Shamans and “Shams”
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks – January 01, 2013
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Ayahuasca tourism is a growing phenomenon, attracting curious travelers seeking shamanic experiences. A fieldwork encounter led to an exploration of this trend, where participant observation revealed the complexities of shamanic practices. Engaging with a shaman added depth to the ethnographic narrative, highlighting the intersection of art, psychoanalysis, and sociology within these rituals. This immersive experience underscores how shamanism can shape cultural tourism, with implications for understanding human-animal interactions and the broader geographies of Latin American and Latino studies.
Abstract
Some months into my fieldwork, my colleague and friend carne to visit me. Anya, a fellow anthropologist, was (and is) an ethnographic filmmaker and a scholar of shainanism (although her fieldsite lay far away from mine—she studied shamanic revival in post-Soviet Buryatia). Naturally, her professional curiosity was piqued by my tales of shamanic tourism. She was quite interested in ayahuasca tourism, and I decided that drinking ayahuasca with a shaman—something I had eschewed until that point—would add another layer to my participant-observation practice.KeywordsTour GuideSpirit WorldRadical AlterityShamanic PerformanceCommunity VisitThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.