“Men,” “shaman,” and “ayahuasca” as overlapping clichés in the Peruvian vegetalismo

Primitivist medicine and capitalist anxieties in ayahuasca tourism Peru

“…In Amazonia, by contrast, the division between nature and culture, or humans and nonhumans, has been spliced in veritably different ways (Viveiros de Castro 1996). The use of the psychedelic ayahuasca brew has generally been a male occupation and, according to some research, its probable rise in popularity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Northwest Amazonia (Brabec de Mori 2011; Gow 1994) may have minimized the role of female healers (Böschemeier & Carew 2018; Shepard 2014).…”