
Zuzanna Sadowska
I am a student at the Anthropos Doctoral School of the Polish Academy of Sciences. I am currently doing a project funded by a “Prelude” grant from the National Science Center on relationships with psychoactive substances. In 2021/2022, I conducted a 9-month ethnographic field study in Brazil on a psychoactive drink traditionally consumed in Amazonian areas, known within Western science as ayahuasca. The drink has many local names and is usually made from two plants Banisteriopsis Caapi and -containing DMT- Psychotria Virdis. DMT is classified in most countries as a controlled substance with no medical properties, the use of which is criminalized. At the same time, in the contexts I observe, drinks made from these plants, are used for medicinal purposes within shamanic, religious and therapeutic practices.
Inspired primarily by the methodology of the “ontological turn,” in my research I look at the changing ontologies of psychoactive substances – that is, how in different social contexts they become drugs, medicines, or causal entities with which people can communicate.
Observing the unstable, relational ontologies of substances is also, in this project, a starting point for analyzing how concepts of “addiction,” “disease,” “sobriety,” or “person” change within different social contexts.
Szkoła Doktroska Anthropos
Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk
e-mail: zsadowska@iaepan.edu.pl
“Narkotyki, leki i intencjonalne byty. Zmienne ontologie substancji psychoaktywnych”