El ritual chamánico de la ayahuasca ha sido adoptado, adaptado y reinventado en contextos urbanos y cosmopolitas de diferentes países del mundo, un proceso que ha estado fuertemente permeado por prácticas y creencias de tipo new age. Una de las versiones locales de este fenómeno se conoce en Colombia como “tomas de yajé”, donde participan citadinos no indígenas de clase media y alta en busca de alteridad tradicional e inspiración espiritual. La investigación que dio origen a este artículo se basa principalmente en observaciones etnográficas y entrevistas, gracias a las cuales se analizaron las maneras en que se interpreta esta forma de chamanismo, indagando particularmente sobre los usos y sentidos del concepto de espiritualidad en las narrativas de los adeptos a las tomas. Los resultados son discutidos a la luz de teorías sobre las subjetividades y las religiosidades en la modernidad, lo cual permite comprender mejor los fundamentos socioculturales y las implicaciones de esta espiritualización del chamanismo. Se concluye que el giro subjetivo de la modernidad tardía es un factor clave para entender la reciente valoración del ritual, el cual se ha convertido, paradójicamente, en un vehículo para la difusión de valores individualistas.

The Ford Foundation's involvement with the social sciences in Brazil coincided with the early years of the military regime that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985. The paper studies how changed political circumstances in the United States and abroad induced the Foundation to gradually abandon the technocratic approach that had governed its overseas programme since the 1950s, thus introducing a critical shift in its policies toward the developing world. A grant proposal to the University of Brasília, which had been subject to repeated military interventions since 1964, highlighted the ethical dilemmas raised by the goal of fostering policy-relevant research in an authoritarian political context. Relying on a pragmatic decision-making framework that converted ethical and ideological considerations into cost–benefit exercises, the Foundation finally moved away from the maxims of modernisation theory to embrace new strategic priorities like human rights, democracy and intellectual pluralism.

This article studies the unfolding of a broad conservative bloc amidst the politico-cultural battles that took place in Cold War Argentina. Focusing on the unexplored gendered, sexual and generational dimensions of the figure of the ‘enemy within’, the article shows that this figure was at the core of a project which coincided with authoritarian practices emanating from the state and also from segments of civil society. The creation of that figure had significant effects, not only in the political but also in the educational and cultural realms, including the imposition of censorship and the delineation of restrictive sexual policies. Moreover, it conditioned the ways in which political repression developed in the context of 1970s state terrorism.