Expériences néo-chamaniques
L Homme January 1, 2015 Sébastien Baud
An anthropologist's way of approaching the field, tasting things, and feeling them impacts both the data collected and the analyses produced. Jean-Loup Amselle's book "Psychotropiques," subtitled "La fièvre de l'ayahuasca en forêt amazonienne," illustrates this epistemological truism. It is a peculiar anthropological work because, in the name of a rationalism to be defended, it criticizes a social practice ("végétalisme") by presenting partial and biased truths. At a time when social science researchers increasingly value grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss 1967), which is inductive and where facts should emerge from the field, the author proposes a resolutely deductive approach.