Ep. 44 – Anthropology of Healing with Bia Labate, PhD

With an anthropological perspective on psychedelics, Madison and Bia contrast healing as a cultural buzzword vs. an ongoing embodied process.

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This time on Set & Setting, Madison and Bia discuss:

• The anthropological study of cultural foundations 
• The commodification of indigenous plant medicines 
• Giving platforms to people of color, the indigenous, LGBTQ people, etc.
• The transformation capacity of psychedelics 
• Spiritual voyeurism & the media culture in America 
• The constant process of revisiting our shadows 
• How everyone can be a social scientist 
• Healing as a private matter rather than a buzzword 

About Bia Labate, PhD:

Dr. Bia Labate (Beatriz Caiuby Labate) is an anthropologist, educator, author, speaker, and activist, committed to the protection of sacred plants while amplifying the voices of marginalized communities in the psychedelic science field. As a queer Brazilian anthropologist based in San Francisco, she has been profoundly influenced by her experiences with ayahuasca since 1996. Dr. Labate has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. Her work focuses on plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice. She is the Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and serves as a Senior Advisor for Culture and Strategy at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Additionally, she is a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and acts as advisor for around 15 organizations, among them the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition, Soltara Healing Center, Sacred Plant Alliance and the Alaska Entheogenic Awareness Council. Dr. Labate is also a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil and the editor of its site. She has authored, co-authored, and co-edited 29 books, three special-edition journals, and numerous peer-reviewed and online publications.

“You have different ways to define what is disease, and therefore you have different ways to define what is healing. These plant medicines originate from cultures that have different founding paradigms to understand reality itself.” –Bia Labate

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