O cipó, a folha e o apuro: visões e imagens de uma etnografia da ayahuasca
Rafael Hupsel Palomo Garcia
September 3, 2018 DOI: 10.11606/d.8.2018.tde-03092018-152106 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography |
|---|---|
| Population | Members of the Irmandade Beneficente Natureza Divina, an urban ayahuasca group, during the feitio (decoction-making ritual) |
| Topics | Ayahuasca |
| Key findings | Argues that photographs of the feitio are not mere copies of reality but a web of relations that reifies and reveals how group members produce and interpret meanings around ayahuasca, including their cosmology and communication with spirits. Contends that deconstructing anthropology's realist photographic paradigm helps capture the subjective, multi-perspectival aspects of the ritual. |
Abstract
This research is an ethnography of the brewing ritual of the beverage known as ayahuasca performed by a group called Irmandade Beneficente Natureza Divina, which is inserted in a wider process of transformations of the urban use of this substance in the last decades.Using an extended set of photographs taken in the feitio, the name given to the decoction making process, I discuss how the relation of the group members with these images circumscribes the main meanings related to ayahuasca experience and describes some elements of their cosmology.Thinking about how photography has been producing anthropological knowledge and its role in ethnographic writing, I discuss how the deconstruction of some paradigms adopted by the discipline, based mostly on the conception of the photography as a copy of "reality", help to understand the most subjectives aspects of a ritual that engages different ways of perception to transit between distinct realities and to communicate with its spirits.The argument leads to assume photography as a web of relations that reifies and reveals the constant movement of interpretation and production of new meanings that characterizes the ways of knowledge used by this group while preparing ayahuasca.
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 |