Bia Labate

Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 4-6pm

Engineering 2, 599

Beatriz Labate has studied the scientific and social features of psychoactive substances for over 15 years. In this meeting we will discuss the situation surrounding the compound ayahuasca, a psychedelic used in both medical and spiritual contexts throughout the Americas. By exploring the frontiers and limits between “therapeutic” and “religious” uses of ayahuasca (and their complicated legal implications) we will better understand the relationship between diverse forms of knowledge production associated with what have been called “sacred technologies.”

Bia Labate, "Scientific Research on Ayahuasca and Health"
SJWG Rapporteur Report
31 January 2012
Rapporteur: Martha Kenney, History of Consciousness
Bia Labate, PhD Candiate in Social Anthropology at the University of Campinas, spoke to us
about the public debate and competing discourses around Ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew of two
plant extracts used around the world in shamanism, healing, sorcery, divination, warfare, and
hunting. Because one of the plants, psychotria viridis, contains the Schedule I narcotic DMT,
Ayahuasca (the bush, the extract from the bush, and the preparation) has been subjected to a
number of diverse regulations worldwide. Labate showed how these regulations are embedded
in different local and global discourses, producing new meanings and uses for Ayahuasca. In
Brazil it is allowed for ritual and religious use, though not therapeutic use. Whereas in Peru it is
considered the “traditional medicine of the indigenous people” and protected as cultural heritage.
In the U.S. the regulation of Ayahuasca created tensions between religious freedom and drug
laws; for the moment religious freedom has prevailed. While in France Ayahuasca was
connected to brainwashing by cults and sects, creating a total ban that includes not just the
extract but the bush as well. Through these examples, Labate showed how Ayahuasca became
entangled in discourses of religious liberty, traditional medicine, personal use, and religious
cults.

In the second half of her talk Labate discussed competing narratives of therapeutic vs. religious
use and harm vs. healing. She showed how these categories were difficult to define and took on
different contours based on national and cultural specificities. These categories raise important
and difficult questions: How do you define a religion? How do you insert traditional medicine
into a public health system? Is scientific legitimization the only route to prove therapeutic
properties? How can we define and police cultural authenticity? As different groups try to
answer these questions, Labate argues that there is a reciprocal appropriation of legal,
anthropological, biomedical discourses. For example, the anthropological category of
“ceremony” is taken up by shamans who prepare Ayahuasca. As a sacred ceremony rather than a
practice of everyday life, “the Ayahuasca ceremony” is something that can be marketed at panindigenous
festivals. Labate concluded her talk by arguing for the space of the social sciences in
this debate; she believes that if Ayahuasca is studied only in a biomedical framework that we lose
important insights into cross-pollination of discourses and identities that happens in this collision
of legal, biomedical, and religious categories.

In the Q&A members of the audience were interested in categories that betrayed the simple
equation of Ayahuasca with DMT. Andrew Matthews, drawing from his fieldwork on forestry in
Mexico, suggested that defining Ayahuasca as more than just the drug could be important for
these questions of regulation. Guillermo Delgado suggested that it was necessary to use specific
indigenous terms for Ayahuasca use rather than use anthropological or pan-indigenous terms like
“shamanism.” Martha Kenney asked if the term “sacred technology” that appeared in the
newsletter description of the talk was a useful term in Labate’s work. Craig Reinerman asked
about the value of the sociological categories of “set and setting” for understanding how “the
same drug” can have different effects in different cultures.

As Labate answered these and other questions, she provided a greater sense of the complexity of
Ayahuasca worlds. She explained, for example, how psychotria viridis was introduced to Hawaii
(and the crisis of regulation that ensued), how she tried to understanding Ayahuasca as inducing
the experience of “becoming plant,” how “shamanism” is a term that is embraced by many
indigenous Ayahuasca preparers, and how environmental regulations were taking the place of
drug regulations in some contexts. By illustrating the complexities involved in the global
understanding and regulation Ayahuasca, Labate illustrated how the skills of social scientists can
contribute to the ongoing dialogue.

Hannah Landecker (UCLA Center for Genetics and Society)

January 26, 2012, 3:00-5:00 PM

Engineering 2, Room 399

Epigenetics has turned food and its metabolism into a problem that is not just about how the body turns food its basic components–carbohydrates, fat, protein-but how food acts as a signal of the environment–both biological and political. Hannah Landecker will explore what this transformation of metabolism and epigenetics reveals about food, environmental politics, and the increased salience of metabolism as a sight for biological understanding and political and moral contestation.

Hannah Landecker, "Eating Information? Food and Metabolism in Epigenetic Perspective"
SJWG Rapporteur Report
26 January 2012
Rapporteur: Martha Kenney, History of Consciousness
Hannah Landecker, Associate Professor at the Society and Genetics Institute at UCLA, spoke to
us about her new book project, American Metabolism. Although the field that she is interested in
is called “nutritional epigenetics,” Landecker has reframed this research as belonging to a longer
tradition of studying “metabolism.” For Landecker, metabolism is about trans-substantiation, one
substance being changed into another. In recent nutritional epigenetics research, we see new
pathways of trans-substantiation. For example, Landecker showed us an article with a mother
mouse and her pups captioned: “They are what she ate.”

After giving us an overview of the epigenetics research, Landecker focused on the theory that
gene expression is regulated by signals from the environment, creating different phenotypes in
the presence of genetic sameness. In research on maternal anxiety behaviors, trans-generational
endocrine disruptors, and nutritional effects, we witness how licking, plastic, and food,
respectively, are presented as environmental signals. Landecker believes that the category of
“signal” is both incredibly productive and not very precise; it is under-theorized by scientists and
STS scholars. She wonders if, in the field of nutritional epigenetics, “the social” has become a
signal.

In the last part of her talk Landecker compared studies of metabolism in the late 19th century to
contemporary research in nutritional epigenetics. Early accounts of metabolism, such as those
by Thomas Huxley, figured metabolism as a set of processes the function like a factory or inner
laboratory. Landecker argued that this was an industrial paradigm for an industrial era. Key
figures and areas of emphasis were: energy, manufacturing, substrate, waste accumulation, labor
and fatigue. In the post-industrial era a new set of figures has arisen: Information, regulation,
signal (timing), functional asynchrony, sleeping and aging. She strongly believes that changes in
the framework for understanding metabolism changes what experiments are conducted and what
kind of knowledge is created. She concluded by arguing that it is important to track and
understand these changes as they are happening.

During the Q&A key questions revolved around the historical specificity of nutritional
epigenetics and issues of social and ethical responsibility arising from this new framework for
metabolism. Jake Metcalf compared responsibility in the factory model with the post-industrial
model. In the factory model, he argued, one person is responsible for the consumption of food;
in the post-industrial regulatory model, many-many humans and non-humans are responsible.
How do we delegate responsibility? Playing off of Landecker’s characterization of epigenetics
belonging to a biology of the in-between, Jenny Reardon suggests that it is difficult to regulate
the in-between. Metcalf replied that we just don’t have the models to make decision-making
viable. Landecker characterized this problem as being burdened by complexity.

This led to the question of what kind of “actionable knowledge” is created by metabolism
research and the figures that underpin it. Responding to a question by Julie Guthman about the
DES growth hormone used in cattle farming, Landecker argued that the current DES problem
was caused by the industrial model, which tried to produce as much meat possible for as little
feed as possible. In other words, the metaphors of a previous generation of science created the
material conditions of today’s farming.

The remaining questions continued to play about this interrelationship between metaphor and
materiality. Elaine Gan, for example, suggested that we think about metabolism metaphors in
Marx. Landecker explained that these were not only metaphors; Marx was deeply interested in
the science of metabolism and believed, for example, that the Irish peasants would not revolt
because they lived off of potatoes. This rich discussion foregrounded the importance of tracking
the relationship between figures, history, materiality, knowledge, and production when
considering questions of science and justice in hot new scientific fields like epigenetics.

Science & Justice Working Group Meeting
Andro Hsu with discussion by Ted Goldstein and Whitney Boesel

November 9, 2011

Engineering 2, Room 599

4:15-6:15 PM

Andro Hsu (VP of Products at GigaGen and former science writer and policy advisor at 23andMe) will join us for a discussion of what we are learning—both about policy/society and biology—as increasing resources are put into turning the ever growing amounts of genomic information into something of value. Ted Goldstein, PhD candidate at the UCSC Center for Biomolecular Sciences and Engineering, will provide a response to Hsu presentation.