Primitivist medicine and capitalist anxieties in ayahuasca tourism Peru

Abstract

Analysing healing practices at an ayahuasca tourism centre in Peru, this article illustrates how Shipibo practices of curing and sorcery have adapted to the demands of international clients searching for primitivist healing experiences. At the core of this adaption is the thorny issue of occult power and its relation to capital accumulation. Sorcery here does not serve clients but is manifest among healers working to capitalize on the guests’ primitivist rejections of modern life while operating in environments of economic scarcity and ambient poverty. Ayahuasca tourists do not request and generally do not believe in sorcery, but their very presence generates and negates the local moral economy of sorcery in novel ways. The article explores a paradoxical aspect of ayahuasca tourism wherein guests purge similar anxious desires for capital accumulation that healers achieve when curing them.

Psychedelic Therapy as Form of Life

“…While Amazonian healers employ strategies and techniques to avoid becoming personally implicated in their patient's moral and social dilemmas, it is not uncommon for this to occur. Consequently, Shipibo healers have described the treatment of international clients at ayahuasca tourist retreats as easy because, unlike their local patients, the foreigners are only struggling with mental disorders, not black magic, and consequently do not require the challenging sociospiritual work of healing the harms inflicted by witchcraft ( [29], p. 507). In contrast to psychiatrist Matthew Johnson's ideal of a psychedelic therapist who serves as a mere projection screen for her patients' views, Amazonian shamans do not bracket their own worldview (although they might hold back certain elements such as their belief in sorcery to avoid alienating their international clients; [29]).…”

“…Consequently, Shipibo healers have described the treatment of international clients at ayahuasca tourist retreats as easy because, unlike their local patients, the foreigners are only struggling with mental disorders, not black magic, and consequently do not require the challenging sociospiritual work of healing the harms inflicted by witchcraft ( [29], p. 507). In contrast to psychiatrist Matthew Johnson's ideal of a psychedelic therapist who serves as a mere projection screen for her patients' views, Amazonian shamans do not bracket their own worldview (although they might hold back certain elements such as their belief in sorcery to avoid alienating their international clients; [29]). Implicitly or explicitly, they offer normative orientation within a multispecies "ecology of selves" populated by humans, animals, and other beings [51,52].…”

Ethical Endeavours

“…A slightly diff erent approach to the theme of 'moral economy' is taken in two articles that focus on the overlaps or contradictions between spiritualism/religion and profi t-making. Alex Gearin (2022) studies the local moral economy of sorcery in the context of ayahousca tourism in Peru, analysing the paradoxical ways in which healers capitalise on their guests' primitivist rejections of modern life and capitalism. Susannah Crockford (2022) focuses on the spiritual practice of 'manifestation', tensions between money-based exchanges and barter, and the intertwinement of economy and religion in everyday life in Arizona.…”