Skip to content

Good Mother Nature: ayahuasca neoshamanism as cultural critique in Australia

Alex K. Gearin

September 1, 2016 DOI: 10.4324/9781315551425-13 (opens in new tab)

Relevant Not relevant

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper
Intervention Ayahuasca
Topics Ayahuasca Shamanism
Keywords Anthropology
Citations 3
Key points Argues that ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia represents a novel extension of earlier neoshamanism, expressing cultural critique against urbanization, materialism, environmental destruction, and consumer capitalism.

Abstract

Introduction This chapter investigates the practice of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia and the ways in which narrative accounts of ecstatic healing are inscribed with forms of "cultural critique" (Marcus & Fischer, 1986) against urbanization, materialism, environmental destruction, and consumer capitalism. The ecstatic healing practices are centered upon ritualized styles of consuming the indigenous Amazonian psychoactive beverage ayahuasca. While a variety of groups, networks, and individuals drink the beverage in Australia, this paper circumvents the Australianbased diasporas of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions (Santo Daime and União do Vegetal) and focuses on Australian-based ayahuasca neoshamanism.2 By "neoshamanism," I refer to what Atkinson (1992, p. 322) calls the "new shamanism," which emerged in the middle classes of European, North American, and other societies among people associated with the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.3 Neoshamanism traditionally traces its lineage to indigenous practices and cosmologies, and tends to be defined by its practitioners as a "spiritual path for personal empowerment" (Wallis, 1999, p. 42). Grounded in a Euro-American history, it involves a cosmology aligned "at once with Nature and the primordial Other, [and] in opposition to institutionalized Western religions and indeed Western political and economic order" (Atkinson, 1992, p. 322). This chapter demonstrates that, in the context of Australia, ayahuasca neoshamanism represents a novel extension and reinvention of earlier types of neoshamanism with regard to an ethos of cultural opposition.

Comparable studies

Other theoretical and historical papers on shamanism, most cited first.

Study Year Design Participants
Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond 2014 Theoretical or philosophical paper
Shamanism as the Original Neurotheology 2004 Theoretical or philosophical paper
Cognitive Neuroscience, Shamanism and the Rock Art of Native California 1998 Theoretical or philosophical paper
From Culture to Experience: Shamanism in the Pages of the Soviet Anti-Religious Press 2020 Historical analysis
Anthropology, Shamanism, and Alternate Ways of Knowing–Being in the World: One Anthropologist's Journey of Discovery and Transformation 2010 Reflective essay or personal narrative

Citations in the library

Cited by 3

Related reading

Explore topics

Ayahuasca Shamanism