Transcultural Keys: Humor, Creativity and Other Relational Artifacts in the Transposition of a Brazilian Ayahuasca Religion to the Netherlands

This chapter presents a textured ethnography of how religion and culture negotiate alterity in urban-industrial societies, drawing on knowledge from traditional populations. It argues against treating religion as an autonomous reality, instead advocating for understanding others' experiences on their own terms. Following Victor Turner, it positions creativity as emerging from resistance to convention. The text highlights humor, creativity, and the questioning of religious life as legitimate means to improve social relationships and expand knowledge, with a focus on the Brazilian Ayahuasca religion and its context in the Netherlands.

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Abstract

This chapter expands the analysis of the social and cosmic dimensions of a process of ‘re-ritualization’ in urbanindustrial societies, inspired by the knowledge of ‘traditional populations. It focuses on primarily on providing a textured ethnography of role of religion and culture in the negotiation of alterity. The chapter epistemological thrust is to deconstruct the need for a circumscribed and unified analytical framework that makes religion an autonomous reality in favor of an open search to understand the others’ experiences in their own terms. The author follows the Victor Turner, perhaps one of the first researchers to situate creativity as a phenomenon which emerges from an explicit or implicit resistance to convention. The author notices that the importance of humor, creativity, and the questioning of religious life as constituting legitimate and useful ways to improve social relationships and also of expanding knowledge. Keywords:Brazilian Ayahuasca religion; creativity; humor; knowledge; Netherland; textured ethnography