Skip to content

An Amazonian shamanic brew in Australia: ayahuasca healing and individualism

Alexander Gearin

The University of Queensland November 20, 2015 DOI: 10.14264/uql.2015.1038 (opens in new tab)

Relevant Not relevant

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Ethnography Peer reviewed
Population Neoshamanic ayahuasca drinkers in Australia
Topics Ayahuasca Shamanism
Keywords Personhood Trance Narrative Aesthetics Ethnography Individualism Anthropology
Citations 6
Key findings Ayahuasca drinkers in Australia achieve healing and wisdom through trance experiences that reconfigure personhood between dividual and individual modes, shaped by both human and nonhuman relations and broader societal individualism.

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine how dividual and individual modes of personhood enable neoshamanic ayahuasca drinkers in Australia to reconfigure cultural ideals and everyday ethical practices. My ethnographic fieldwork allowed me to trace social conventions of drinking ayahuasca, participants’ techniques of the ecstatic body and senses, and narrative styles of codifying ecstatic trance, to determine key means by which Australian ayahuasca drinkers achieve “healing” and “wisdom” from their practices. During the heights of trance, drinkers experience radical changes to the senses and the body. These are analysed in terms of configurations of personhood and how the “I” of the drinker in narrative accounts of trance may be constituted by human and nonhuman persons and critical relations to broader Australian society. The thesis engages with anthropological literature on trance and with notions of the person in order to examine this form of relational personhood in capitalist society. I illustrate how the critical cosmology of ayahuasca neoshamanism is embedded in healing experiences of dividual personhood that are over determined by the individual in ways reminiscent of Western social organisation.

Comparable studies

Other qualitative studies on ayahuasca, most cited first.

Study Year Design Participants
The antipodes Of the mind Indigenous people, shamans, members of different religious sects using Ayahuasca, and... 2002 Qualitative study
Drug Tourism or Spiritual Healing? Ayahuasca Seekers in Amazonia Westerners participating in an ayahuasca retreat in Amazonia 2005 Qualitative study
Therapeutic Effects of Ritual Ayahuasca Use in the Treatment of Substance Dependence—Qualitative Results Therapists, expert researchers, and individuals who underwent ayahuasca-assisted... 2014 Qualitative study n = 29
Nourishing the Spirit: Exploratory Research on Ayahuasca Experiences along the Continuum of Recovery from Eating Disorders Individuals previously diagnosed with an eating disorder 2017 Qualitative study n = 16
Exploring ayahuasca‐assisted therapy for addiction: A qualitative analysis of preliminary findings among an Indigenous community in Canada Indigenous adults in Canada who participated in ayahuasca-assisted ceremonial retreats 2019 Qualitative study n = 11

Citations in the library

Cited by 6

and 1 more in the library

Cites 5

Related reading

Explore topics

Ayahuasca Shamanism