The Expanding World Ayahuasca Diaspora

During its expansion from the Amazon jungle to Western societies, ayahuasca use has encountered different legal and cultural responses. Following on from the first edited collection, The World Ayahuasca Diaspora, volume II continues to explore how certain alternative global religious groups, shamanic tourism industries and recreational drug milieus grounded in the consumption of the traditionally Amazonian psychoactive drink ayahuasca embody various challenges associated with modern societies.

Each contributor explores the symbolic effects of a "bureaucratization of enchantment" in religious practice, and the "sanitizing" of indigenous rituals for tourist markets. Chapters include ethnographic investigations of ritual practice, transnational religious ideology, the politics of healing and the invention of tradition. Larger questions on the commodification of ayahuasca and the categories of sacred and profane are also addressed.

Exploring classic and contemporary issues in social science and the humanities, this book provides rich material on the bourgeoning expansion of ayahuasca use around the globe. As such, it will appeal to students and academics in religious studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, biology, ecology, law and conservation.

Foreword: Ayahuasca and its Controversies

Óscar Calavia Sáez　

1. A Critical Review of the Literature on the Diaspora of Brazilian Ayahuasca Religions

Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Glauber Loures de Assis

2. Interpellations and Challenges in the Neoshamanic and Ayahuasca Fields in Uruguay

Juan Scuro

3. "Altered by the Hand of Man": Contextualizing Ayahuasca Law in Britain and Europe

Jonathan Hobbs

4. Santo Daime in a "Post-Catholic" Ireland: Reflecting and Moving on

Gillian Watt

5. From Village to Forest: Artistic-Spiritual Partnerships between Ernesto Neto and the Huni Kuin

Ilana Seltzer Goldstein Beatriz Caiuby Labate

6. The Global Expansion of Ayahuasca through the Internet

Matthew Conrad

7. Ayahuasca’s Influence on Gay Identity

Clancy Cavnar

8. "Men," "Shaman," and "Ayahuasca" as Overlapping Clichés in the Peruvian Vegetalismo

Ana Gretel Echazú Böschemeier Carl Kevin Carew

9. What Ayahuasca Wants: Notes for the Study and Preservation of an Entangled Ayahuasca

Silvia Mesturini Cappo

10. "La Dieta": The Western Reinvention of Indigenous Amazonian Food Shamanism

Alex K. Gearin Beatriz Caiuby Labate

11. Power and Legitimacy in the Reconfiguration of the Yagecero Field in Colombia

Alhena Caicedo Fernández