaspora

chapter 1|20 pages

If tradition did not exist, it would have to be invented

Retraditionalization and the world ayahuasca diaspora

chapter 2|18 pages

Between ecstasy and reason

A symbolic interpretation of UDV trance

chapter 3|22 pages

The religion of the forest

Reflections on the international expansion of a Brazilian ayahuasca religion 1

chapter 4|20 pages

Culling the spirits

An exploration of Santo Daime's adaptation in Canada

chapter 5|24 pages

A religious battle

Musical dimensions of the Santo Daime diaspora

chapter 6|20 pages

Good Mother Nature

Ayahuasca neoshamanism as cultural critique in Australia

chapter 7|22 pages

Aussiewaska

A cultural history of changa and ayahuasca analogues in Australia

chapter 8|18 pages

Disentangling the ayahuasca boom

Local impacts in Western Peruvian Amazonia

chapter 9|20 pages

The economics of ayahuasca

Money, markets, and the value of the vine

chapter 10|20 pages

Global ayahuasca

An entrepreneurial ecosystem

chapter 11|20 pages

A climate for change

ICEERS and the challenges of the globalization of ayahuasca

chapter 12|20 pages

Ayahuasca in the English courts

Legal entanglements with the jungle vine