Overview

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 the simplified obsession with universal or primordial truth that has pervaded inquiries into ayahuasca experiences, and explores the practices of contemporary ayahuasca drinkers to reveal how the brew has conjured contradictory visions 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 enterprising individuals in mainland China, Global Ayahuasca examines how the wondrous visions of ayahuasca are entangled within the social and economic realities that they illuminate, revealing tensions, fears, and hopes of everyday modern life.

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9781503636576

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Reviews

"""In this fascinating ethnographic study that follows ayahuasca into unexpected spaces, Alex Gearin takes readers on an engaging voyage from Indigenous Amazonia to corporate China. He is an expert guide through the surprising philosophical machinations of this new chapter in ayahuasca's globalizing story.""—Erika Dyck, author of Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey ""In the psychedelic renaissance, Gearin's superb ethnography Global Ayahuasca makes a powerful counterpoint to the scientific pursuit of universal knowledge of mind-altering drugs and the mystical quest for unitive experiences. Gearin challenges the ubiquitous interpretation of visions in terms of trauma by attending to Indigenous futurism. The book reveals the rich tapestry of human experience shaped by this wondrous tea.""—Nicolas Langlitz, author of Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain"

"""In this fascinating ethnographic study that follows ayahuasca into unexpected spaces, Alex Gearin takes readers on an engaging voyage from Indigenous Amazonia to corporate China. He is an expert guide through the surprising philosophical machinations of this new chapter in ayahuasca's globalizing story.""—Erika Dyck, author of Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey ""In the psychedelic renaissance, Gearin's superb ethnography Global Ayahuasca makes a powerful counterpoint to the scientific pursuit of universal knowledge of mind-altering drugs and the mystical quest for unitive experiences. Charting ayahuasca's extraordinary global journey from the Amazonian rainforest to Australian suburbs and Chinese megacities, the book reveals the rich tapestry of human experience shaped by this wondrous tea.""—Nicolas Langlitz, author of Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research since the Decade of the Brain"

Author Information

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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