ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the business of ayahuasca. In approaching ayahuasca as a burgeoning industry linked to the ayahuasca diaspora – the spreading of its use beyond Amazonia – I will discuss its emergence through entrepreneurism arising amid local contexts and participants. My analysis of how the ayahuasca industry has developed in only a few decades from an obscure practice into a cosmopolitan capitalist endeavor is examined through a case study in the Tambopata Province in Peru. It also suggests that small-scale entrepreneurism has contributed toward shaping ayahuasca’s international popularity. This chapter further contemplates the actual and potential impact that ayahuasca businesses have on South American indigenous and local peoples whose expertise and practices have long been the hallmark of ayahuasca practices, and raises questions of South American postcolonialism and its legacy of imperialism. 2 As such, this analysis provides an anthropological approach toward understanding the emergence and development of entrepreneurship, and makes contributions to literatures on postcolonialism, globalization, Amazonia, and ayahuasca.
