Dividual Vision of the Individual
Ayahuasca Neo-shamanism in Australia and the New Age Individualism Orthodoxy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v7i2.31955Keywords:
Ayahuasca, New Age, dividualism, individualism, entheogenic esotericismAbstract
There has been ongoing scholarly debate concerning whether New Age spirituality may be defined by individualistic more than collectivistic values, beliefs and behaviours. Most scholars have answered in the positive and indicated how New Age beliefs and techniques emphasise the importance of the self and self-interests of the practitioner. This article contributes to debates on New Age individualism with an analysis of ayahuasca neoshamanism in Australia. I introduce thick ethnographic evidence of collectivist logics of social action in ritual practices of ecstatic purging and visions. I argue that these practices can be interpreted through anthropological notion of "dividualism" whereby the person is multiple, partible, and exchangeable along social relations of obligation (Strathern 1988, Mosko 2013). The article illustrates how ethnographic theory may contribute to debates about individualism and collectivism in New Age spirituality by creating space for "native" or emic theories of social action.
References
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Aupers, S. and D. Houtman. 2006. “Beyond the spiritual supermarket: The social and public significance of New Age spirituality.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 21(2): 201–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537900600655894
Bird-David, N. 1999. “‘Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology.” Current Anthropology 40: 67–91. https://doi.org/10.1086/200061
Bellah, R., R. Madsen, W. Sullivan, A. Swidler and S. Tipton, eds. 1985. Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bruce, S. 1995. Religion in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cadge, W. 2007. “Reflections on habits, Buddhism in America, and religious individualism.” Sociology of Religion 68: 201–205. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/68.2.201
Chau, A. Y. 2008. “The sensorial production of the social.” Ethnos 73(4): 485–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840802563931
Dumont, L. >1970. “Religion, politics, and society in the individualistic universe.” Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 31–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/3031738
Farias, M. and M. Lalljee. 2008. “Holistic individualism in the age of Aquarius: Measuring individualism/collectivism in New Age, Catholic, and atheist/agnostic groups. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47(2): 277–289. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2008.00407.x
Gearin, A. K. 2017. “Good mother nature: Ayahuasca neo-shamanism as cultural critique in Australia.” In The World Ayahuasca Diaspora: Reinventions and Controversies, Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar, Alex K. Gearin, 123–141. London: Routledge.
Gearin, A. K. 2015. “‘Whatever you want to believe” Kaleidoscopic individualism and ayahuasca healing in Australia.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 26(3): 442–455. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12143
Geertz, C. 1975. “On the nature of anthropological understanding.” American Scientist 63: 47–53.
Glaskin, K. 2012 “Anatomies of relatedness: Considering personhood in Aboriginal Australia.” American Anthropologist 114(2): 297–308. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01426.x
Goody, J. 1991. “Towards a room with a view: A personal account of contributions to local knowledge, theory, and research in fieldwork and comparative studies.” Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.20.100191.000245
Hamilton, M. 2000. “An analysis of the festival for Mind-Body-Spirit, London.” In Beyond New Age, edited by Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman, 188–200. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Heelas, P. 1996. The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hedges, E. and James A. Beckford. 2000. “Holism, healing and the new age.” In Beyond New Age, edited by Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman, 167–187. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Houtman, D. and P. Mascini. 2002 “Why do the churches become empty, while new age grows? Secularization and religious change in the Netherlands.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41(3): 455–473. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.00130
Hultkrantz, A. 2004. “Ecological and phenomenological aspects of shamanism.” In Shamanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology, edited by A. Znamenski, 146–171. London: Routledge.
Itzhak, N. 2015. “Making selves and meeting others in neo-shamanic healing.” Ethos 43(3): 286–310. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12086
Jakobsen, M. D. 1999. Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. New York: Berghan.
Labate, B. and C. Cavnar, eds. 2014. Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lambek, M. 2010. “Toward an ethics of the act.” In Ordinary Ethics, Anthropology, Language and Action, edited by Michael Lambek. New York: Fordham University Press.
Lenaerts, M. 2006. “Substance, relationships and the omnipresence of the body: An overview of Ashéninka ethnomedicine (Western Amazonia).” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2(1): 49. (open access). https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-2-49
LiPuma, E. 1998. “Modernity and forms of personhood in Melanesia.” In Bodies and Persons: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia, edited by Michael Lambek and Andrew Strathern, 53–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Londono Sulkin, C. 2005. “Inhuman beings: Morality and perspectivism among Muinane people (Colombian Amazon).” Ethnos 70(1): 7–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840500048474
Lyon, D. 2000. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Macpherson, C. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, P., and L. Hoogstra. 1992. “Language as a tool in the socialization and apprehension of cultural meaning.” In New Directions in Psychological Anthropology, edited by Theodore Schwartz, Geoffrey M. White and Catherine A. Lutz, 83–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mosko, M. S. 2015. “Unbecoming individuals: The partible character of the Christian person.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1): 361–393. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.017
Mosko, M. S. 2013. “Dividuals, individuals, or possessive individuals?: Recent transformations of North Mekeo commoditization, personhood, and sociality.” In Engaging with Capitalism: Cases from Oceania, edited by Fiona McCormack and Kate Barclay, 167–198. Bigley: Emerald Books. https://doi.org/10.1108/s0190-1281(2013)0000033009
Mosko, M. S. 1992. “Motherless Sons: “Divine Kings” and “Partible Persons” in Melanesia and Polynesia.” Man 27(4): 697–717. https://doi.org/10.2307/2804170
Myhre, K. C. 2006. “Divination and experience: explorations of a Chagga epistemology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12(2): 313–330. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00293.x
Oh S., Sarkisian, N. 2012. “Spiritual individualism or engaged spirituality? Social implications of holistic spirituality among Mind-Body-Spirit practitioners.” Sociology of Religion 73(3): 299–322. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srr054
Ortner, S. B. 1995. “The case of the disappearing shamans, or no individualism, no relationalism.” Ethnos 23(3): 355–390. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1995.23.3.02a00040
Possamai, A. 2004. “Alternative spiritualities and the cultural logic of late capitalism.” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4(1): 31–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/01438300302807
Razam, R. 2011. “In the beginning was DOOF!” Interview conducted by DJ Krusty. https://vimeo.com/20399971. Accessed May 2014.
Rivière, P. 1984. Individual and Society in Guiana: A Comparative Study of Amerindian Social Organization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558115
Shanon, B. 2002. Antipodes of the Mind: Chartering the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Singelis, T. M., C. H. Triandis, D. Bhawuk and M. Gelfand. 1995. “Horizontal and verticle dimenions of individualism and collectivism: A theoretical and measurement redifined.” Cross-Cultural Research 29(3): 240–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/106939719502900302
Strathern, A., and P. Stewart. 2000. “The relational-individual.” In Arrow Talk: Transaction, Transition, and Contradiction in New Guinea Highlands, edited by Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart, 11–15. Kent: Kent State University Press
Strathern, M. 1988. The Gender of the Gift. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Taylor, C. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. 2002. Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Townsend, J. 2004. “Individualist religious movements: Core and neo-shamanism.” Anthropology of Consciousness 12(1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1525/ac.2004.15.1.1
Vilaça, A. 2015. “Dividualism and individualism in indigenous Christianity: A debate seen from Amazonia.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1): 197–225. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.010
Vitebsky, P. 1995. “From cosmology to environmentalism: Shamanism as local knowledge in a global setting.” In Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, edited by Richard Fardon, 182–203. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203450994_chapter_9
Worsley, P. 1982. “Non-western medical systems.” Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 315–348. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.11.100182.001531
Aupers, S. and D. Houtman. 2006. “Beyond the spiritual supermarket: The social and public significance of New Age spirituality.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 21(2): 201–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537900600655894
Bird-David, N. 1999. “‘Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology.” Current Anthropology 40: 67–91. https://doi.org/10.1086/200061
Bellah, R., R. Madsen, W. Sullivan, A. Swidler and S. Tipton, eds. 1985. Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bruce, S. 1995. Religion in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cadge, W. 2007. “Reflections on habits, Buddhism in America, and religious individualism.” Sociology of Religion 68: 201–205. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/68.2.201
Chau, A. Y. 2008. “The sensorial production of the social.” Ethnos 73(4): 485–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840802563931
Dumont, L. >1970. “Religion, politics, and society in the individualistic universe.” Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 31–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/3031738
Farias, M. and M. Lalljee. 2008. “Holistic individualism in the age of Aquarius: Measuring individualism/collectivism in New Age, Catholic, and atheist/agnostic groups. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47(2): 277–289. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2008.00407.x
Gearin, A. K. 2017. “Good mother nature: Ayahuasca neo-shamanism as cultural critique in Australia.” In The World Ayahuasca Diaspora: Reinventions and Controversies, Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Clancy Cavnar, Alex K. Gearin, 123–141. London: Routledge.
Gearin, A. K. 2015. “‘Whatever you want to believe” Kaleidoscopic individualism and ayahuasca healing in Australia.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 26(3): 442–455. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12143
Geertz, C. 1975. “On the nature of anthropological understanding.” American Scientist 63: 47–53.
Glaskin, K. 2012 “Anatomies of relatedness: Considering personhood in Aboriginal Australia.” American Anthropologist 114(2): 297–308. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01426.x
Goody, J. 1991. “Towards a room with a view: A personal account of contributions to local knowledge, theory, and research in fieldwork and comparative studies.” Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.20.100191.000245
Hamilton, M. 2000. “An analysis of the festival for Mind-Body-Spirit, London.” In Beyond New Age, edited by Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman, 188–200. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Heelas, P. 1996. The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hedges, E. and James A. Beckford. 2000. “Holism, healing and the new age.” In Beyond New Age, edited by Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman, 167–187. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Houtman, D. and P. Mascini. 2002 “Why do the churches become empty, while new age grows? Secularization and religious change in the Netherlands.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41(3): 455–473. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.00130
Hultkrantz, A. 2004. “Ecological and phenomenological aspects of shamanism.” In Shamanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology, edited by A. Znamenski, 146–171. London: Routledge.
Itzhak, N. 2015. “Making selves and meeting others in neo-shamanic healing.” Ethos 43(3): 286–310. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12086
Jakobsen, M. D. 1999. Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. New York: Berghan.
Labate, B. and C. Cavnar, eds. 2014. Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lambek, M. 2010. “Toward an ethics of the act.” In Ordinary Ethics, Anthropology, Language and Action, edited by Michael Lambek. New York: Fordham University Press.
Lenaerts, M. 2006. “Substance, relationships and the omnipresence of the body: An overview of Ashéninka ethnomedicine (Western Amazonia).” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2(1): 49. (open access). https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-2-49
LiPuma, E. 1998. “Modernity and forms of personhood in Melanesia.” In Bodies and Persons: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia, edited by Michael Lambek and Andrew Strathern, 53–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Londono Sulkin, C. 2005. “Inhuman beings: Morality and perspectivism among Muinane people (Colombian Amazon).” Ethnos 70(1): 7–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840500048474
Lyon, D. 2000. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Macpherson, C. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, P., and L. Hoogstra. 1992. “Language as a tool in the socialization and apprehension of cultural meaning.” In New Directions in Psychological Anthropology, edited by Theodore Schwartz, Geoffrey M. White and Catherine A. Lutz, 83–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mosko, M. S. 2015. “Unbecoming individuals: The partible character of the Christian person.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1): 361–393. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.017
Mosko, M. S. 2013. “Dividuals, individuals, or possessive individuals?: Recent transformations of North Mekeo commoditization, personhood, and sociality.” In Engaging with Capitalism: Cases from Oceania, edited by Fiona McCormack and Kate Barclay, 167–198. Bigley: Emerald Books. https://doi.org/10.1108/s0190-1281(2013)0000033009
Mosko, M. S. 1992. “Motherless Sons: “Divine Kings” and “Partible Persons” in Melanesia and Polynesia.” Man 27(4): 697–717. https://doi.org/10.2307/2804170
Myhre, K. C. 2006. “Divination and experience: explorations of a Chagga epistemology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12(2): 313–330. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00293.x
Oh S., Sarkisian, N. 2012. “Spiritual individualism or engaged spirituality? Social implications of holistic spirituality among Mind-Body-Spirit practitioners.” Sociology of Religion 73(3): 299–322. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srr054
Ortner, S. B. 1995. “The case of the disappearing shamans, or no individualism, no relationalism.” Ethnos 23(3): 355–390. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1995.23.3.02a00040
Possamai, A. 2004. “Alternative spiritualities and the cultural logic of late capitalism.” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4(1): 31–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/01438300302807
Razam, R. 2011. “In the beginning was DOOF!” Interview conducted by DJ Krusty. https://vimeo.com/20399971. Accessed May 2014.
Rivière, P. 1984. Individual and Society in Guiana: A Comparative Study of Amerindian Social Organization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558115
Shanon, B. 2002. Antipodes of the Mind: Chartering the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Singelis, T. M., C. H. Triandis, D. Bhawuk and M. Gelfand. 1995. “Horizontal and verticle dimenions of individualism and collectivism: A theoretical and measurement redifined.” Cross-Cultural Research 29(3): 240–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/106939719502900302
Strathern, A., and P. Stewart. 2000. “The relational-individual.” In Arrow Talk: Transaction, Transition, and Contradiction in New Guinea Highlands, edited by Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart, 11–15. Kent: Kent State University Press
Strathern, M. 1988. The Gender of the Gift. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Taylor, C. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. 2002. Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Townsend, J. 2004. “Individualist religious movements: Core and neo-shamanism.” Anthropology of Consciousness 12(1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1525/ac.2004.15.1.1
Vilaça, A. 2015. “Dividualism and individualism in indigenous Christianity: A debate seen from Amazonia.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1): 197–225. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.010
Vitebsky, P. 1995. “From cosmology to environmentalism: Shamanism as local knowledge in a global setting.” In Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, edited by Richard Fardon, 182–203. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203450994_chapter_9
Worsley, P. 1982. “Non-western medical systems.” Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 315–348. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.11.100182.001531
Published
2017-02-20
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Section
Articles
How to Cite
Gearin, A. (2017). Dividual Vision of the Individual: Ayahuasca Neo-shamanism in Australia and the New Age Individualism Orthodoxy. International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 7(2), 199-220. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.v7i2.31955
