Skip to content

Shamans and “Shams”

Veronica Davidov

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks 2013 DOI: 10.1057/9781137355386_7 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Ethnography Peer reviewed
Topics Ayahuasca Shamanism
Keywords Tourism Curiosity Ethnography Psychoanalysis Art history
Citations 1
Key findings The author decided to drink ayahuasca with a shaman to add another layer to her participant-observation practice.

Abstract

Some months into my fieldwork, my colleague and friend carne to visit me. Anya, a fellow anthropologist, was (and is) an ethnographic filmmaker and a scholar of shainanism (although her fieldsite lay far away from mine—she studied shamanic revival in post-Soviet Buryatia). Naturally, her professional curiosity was piqued by my tales of shamanic tourism. She was quite interested in ayahuasca tourism, and I decided that drinking ayahuasca with a shaman—something I had eschewed until that point—would add another layer to my participant-observation practice.KeywordsTour GuideSpirit WorldRadical AlterityShamanic PerformanceCommunity VisitThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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

Explore topics