Ayahuasca: Beween Cognition and Culture: Perspectives from an interdisciplinary and reflexive ethnography

✍ Scribed by Ismael Eduardo Apud Peláez

• Publisher: Publicacions URV
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 294
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book summarizes Ismael Apud’s ethnographic research in the field of ayahuasca, conducted in Latin America and Catalonia over a period of 10 years. To analyze the variety of ayahuasca spiritual practices and beliefs, the author combines different approaches, including medical anthropology, cognitive science of religion, history of science, and religious studies. Ismael Apud is a psychologist and anthropologist from Uruguay, with a PhD in Anthropology at Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

✦ Table of Contents

Table of contents
Figures
Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Preface: Psychedelia, rationality and experience: An anthropological perspective
Introduction
Section I. Ethnography in Latin America
Chapter 1. The fieldwork before the fieldwork
Ayahuasca, vegetalismo, neoshamanism and New Age networks
A mystical experience triggers a research project
Chapter 2. An ethnography from Uruguay to the Amazon rainforest
An interdisciplinary research project: between culture and cognition
A multi-technical ethnography: using both qualitative and quantitative methods
The ayahuasca experiences: spirits and reflections
The cultivation of mental imagery: ayahuasca as a cognitive tool
A multi-situated ethnography: transnational networks of spirituality
A reflexive anthropology
Chapter 3: Anthropology, shamanism and neoshamanism
Enlightenment vs Romanticism
The vilified shaman turns into a psychotherapist
Psychedelics and ASCs
Anthropologists going native
Neo-shamanism in the psycho-spiritual networks
The ontological turn
Spiritual ontologies: cognition and ASCs
Section II. Ethnography in Catalonia
Chapter 4. Ayahuasca and medical systems in Catalonia
Arrival in Catalonia
Health care through the lenses of medical anthropology
Medicine, religion and ayahuasca
Medical pluralism and ayahuasca in Catalonia
Medicine or religion?
Chapter 5. Science, spirituality and ayahuasca
The demarcation problem
Consciousness as the heart of the matter
From an intentional onion to a mechanical universe
Spirits and teleonomies in modern science
The case of psychedelic studies. A pharmacology of spirituality?
Ayahuasca experiences and the founders of two centers
The cultural transmission of science and religion
Chapter 6. Ritual healing from a multi-level perspective
Opening the black box of placebo
Medical anthropology and ritual healing
Ritual in cognitive science of religion
Conversion and experience
Ritual, cognition and culture. A final synthesis
Psychedelics, rituals and healing
Chapter 7. Ayahuasca healing and addictions in Catalonia
Addiction in its context
Ayahuasca and addictions
Methodological considerations and qualitative research
Description of the cases
Ayahuasca’s spiritual experiences in the 12 cases studied
The spirit of the plant as a superhuman agent
Experience, narrative and conversion
Chapter 8. Four biographical narratives of recovery from addiction from IDEAA
Case 1. Body and mind
Case 2. Lies and jaguars
Case 3. Fights and troubles
Case 4. Death and God
Final conclusions
Chapter 9. Two conversions in Catalonia
Case 1. Death and rebirth
Case 2. Masks and intrusive thoughts
Final conclusions
General conclusions
Bibliography