Rating: *****
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Lang:en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Added: August 21, 2020
Modified: November 5, 2021
Summary
Neuropsychedelia examines the revival of psychedelic
science since the "Decade of the Brain." After the breakdown
of this previously prospering area of psychopharmacology, and
in the wake of clashes between counterculture and
establishment in the late 1960s, a new generation of
hallucinogen researchers used the hype around the
neurosciences in the 1990s to bring psychedelics back into
the mainstream of science and society. This book is based on
anthropological fieldwork and philosophical reflections on
life and work in two laboratories that have played key roles
in this development: a human lab in Switzerland and an animal
lab in California. It sheds light on the central
transnational axis of the resurgence connecting American
psychedelic culture with the home country of LSD. In the
borderland of science and religion,
Neuropsychedelia explores the tensions between the
use of hallucinogens to model psychoses and to evoke
spiritual experiences in laboratory settings. Its
protagonists, including the anthropologist himself, struggle
to find a place for the mystical under conditions of
late-modern materialism. **