Espiritualidad y chamanismo: Rituales de ayahuasca bajo el giro subjetivo en Colombia
Latin American Research Review June 8, 2022 Jean Paul Sarrazín 4 citations
The ayahuasca shamanic ritual has been adopted, adapted, and reinvented in urban and cosmopolitan contexts worldwide, heavily permeated by New Age practices and beliefs. In Colombia, a local version known as "tomas de yajé" involves middle- and upper-class non-Indigenous city dwellers seeking traditional otherness and spiritual inspiration. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews, the study analyzes how this form of shamanism is interpreted, focusing on the uses and meanings of spirituality in participants' narratives. Results, discussed through theories of subjectivity and religiosity in modernity, show that the subjective turn of late modernity is key to understanding the ritual's recent valuation, paradoxically becoming a vehicle for spreading individualistic values.