Healing Encounters: Reinventing an indigenous medicine in the clinic and beyond

Project Information

Healing Encounters

Grant agreement ID: 757589

DOI

10.3030/757589

Project closed

EC signature date 26 March 2018

Start date 1 April 2018

End date 31 March 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 450 166,00

EU contribution

€ 1 450 166,00

Coordinated by

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 5 - Healing Encounters (Healing Encounters: Reinventing an indigenous medicine in the clinic and beyond)

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This anthropological project explores the encounters instigated by the global circulation of therapeutic practices that make use of the Amazonian herbal brew Ayahuasca (also known as Nixi pae, Uni, Daime…). To do this, we gathered ethnographic data in and between three ideal-type sites: “the City” where neotraditional urban ritual forms proliferate, creatively re-assembling elements from a diverse range of sources; “the Laboratory” where neuroscientists, pharmacologists and clinicians attempt to qualify the therapeutic potential of Ayahuasca using Western diagnostic criteria and an evidence model (the double-blind randomized controlled trial) that is ill-suited to the task; and “the Forest” where Ayahuasca plays a central role in Indigenous cultural revitalisation and resistance. HealingEncounters adopts a multi-sited and multidimensional ethnographic approach coupled with insights from the field of Science and Technology Studies. Our comparative analysis is structured around three transversal encounters that are: 1. Materialsemiotic Encounters: To map the entanglement of biological and symbolic effects in healing practices. 2. Encounters Beyond-the-Human: To bring attention to the healing propitiated by relations with more-than-human beings, spirits or companion species enmeshed in webs of relationality with humans. 3. Ontological Encounters: To recognise a multiplicity of ontologies within a common world of encounters. The project employs the concept of “encounter” both as an analytical tool and a methodology. Our examination of how different world-making endeavours redefine one another, while contributing to a layered yet interconnected world, is rooted in feminist and decolonial theories and methodologies. We focus on understanding the intricate, intertwined dynamics between Ayahuasca and colonialism, paying close attention to how settler colonial strategies persistently extract plants and knowledge from their multifaceted and entangled assemblage of relationships.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In HEALING IN THE LAB ethnographic research was carried out in international psychedelic spaces with a specific focus on Brazilian psychedelic science. The controversies surrounding the building of intellectual property on psychedelics were analyzed and training program in psychedelic-assisted therapy was undertaken.
Key results:
- Sanabria (2021). "Vegetative Value: promissory horizons of therapeutic innovation in the global circulation of Ayahuasca." BioSocieties (16)387-410
- Benedito & Sanabria (forthcoming) "Psychedelic Nation? (De)Provincializing 'the' psychedelic renaissance from Brazil." Science, Technology & Human Values.
- Dumit, & Sanabria, (2022). “Set, Setting and Clinical Trials - Colonial Technologies and Psychedelics" in The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology
- Sanabria, (2020). "(Psychedelics) Beyond the “Neuro”." Cultural Anthropology

In HEALING IN THE CITY ethnographic research was conducted in urban centres in Europe and the Americas. We focused on the somatic dimensions of ayahuasca experiences rather than the cognitive dimensions which dominate existing literature.
Key developments include theorizing the highly gendered labour of “space holding” as a form of care and theorizing the settler colonial underpinnings of (psychedelic) set and “setting,” and the adoption of the polysemic Afro-Brazilian concept of Encruzilhada (crossroads) to highlight the paradoxes and frictions of encounter.
Key results:
- Talin. 2024. “Ayahuasca Crossroads: An ethnography of the circulation of Ayahuasca rituals between urban Brazil and Europe” PhD Dissertation.
- Benedito, & Valêncio (forth) “Acolhimento e cuidado no Santo Daime”, In: Santo Daime Alteridades.
- Isabel S. de Rose 2022. “Forest Medicines, kinship alliances and equivocations in the contemporary dialogues between Santo Daime and the Yawanawá.” Anthropology of Consciousness 33(2): 279-306
- Sanabria 2021 « Imagining Otherwise Encounters After Epistemicide » Sacred Plants in the Americas International Conference
In HEALING IN THE FOREST ethnographic research was conducted with Shipibo Konibo and Huni Kuin collaborators. The project’s Scientific and Ethical Committee included two Indigenous ritual experts with whom work in sub-projects “Lab” and “City” was discussed throughout.
Major achievements include the development of a novel methodological approach of researching ‘with’ rather than ‘about’ plants, the organisation of a multisensory immersive intercultural workshop leading to an analysis of the soundscape that accompany the Huni Kuin ayahuasca ritual as a “vibration” or the gathering of a corpus of ethnographic interviews with Indigenous women on their experiences of ayahuasca.
Key results
- Lopez Sanchez; Mesturini & Sanabria, (2024) Trabajar con las plantas que tienen madres. Diálogos con un onanya shipibo.
- Chartier, Sales, & Sanabria, (forth) « La vibration qui unit ». Terrain
- Sanabria & Mesturini 2023 “Plotting PhytoFutures.” American Anthropologist

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

BEYOND THE HUMAN critically engages with multispecies ethnography which leave the category of the Human unquestioned. Drawing on Latin American decolonial theory HealingEncounters critically engages the humanist project of anthropology.

SPECULATIVE FUTURES explored futures beyond the modernist imaginary leading us to engage with the questions of coloniality, repair, healing justice and manifesting the Otherwise. Speculation arose as a core methodology for building transversality within our collective project. It answered a core project design challenge: that of holding together and creating contact zones between the different areas or “sites” of the project, and their at times radically divergent commitments, ethics, or ontologies.

BEYOND (PSYCHEDELIC) BRAINHOOD focused analytical attention on the “mind below the neck” by documenting how practitioners understand the role of the peripheral, breathing, moving body in Ayahuasca healing. This provides a corrective to the way social science of psychedelics and mental health has centred the “neuro” and the cognitive.

COLLABORATING WITH PLANTS - Many plant experts insist that certain plants are teachers. Taking this assertion seriously means opening up to the possibility of approaching plants not as objects of analysis but as subjects in their own right. Doing so requires developing forms of scientific collaboration that enable Indigenous knowledge practices to guide scientific inquiry.

DEPROVINCIALIZING THE PSYCHEDELIC RENAISSANCE from Brazil situates the project within Science and Technology Studies discussions on the politics of science at the margins of EuroAmerica, analysing the importance of public funding, Brazil’s paradigm of “collective health” and community mental health and the relationships between scientists and (ayahuasca) practitioners that made Brazilian psychedelic possible.

Nixi pas (Huni Kuin name for Ayahuasca), Acre, Brazil, 2023