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It’s all you! Australian ayahuasca drinking, spiritual development, and immunitary individualism

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Date
2018-09
Author
Rodd, R
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Abstract
<jats:p> Ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant decoction, has spread from indigenous communities in South America to urban areas in the Americas, Europe, and Australia where it is used in neoshamanic rituals. This paper draws on ethnography of Australian ayahuasca ceremonies to examine the ways that individualism shapes the structure of ayahuasca rituals, the interpretation of visionary experiences, and notions of spiritual development. I show how the metaphors that Australian drinkers involved in this study use to understand their ayahuasca experiences and spiritual development reflect a form of immunitary individualism, which is premised on the negation of difference and relationality. Secular disenchantment and a culture of narcissism may drive people to seek ayahuasca, but transcendence is interpreted in terms of an expansive, non-relational self. In this sense, neoshamanic ayahuasca culture may be an escape from and reproduction of the culture of narcissism associated with the malaise of modernity. </jats:p>
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Journal article
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/22355
Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1177/0308275x18775818
Publication Info
Rodd, R (2018). It’s all you! Australian ayahuasca drinking, spiritual development, and immunitary individualism. Critique of Anthropology, 38(3). pp. 325-345. 10.1177/0308275x18775818. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/22355.
This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Rodd

Robin Hudson Rodd

Associate Professor of Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University
I began my career as an anthropologist studying with Piaroa communities in southern Venezuela, where I was interested in the use of psychoactive plants, local theories and practices of knowledge, mind, power, and health. I focused on the ways that consciousness practices associated with the consumption of yopo snuff and Banisteriopsis caapi were socially transmitted and integrated into everyday community life. I have since examined the ritual practices and theories of selfhood
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