Shamanism and Evangelism Among the Shipibo-konibo of San Francisco

Predation and Competing Ontologies

Abstract

In regular contact with urban civilization and the market economy, Shipibo-Konibo society today experiences a phenomenon of religious pluralization between, on the one hand, a marketing, in some villages, of vernacular shamanism aimed at a public of Western tourists in search of mystical and hallucinogenic experiences and, on the other, a growing implantation of protestant churches of different denominations. If, at first sight, this evolution can be analyzed as a form of acculturation, in the light of ethnography, the resulting religious cohabitation reactivates on the contrary a certain predation complex specific to the past, through both ontological and statutory rivalries that would be linked to a close proximity of the approaches of the two institutions.