Category Archives: Globalization

Cultural appropriation, Ethnobotanical reflections, Globalization, Indigenous Amazonian peoples: Social issues

A compelling case of biopiracy: The Stevia story

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stevia_cultivationToday we hear less about biopiracy than we did a few years ago.  As I’ve argued elsewhere, some cases of alleged biopiracy are more ambiguous than critics of cultural appropriation typically admit.  But one case of flagrant biopiracy, that of sweeteners drived from the South American species Stevia rebaudiana, is finally starting to get the attention it deserves.

S. rebaudiana is an herbaceous plant native to eastern Paraguay that was long used by indigenous Guaraní peoples as a sweetener for teas and medicinal preparations.  The sweetness of Stevia comes from several glycosides, including stevioside and rebaudioside, that produce a sensation of intense sweetness without increasing the blood glucose of those who consume it.

Use of Stevia as a sweetener was documented by Western science in the late nineteenth century, although its chemical constituents were not identified for another sixty years.  As developed nations began to search for calorie-free sweeteners, the properties of Stevia became of considerable interest.  Stevia seems to have been embraced as an alternative to sugar first by Japanese and Chinese corporations.  In the U.S., use of Stevia initially stalled because of preliminary evidence that its chemical constituents might be carcinogenic, although effective lobbying by manufacturers of competing artificial sweeteners was also a factor.  The carcinogenicity claim was eventually refuted, however, and Stevia‘s commercial value has grown substantially since the 1980s.

The Guaraní, one of South America’s poorest and most endangered indigenous populations, have received negligible benefits from the global market for this potentially billion-dollar product.  Ironically, marketing campaigns for Stevia-based sweeteners often identify it as “traditional” or “indigenous.”

stevia

Smallholder farmers in Paraguay derive some income from cultivation of the plant for the market.  But even this modest compensation is being undermined by commercial biosynthesis of Stevia‘s key compounds in the developed world.  In other words, industrial producers no longer need the Stevia plant to manufacture the sweetener that has become a hot product in the competition for zero-calorie alternatives to cane sugar in parts of the world where obesity and diabetes are major public health problems.  The scale of this obvious injustice is staggering.

For more information on this situation and efforts to address it, a good starting point is the publication The Bitter Sweet Taste of Stevia, a report published by a consortium of European and Paraguayan NGOs.  A protest petition directed to Coca-Cola can be found here.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Cultural appropriation, Ethnobotanical reflections, Globalization, Human futures

An Amazonian religion in New Mexico’s high desert

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udv-psicodelico
Image from https://vimeo.com/66879503

Back in the early 1990s, when I was doing fieldwork for a book that eventually became The Channeling Zone, I was invited to an ayahuasca healing session in Santa Fe.   I had seen enough ayahuasca consumed in northeastern Peru to think that the prospect of full-on emesis and purgation in the house of some stranger was singularly unappealing, so I decided to take a pass.

Now I have regrets, mostly because the sacramental use of ayahuasca is on the cusp of becoming a permanent part of the colorful religious landscape of northern New Mexico.  After years of litigation, it now seems likely that União do Vegetal (UDV)–or more formally, O Centro Espirita Beneficente União do Vegetal–will build a temple in Arroyo Hondo, just outside Santa Fe.  UDV has thus far successfully fought a series of legal battles that have established the legality of the sacramental use of ayahuasca and prevailed against NIMBY lawsuits from neighboring property owners.  UDV claims to have other centers is the states of Colorado, California, Texas, Florida, and Washington as well as in several countries beyond Brazil, where it originated.

Aside from concerns about the legality of ayahuasca use in the US or local objections to the construction of a UDV church, the spread of this new religion raises challenging questions about whether its practices represent a harmful form of cultural appropriation.  The unauthorized use of the knowledge and cultural productions of other ethnic groups, especially indigenous ones, remains a serious problem worldwide, even if accusations of cultural appropriation sometimes descend to silliness that trivializes real injustice.   The growth in what has been called “ayahuasca tourism” in Amazonian countries has come in for its share of criticism, some of it convincing.

But it is harder to see how the global diffusion of a religion that uses ayahuasca for sacramental purposes could have a significant prejudicial effect on the Amazonian peoples whose knowledge led to the discovery of the relevant plant species and their incorporation of their visionary properties into a range of religious traditions.  There might be short-term environmental impacts if global demand for Banisteriopsis and Psychotria extracts exceed supply.  Presumably, however, practitioners of UDV are already attempting to cultivate these plants in their home countries.

It’s true that the situation contains an element of unfairness: the Amazonian creators of ayahuasca-focused spirituality derive little or no benefit from the global spread of a new religion based on their knowledge.  In some cases, the purveyors of this new religion are conspicuously wealthy.  Does this matter?  The ethics strike me as ambiguous when considered in light of the accelerating movement of images, ideas, and technologies around the globe.  Could something good come from it?  Equally hard to say.   I’d welcome a careful, non-tendentious assessment of the impact of a global religious movement that draws on Amazonian understandings.

Some relevant sources:

“Controversy Brews Over Church’s Hallucinogenic Tea Ritual, “National Public Radio, April 2013.

UDV documents related to its Supreme Court case and other issues.

Brian Sheets, “Papers or Plastic: The Difficulty in Protecting Native Spiritual Identity,”  Lewis and Clark Law Review, 2013.  [Contains no direct discussion of the UDV but reviews the legal status of efforts to control the appropriation of Native American religions in the United States.   Relevant concluding passage:  “While it is difficult to try to define what constitutes appropriation from sincere religious beliefs and then try to protect Native culture from its dilution and misrepresentation, at least one thing is clear: destructive acts that bring the repute of Native culture and religion down need con- sequences. And whether that is to be formed in a court of law or public opinion, the difficulty arises from culture-clash that is still in the process of being resolved” (p. 634).

Crowd-sourcing works!  Within hours of uploading this post I heard from a number of friends from the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA, natch) who suggested additional sources.  Probably the most significant is a series of books edited by Bia Labate (Beatriz Caiuby Labate) and others, a complete list of which can be accessed at her website.  She is co-editing yet another relevant work, The World Ayahuasca Diaspora: Reinventions and Controversies, with Clancy Cavnar and Alex Gearin, due out in mid-2016.

With a special tip of the sombrero to Josh Homan and Glenn H. Shepard.