Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The human drive to alter consciousness through use of psychoactive plants is found throughout human history and existed far back in prehistory. Anthropological perspectives provide several vantage points from which to address this impetus for the use of consciousness altering substances, general cross-cultural variation in their patterns of use, and subsequent technological transformations and evolution into disfavor as illicit drugs. A major contribution is in understanding the interaction of cultural and biological factors, specifically how cultural assumptions and practices affect societal attitudes towards alteration of consciousness, how use patterns change across time, and how cultures vary in response to the psychobiological dynamics of the addictive potential of substances that alter consciousness. Anthropology's cross-cultural perspectives reveal the different values that are placed upon drug substances affect their patterns of use and their effects upon users.Cultures differ considerably in the attention and support that they give to the induction of altered states of consciousness (ASC), including drug induced ASC. All cultures have practices that utilize some process to obtain ASC (Laughlin et al. 1992; Winkelman 1992). Since ASC reflect biologically based structures of consciousness, a latent human potential that Winkelman (2000) refers to as “integrative consciousness”, ... log in or subscribe to read full text