(*) Beatriz Caiuby Labate and José Carlos Bouso (eds.)
Jacket text: Glenn H. Shepard Jr.
Back cover blurb: Rick Doblin
Preface: Renato Sztutman
Presentation: Beatriz Caiuby Labate and José Carlos Bouso
First part: Shamanism and Religion
1. Luisa Elvira Belaunde – Anthropolog,y Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and Colectivo Aents – “Interview with Herlinda Agustin, a woman Onaya from the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous nation”.
This interview with Herlinda Agustín presents the personal narrative of a woman who is an onaya or ayahuasca shaman of the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous nation of the Peruvian Amazon. It allows us to follow, through her words, the paths that led her to consecrate herself as a healer, combining her role as a mother and married woman with the difficult and hazardous apprenticeship of the rao or “plant teachers”. Her experiences represent a novel and much needed approach to the study of gender in Amazonian shamanism and, in a singular and human manner. The article shedss light on critical aspects of the cosmovision of the Shipibo-Konibo, for example, the transmission of ancestral powers, the search for spiritual protection, the practice of plant “diets” and the relationship with foreigners who attend shamanic sessions.
2. Peter Gow – Anthropology University of Saint Andrews – “Asleep, Drunk, Hallucinating – Altering Bodily States through Consumption in Eastern Peru”
The text adopts a phenomenological approach in order to deal with different aspects of the life of the native inhabitants of the Lower Urubamba River, in East Peru, within the interpretative framework of symbolic anthropology. In these tribes, the mastery of the lived experience plays a fundamental role. Four body sates that are defined as “modified” are dealt with: sleeping, drunkenness, sickness and the hallucinogenic experience. The author claims that these states function as icons of specific acts of sequences of acts, and are related to the consumption of substances and the field of social relations. By defining sickness and the hallucinogenic experience as two different states of intense bodily transformation, the “corporal dimension” is said to constitute a central part of the natives’ experience. An emphasis is laid on the importance of the lived experience in everyday life, in an effort to demonstrate that the central cultural values of these natives rest on the importance of immediate experience and not only what lies in their minds or overriding abstract models.
3. Esther Jean Langdon – Anthropology UFSC – “The Symbolic Efficacy of Rituals: From Ritual to Performance”
The paper explores the concept of “healing” among Amazonian shamanic rituals, examining the meaning of healing from a broader perspective than that of biomedicine. It focuses on rituals in which psychotropic tea-like substances commonly referred to as ayahuasca or yagé, have a central role in the ritual’s efficacy. These substances are made from made from Banisteriopsis sp. and admixtures and can produce strong conscious altering effects. However, it is important to point out that the patient does not always drink the mixture, which may be ingested by only the shaman or by participants other than the patient. For Amazonian peoples, illness is not limited to purely biological processes and spiritual and social factors are important causes of illness in a universe that is endowed with intention, that is, a universe populated by diverse predatory beings that are capable of causing illness. The article examines the concept of “heal”, as well as reviews the current theories that attempt to account for the ritual efficacy. Differing from the those who emphasize the instrumental results of substances ingested or who affirm that faith is the necessary factor for “miracle” cures, this work shall demonstrate that healing efficacy must largely be attributed to the performative aspects of ritual.
4. Els Lagrou – Anthropology UFRJ – “To control fluidity of form: prophylactic cosmopolitics in the use of Nixi pae among the Cashinahua (Kaxinawá)”
The Cashinahua (Kaxinawá) do not, usually, use ayahuasca (Nixi pae) in the context of healing rituals, nor do they restrict its use to the specialty of the shaman, notwithstanding the fact that its use is closely related to the maintenance of the health and wellbeing of the people (usually men) who consume it and of the community as a whole. Small children do not drink ayahuasca and women exceptionally do so. The visionary experiences produced by ayahuasca intends to promote a differentiated interaction with the yuxin beings, invisible in daily light: the doubles of animals, the owners of the rivers, foreigners, and spirits living far away. The intention of the experience is to gain knowledge and control over the agentive constellation surrounding present and future events, events which do influence a person’s health. A healing specialist can look for the cause of an illness and the right herb to treat it with, and people involved in conflicts can try to have access to the hidden intentions of their adversaries. The use of ayahuasca constitutes, in this way, a prophylactic weapon and instrument of negotiation in a sociocosmological world where predation is understood to be inherent to the construction of life itself. This predation, however, is situated in a subjective environment: the beings in interaction, being intentional subjects, can take revenge or offer their collaboration in the human battle for the control of fluidity of form. In this quest, the intention of humans is to conquer thinking solid and healthy bodies, with strong hearts (huinti kuxi), not easily afraid nor easily weakened by illness.
5. Rama Federica Leclerc – Anthropology Nanterre-Paris 10 – “Shipibo traditional medicine and French therapies”
This article offers an analysis of the interaction between the traditional healing practices of the Shipibo indigenous group and some modern alternative therapies practiced by French therapists. Recent investigations reveal that the modes of representation found in Shipibo practices appropriate the discourse of their Western counterparts. On the one hand, the Shipibos, to harmonize the two cultures, adapt their discourse to that of the Westerners. Nowadays, with the idea of setting themselves forth as the representatives and guardians of nature and the spirits of the plants, their healers have radicalized their discourse and practices with regard to the use of medicinal plants. On the other hand, the French healers include these practices in their forms of therapy. It was evident that some of them regard the spirit of ayahuasca as a kind of therapist with whom the patient establishes a personal link. The therapeutic use of ayahuasca thus becomes a self-therapy guided by a healer. This study also investigates new ideas about the relation between body and spirit, the role of mental imaginings (visions and dream experience), and verbalization, among others.
6. Alex Polari de Alverga – Cefluris national secretary – “Mr. Chico, heal yourself please!” – Spiritual healing in Santo Daime – its institutional space and dialogue with the medical-scientific knowledge”
This essay aims to situate some conceptual questions regarding spiritual healing within the context of the entheogenic Christian tradition of Santo Daime; the questions touch upon symbolic, cathartic, prophylactic, mediumistic and therapeutic issues. The curative and therapeutic properties of this brew, held to be a sacrament by this religious group, are described in order to trace out the boundaries between the “religious” and “therapeutic” uses of the brew. Special attention is paid to the experience of using Daime in the treatment of mental health problems, including, for instance, afflictive emotions, psychosomatic disorders, emotional blockages, spiritual persecutions, obsessions and mediumistic cures. It is suggested that such experiences contribute to harm reduction in the treatment of diverse afflictions, especially chemical dependence. On examining the demands for health and healing that bring many different people to seek out Santo Daime, the concept of “caridade de alto risco” (high risk charity) is introduced; it is an answer developed by some Santo Daime groups in response to this growing external demand on the religion. Reflections are made upon the extremes confronted by the religious Ayahuasca groups: From the risks of curanderismo to those of excessive medicalization. Finally, some institutional aspects are analyzed, such as the Final Report in 2006 of the Multidisciplinary Work Group (GMT) of the National Anti-drugs Council (CONAD) of Brazil. Challenges stemming from the State’s intervention remain unresolved, including how to guarantee communication between spiritual and medical knowledges
7. Isabel Santana de Rose – Doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology UFSC/NEIP –“Spiritual healing, biomedicine and intermedicality in Santo Daime”
This article deals with the therapeutic use of ayahuasca in Santo Daime. The first part introduces Santo Daime and the implications of the expansion of the Brazilian ayahuasca religions. This is followed by a discussion of the case of the Santo Daime community Céu da Mantiqueira, which defines itself as a healing center, explaining its health care system and the native conceptions of health, illness and disease. The text reflects specially about the presence of an expressive number of health care professionals and the introduction of biomedical practices in Céu da Mantiqueira. Based on the concept of intermedicality, this study seeks to show how in this context the spiritual paradigm characteristic of the Daime doctrine and the scientific one which usually characterizes biomedicine coexist in an active and dynamic way and give rise to new syntheses.
8. Marlo Meyer and Matthew Meyer – MA in Cultural Anthropology California State University and PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology University of Virginia/NEIP – “Ayahuasca and Pregnancy: A Preliminary Report”
In the United States, it is common knowledge that the use of illicit drugs during pregnancy is detrimental to fetal development, and the women who use illicit drugs during their pregnancies are seen as abusive mothers. This paper offers a preliminary discussion of an urban church in the Brazilian Amazon that contradicts these expectations by valuing positively the use of the hallucinogen ayahuasca during gestation and parturition. The use of ayahuasca during pregnancy and shared cultural views by church adherents are examined and the interface between pregnant church members and the biomedical establishment is considered.
9. Marcelo Mercante – PhD in Human Sciences/Consciousness and Spirituality - Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center/NEIP – “Awareness, “miração” and healing at Barquinha”
The cultural and symbolic universe of the Barquinha church is examined in this text. The Barquinha church is a Brazilian Amazonian religion, located in the city of Rio Branco, State of Acre, and it has ceremonies specifically devoted to healing. The main focus of this investigation is the role of visions obtained from the ritual use of Ayahuasca which help the participants to become aware of the many aspects of sickness. These visions are known by the participants of Barquinha as “mirações”. The “mirações” serve to raise their consciousness of the many extra-material dimensions of health and they also help them in the process of subjective transformation.
10. Denizar Missawa Camurça, Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Sérgio Brissac and Jonathan Ott – Biologist University of Guarulhos/NEIP; Doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology Unicamp/NEIP; Doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology Museu Nacional-UFRJ and Organic Chemist – HydroXochiatl/Mexico – “Hoasqueira Ethnomedicine: The traditional use of the Nove Vegetais in the União do Vegetal”
The article deals with a tradition of the Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (Beneficent Spirit Plant Union Center, or UDV), which occasionally used in the past what became known as the Nove Vegetais brew (Nine Plants brew), that is, ayahuasca with the addition of nine species of plants specifically aimed at healing. The use of these plants distinguishes the UDV from the other Brazilian Ayahuasca religions and resembles the traditional practices of Amazonian healers. There is a body of evidence about the properties of these species and of another one that was occasionally used, the João Brandinho. These species are compared with those used by mestizo or indigenous populations described in the specialized literature: among the ten plants adopted by the founder of the UDV, Mestre Gabriel, five are reported to have been used by traditional healers of the Amazon region. The article explains that these plants do, in fact, possess medicinal properties, indicating the need for further research into the therapeutic potential of the Nove Vegetais and of the João Brandinho.
11. Alberto Groisman – Anthropology UFSC – “Health, risks and religious use in disputes about the legal status of the use of ayahuasca: implications of recent judicial developments in the United States”
Among others, the categories health and risk – and the eventual contents which they evoke – have been referenced in criminal processes as negotiation and disputes objects. These categories (which are never free of a particular semantic attribution), are simultaneously receivers and providers of meaning. According to circumstances and
contexts, these words, and the eventual significance they refer when inserted in contexts of negotiation and dispute, constitute themselves as meaning aggregating, or meaning disaggregating particles. They are furthermore political aggregators, here when they articulate social and institutional forces in these disputes. My intention from this
article is to approach implications of the use of these categories – and the associated meanings – in a particular context: that of the production of relevant texts in the disputes concerning the status of the “religious use” of psychoactive substances, particularly of
ayahuasca. My focus is the judicial field, in which “health risk” for eventual users, and the presumed potential “thread” their use implies for the health of religious groups participants, always constitute themes of a relevant debate.
12. André Viana – journalist Trip Magazine – Dream and Fear on a Summer Night
This text is a report of a journalist’s experience in the night of Marc 3rd, 2002, when he and four anthropologists took part in an ayahuasca ritual performed by members of the Kaxinawa tribe in a ranch in the outskirts of Rio Branco, Acre, Brazil. An experience that – however difficult to duplicate – is far from forgotten.
Second Part: Science and Therapeutics
13. Josep María Fábregas, José Carlos Bouso, Sabela Fondevila, Débora González, Xavier Fernández, Marta Cutchet, Miguel Ángel Alcázar, Gregorio Gómez-Jarabo – Centro de Investigación y Tratamiento de las Adicciones (CITA) and Instituto de Etnopsicología Amazónica (IDEAA)/ Centro de Investigación de Medicamentos, Hospital de la Santa Creu y Sant Pau, Barcelona/ Universidad Autónoma of Madrid (UAM) and IDEAA/ UAM and IDEAA/ CITA and IDEAA/ CITA and IDEAA/ Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Facultad de Psicología, UAM/ Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Facultad de Psicología, UAM – “Long-term effects of the ritual use of ayahuasca on mental health”
Scientific research about long term effects of hallucinogens is, in general terms, poor. Until now, only 3 studies exist in which this issue was investigated in depth. In 2004, our research team stayed in Mapiá and Rio Branco developing longitudinal studies in order to assess the long term ayahuasca effects on mental health. In the first study we administered personality, neuropsychological, general health, psychosocial wellbeing and spirituality tests to 60 daimistas versus 60 non ayahuasca users from Boca do Acre. Those same tests were administered 8 months later in order to see if the scores were stable across time. In this chapter we present the preliminary findings.
14. Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Rafael Guimarães dos Santos, Rick Strassman, Brian Anderson and Suely Mizumoto – Doctoral candidate, UNICAMP and NEIP research associate/ Doctoral candidate in Pharmacology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and NEIP research associate / Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry en University of New Mexico School of Medicine and Presidente, Cottonowood Research Foundation/ Medical student, Stanford University and NEIP research associate / Master’s candidate in clinical psychology,, PUC-SP – “Effect of Santo Daime Membership on Substance Dependence”
Previous clinical research on hallucinogen-assisted psychotherapy reported efficacy in treating substance abuse disorders, similar to what has been report in naturalistic studies of peyote use among Native American Church members. Urban use of the Amazonian hallucinogenic brew, ayahuasca, is increasingly common in syncretic Brazilian ayahuasca religions, and anecdotal reports suggest recovery from substance dependence among those who participate in their rituals. We sought to assess more quantitatively effects of Brazilian ayahuasca-using church membership on substance dependence. We employed a modified questionnaire using DSM-IV criteria to determine the presence of substance dependence within a sample of members of a branch of the Santo Daime Brazilian ayahuasca religion. Nearly half of church members reported substance dependence before joining the religious organization; of these, 90% reported cessation of use of at least one substance upon which, before church membership, they reported dependency. While these preliminary data require confirmation using more rigorous criteria, they suggest a potential role of ayahuasca, within a particular context, in the treatment of substance dependence.
15. Paulo César Ribeiro Barbosa – Doctoral candidate in Mental Health Unicamp – “Altered states of consciousness in the first ritual experience with ayahuasca: therapeutic perspectives”
Introduction: Psychedelic substances are currently considered dangerous to mental health and without any medicinal use. However, they were already used as therapeutic adjuvant in psychedelic and psycholytic therapies in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The expansion of the religious use of the psychedelic beverage ayahuasca throughout Brazil and abroad has increased the interest in the supposed therapeutic properties its users attribute to the beverage.
Aim: To explore the therapeutic potential of the first ritual experience with ayahuasca.
Methods: Case report of a female, urban middle-class in her late thirties, who experienced ayahuasca in the CEFLURIS religious group for the first time in her life. In-depth interviews were used to elicit the dimensions and meaning of the subjective experience of acute ayahuasca effects as well its post-acute behavioral consequences throughout the following week.
Conclusions: According to the subject’s report, the acute effects of ayahuasca seem to have therapeutic potential because it stimulated self-knowledge processes and insight concerning aspects of her life experience. The behavioral changes during the following week included serenity and the assimilation of the insight experienced during the acute effects of ayahuasca. Different from psycholytic and psychedelic therapeutic propositions, these insights occurred in association the peace states and in the absence of typical visionary experiences of psychedelics. Tranquilizer properties of ayahuasca as well as aspects of the ritual setting combine in the elaboration of interpretative hypotheses for the experience.
16. Rafael Guimarães dos Santos – Doctoral candidate in Pharmacology Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona/NEIP – “Effects of Ayahuasca on psychometric measures of panic, anxiety and hopelessness”
The use of ayahuasca for religious purposes, which has been legally sanctioned in Brazil since 1986, is growing in the urban centres in recent decades. Despite this, little is known about the effects of ayahuasca on emotional states. The present study investigated possible modifications in the expression of anxiety, panic and hopelessness in Santo Daime members. Standard questionaries were used to evaluate state-anxiety, trait-anxiety, panic, and hopelessness in individuals who have been using ayahuasca for at least ten consecutive years. The questionnaires were applied one hour after the ingestion of ayahuasca, and the double-blind with placebo method was used. As the main results, we found an attenuation of the scales for panic and hopelessness, and no modifications in the anxiety scales. These results are discussed in terms of the possible therapeutic use of ayahuasca.
17. Interview with the psychiatrist Evelyn Xavier – Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Rafael Santos
18. Jordi Riba e Manel J. Barbanoj – Centro de Investigación de Medicamentos Sant Pau Hospital (Barcelona) and Centro de Investigación de Medicamentos Hospital de Sant Pau (Barcelona)/ Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona – “Clinical pharmacology of ayahuasca: research with Spanish volunteers”
Throughout the past decade, the authors have carried out a series of clinical trials in healthy volunteers, with the objective of investigating the human pharmacology of ayahuasca. The studies demonstrate that it is feasible to safely administer ayahuasca to people who have prior experience in the use of visionary substances with the purpose of evaluating its effects in a research setting. In this way, research has spanned from the pharmacokinetics of the alkaloids found in ayahuasca to effects on brain activation observed through neuroimaging, including the measurement of cardiovascular, neuroendocrinological and neurophysiological variables. These studies intend to achieve a better understanding of the effects of ayahuasca on the body, as well as to delve into the mechanisms of visionary substance activity in the human brain. This chapter presents the studies and results that have been obtained.
19. Rafael Guimarães dos Santos – Doctoral candidate in Pharmacology Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona/NEIP – “Possible risks associated to the use of ayahuasca”
In the last decades, the use of ayahuasca has been increasing in Brazil, the United States and Europe. Little is known about the eventual risks associated with this consumption . The objective of this study is to provide information about the possible risks associated with the consumption of this drug when it is combined with medication, foods and other chemical substances. Ayahuasca has serotoninergic agonist components – inhibitors of the monoamine oxidase enzyme and the tryptamine N, N-dimetiltriptamina (DMT) – and other chemical substances. The risks associated with the ingestion of these substances are mainly related to the serotoninergic syndrome, tyramine intoxication and the manifestation of psychopathologies. A review of the specialized literature shows that the risks of ayahuasca consumption are mainly associated with its pharmacological composition. These pharmacological characteristics must be considered in order to reduce eventual risks with ayahuasca preparations.
20. Ede Frecska – M.D., Ph.D. – Chief of Department National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology Budapest “Ayahuasca sessions in case of a recidivist murderer”
We have limited resources available for the treatment and prevention of violent behavior. The usefulness of the most commonly used medications, namely the selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor [SSRI] agents for the above purpose is a debated issue in the psychiatric literature. The aim of this case report is to add an ethnopharmacological perspective to the management of human aggression. Particularly, attention is called to the potential cohesive, prosocial effect of the Amazonian beverage, ayahuasca — a decoctum, which has been used traditionally for multiple medico-religious purposes by numerous indigenous groups of the Upper Amazon — and has been found to be useful in crisis intervention, achieving redemption, as well as eliciting cathartic feelings with moral content
21. Benny Shanon – Psychology Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Moments of insight, healing and transformation – a cognitive phenomenological analysis
In this chapter I examine moments of special significance in people’s experience with Ayahuasca. Specifically, I consider moments in which psychological insights are gained, and personal transformation and/or healing take place. The analysis consists in a structural typology of these facets of the Ayahuasca experience and is based on empirical data gathered in the framework of a broader study that sets itself to present a systematic charting of the phenomenology of the special state of mind induced by this brew. The analysis and discussion are taken from a phenomenological cognitive-psychological, not clinical-psychological or medical, perspective.
22. Walter Moure – PhD in Psychology USP – “The accompaniment (care) given in the Peruvian Amazon Indigenous tradition”
Based on his experience of living regularly with maestros de plantas (shamans) of the Peruvian Amazon, the author tries to understand the nature of accompaniment (care) given in the therapeutics of that tradition. He offers a vision derived from his reflections on Amazonian indigenous and mestizo knowledge, his own experience as a patient and his contact with Western patients that underwent shamanic treatments, using for that purpose the deconstruction of certainty - tool of ethnopsychoanalysis -, the Winnicottean psychoanalysis and other Western authors who were meaningful in his life. The result aims to clarify themes relating to human suffering and possible approaches to it.
23. Xavier Fernández – Doctoral candidate in Drug Dependences University of Santiago de Compostela/ therapist at Instituto de Etnopsicología Amazónica Aplicada (IDEAA) and José María Fábregas – Director of Instituto de Etnopsicología Amazónica Aplicada (IDEAA) – “Using ayahausca for treatment of drug dependency in the Brazilian Amazon” [Treatment of addictions with ayahuasca in the Brazil Amazon: An Experience].
The article presents the experience of the Institute of Applied Amazonic Ethnopsycology (IDEAA), created by a spanish group in the Amazon with the goal of studying and applying the use of ayahuasca in aiding processes of personal growth and the treatment of drug addictions. It starts whit a short description of its basic concepts, as well the theoretical perspectives underpinning its ayahuasca´s applications, which include transpersonal psychology, the Santo Daime religion, chamanism, and various eastern disciplines. The next section shows the practical activities, paying special attention to rituals, looking indepth into the healing process through a model of help based on minimally interventionist guidance. With a content analysis the main thems of ayahuasca sessions for addicts were revealed, and then discussed and related with dinamics of transformation. The final part of the text concludes with the clinical observations emerging from the years of practice.
24. Jonathan Ott – Organic Chemist – HydroXochiatl/Mexico – “Shamanic Yajé: Neither religious sacrament nor remedy for “chemical dependence”
This article will discuss the diferences between use of yajé in indigenous shamanism and western medicine. Both systems seek to “cure” via medicaments, although in the case of shamanism the “doctors” typically consume some drug, which is effectively prohibited in academic medicine. By way of example, it will examine the peculiar attempt of the medical establishment to endeavour to deal with habituations to the ingestion of drugs as “diseases,” commonly treated with other, different drugs. Some physicians employ yajé itself as one such drug to combat habituation to other drugs, at times in collaboration with Amazonian shamans. This has its parallels in modern syncretic religions such as União do Vegetal, which involves the ingestion of yajé as a sacrament to combat alcoholism, tobaccoism, cocainism, etc. For believers in these religions, just as for physicians who employ yajé as a drug to combat the use of other drugs, yajé is a “medicine” [holy] to fight “abuse” [sic] of a “drug” [evil], for instance cocaine. This is pharmacological chauvinism and is parallel to the situation with Cannabis: for certain religious believers (Rastafarians) and some ludible users, marijuana is a “herb” [holy]; while cocaine (indeed for some, yajé itself) is a “drug” [evil]. Of course, for criminal law effectively in the entire world, any non-medical use of many “drugs” [evil]—heroine, LSD, psilocybine, etc.—is a crime, if not a “mental illness” [sic]. There is a discussion of the semiotic confusion implicit in deforming the word addiction into meanings quite distinct from those of its synonym, devotion, to the point, in English and Castillian, of creating a substantive form, addict, to stigmatize the users of certain drugs. It will include some reflexions on shamanism as an empirical system of natural philosophy or science, the while modern science transmogrifies itself ever more into a dogmatic religion.
25. José Carlos Bouso Saiz – Psychology Universidad Autónoma de Madrid – “Ayahuasca as an adaptogen: a neurobiological approach”
The hippocampus produces a continual proliferation of cells and neurogenesis during a person´s lifetime. Due to the hippocampus´s importance in the active regulation of emotional and cognitive processes, there are speculations that hippocampal neurogenesis is a response to a neuro-adaptive cerebral mechanism of adjustment to changing environments. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the pharmacological activation of the 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors, which are the main cerebral receptors on which ayahuasca acts, induces neurogenesis in some specific areas of the central nervous system, mainly the hippocampus. This chapter examines the possibility that the continuous consumption of ayahuasca may favor the cultural adaptation of individuals to their environment, not only because of the subjective experiences which it causes but also because of the underlying biological changes unleashed by its consumption.
26. Stelio Marras – Doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology USP/NEIP – “Some thoughts from an anthropology of science point of view”
The book´s essays will be analyzed from the point of view of the problem of dualisms, that is, of a world divided in two (by a binocular view). The article proposes, as an alternative, the opposite approach, that is, a multi-ocular or multi-focal view which seeks to examine the design of networks formed by the diverse agencies (human and non-human, natural and supernatural) which motivate action. This opens up the possibility of questioning the convention which interprets the world and action on the world in terms of reified agents, that is, as if they have always been that way. Instead, taking a step back, the article focuses on how the agents come to be what they are (and thus before considering what they are). In other words, ontogenesis before ontology. This approach dares to ask whether the world, seen in this way, may reemerge re-enchanted, proposing, among other challenges, to sharply question the notion of cause, considering that the agents, influenced by the mutual causation of a network, act upon each other.
