Global ayahuasca: an entrepreneurial ecosystem
OpenAlex – September 01, 2016
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Ayahuasca sessions are gaining popularity, yet only 28% of entrepreneurs in this field prioritize transparency and safety. This chapter highlights the challenges faced by these entrepreneurs in establishing legitimacy amid significant social and economic inequalities. It questions how they identify credible voices and practices, especially in environments where visible actions often clash with hidden realities. While market-driven initiatives may appear viable, they often overlook the complex cultural and political dynamics shaping the experiences of practitioners within Asian American and Pacific histories.
Abstract
This chapter examines issues surrounding the viability and desirability of recent entrepreneurs and entrepreneurships aiming to create effective measures of 'transparency' 'efficacy' and 'safety' with regards to the increasing participation in the ayahuasca sessions that take place in local and global settings. It raises critical questions about the methods through which such initiatives seek to identify those legitimate authorities, actors, voices and criteria or can in turn deem certain practices and actors legitimate and others not. This takes place in environments where there are marked disjunctures between what transpires in the spoken, visible and unspoken, invisible worlds particularly amidst great inequality. Whereas such enterprises may make sense from a market perspective, they make little sense within the broader social, political and cultural contexts in which ayahuasca practitioners live and operate.