The international Ayahuasca community: Globalization and difference
The ayahuasca international community is a global reality which currently gathers different social actors, various interests, and diverse representations and practices related to this psychoactive of amazonic origin. The objective of this article is to explore some characteristics of the symbolic production that creates and recreates the ayahuasca international community, the sort of relations it configures and its effects; as well as the ways in which ayahuasca, its diverse users and uses, and their defense are represented and conceived. I will center on two major aspects. First, the topics, ideas, and approaches related to the general perception of that considered as the community, i.e., the internal referents through which a certain “identity” and a notion of “us” is articulated. Second, the relation this international community keeps with indigenous peoples and the Amazonia as ambiguous referents which, while thought of as part of the community, are perceived at the same time as outsiders that remit to an idea of origin and authenticity. Mainly, I am interested in exploring how that symbolic production is linked to the existence of a localized hegemony, in the sense of a concentrated capacity of developed or Global North countries to direct and regulate the transit of people and cultural goods. Globalization produces an “universalizing” effect that encompasses and subsumes in its interior a whole variety of manifestations produced at the national and local levels, which are construed as hierarchically inferior or less overarching. Thus, my purpose is to highlight the weight and value of local and national production as essential coordinates in order to understand the (geo)politics of ayahuasca.