The economics of ayahuasca: money, markets, and the value of the vine

Summary

Ayahuasca is transforming into a valuable commodity in the global economy, with implications for contemporary economic understanding. This Amazonian vine, traditionally used for spiritual and medicinal purposes, is now part of a burgeoning market. In an interdisciplinary exploration involving ethnobotany, neuropsychology, and economics, its increasing circulation raises questions about value perception and monetary exchange. With its diverse representations—from plant teacher to drug—ayahuasca challenges existing economic paradigms, illustrating the complex interplay between cultural significance and market dynamics.

Abstract

Introduction The field of ayahuasca studies has emerged as a thoroughly interdisciplinary academic pursuit in the early twenty-first century, with research occurring in areas such as ethnobotany, neuropsychology, psychiatry, religious studies, anthropology, and drug policy studies. In each of these domains, the object of research – ayahuasca – is represented through a variety of social constructions: an Amazonian vine, a traditional medicine, a religious sacrament, a plant teacher, and a "drug" (Tupper, 2011). However, in this chapter, I consider ayahuasca as a different kind of socially constructed artifact: a material commodity, increasingly circulating in a global supply chain of monetary exchange. In so doing, I invoke an academic field that has not yet taken much interest in ayahuasca, that of economics. My discussion covers how ayahuasca is emerging as an object of exchange in the modern transnational economic sphere, and takes an exploratory turn into how this emergence may present a challenge to contemporary mainstream economic knowledge and thought.

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