Short Abstract

How do psychedelic substances transform consciousness and actualise experiences of belonging, healing and spirituality?This panel explores emerging practices with psychedelics in informal contexts by analysing global circulation, cultural appropriation and therapeutic processes, among other aspects.

Long Abstract

In recent decades, there has been an expanding interest around psychedelics, from shamanic retreats to informal gatherings, and parties, from media hype to growing clinical trials, often grouped under the umbrella of ‘psychedelic renaissance’. Configurations involving psychedelic substances are heterogeneous, overlapping, and hybrid, coexisting across social groups and geographies, and increasingly incorporating the emergence of new ritualised settings. Such spaces challenge established boundaries between the secular and the sacred, science and belief, therapy and spirituality, legality and illegality.

Inhabiting a world marked by polarising fields—between institutional and informal, religious and non-religious, biomedical and experiential—psychedelics provide fertile ground for ethnographic inquiry but present little-explored empirical data. They exemplify how individuals and communities navigate tensions between competing epistemologies and ethical-legal orders, while experimenting with original forms of belonging and healing.

This panel — stemming from the research project SPIRECTS – Spiritual Practices and Psychedelic Substances in Emerging Ritualised Contexts (CICS.NOVA, NOVA University of Lisbon, FCT-funded, 2023.13311.PEX) — invites contributions examining psychedelics from ethnographic, sociological and interdisciplinary perspectives. We look for papers that analyse the complexity of emerging practices in informal contexts and explore how they are shaped by global circulations, cultural appropriation, therapeutic discourses, among other aspects. We are particularly interested in proposals that investigate the relationship between spirituality and the use of psychedelic substances, although papers focusing exclusively on the latter are equally welcomed.

Rather than viewing such configurations as marginal phenomena, we approach them as dynamic responses to broader crises of meaning and authority. Ultimately, our panel aims to advance ethnographies of psychedelics, provoking further dialogue on the transformative and ambivalent potential of these substances—specifically, their ability to both reproduce and transcend polarisation in our fractured yet interconnected world, where consciousness itself becomes a terrain of negotiation.

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