Tobacco and Shamanism in South America

Johannes Wilbert was an anthropologist specializing in South American indigenous religion, and this Yale University Press book is his definitive ethnographic study of ritual tobacco use across South America, establishing that Nicotiana rustica is consumed in doses and by routes across the continent that have nothing to do with recreational smoking. Its strength is comprehensive comparative fieldwork across many South American indigenous traditions, documenting tobacco's place as the continent's most widespread sacred plant in shamanic practice specifically, rather than assuming its use is uniform or purely recreational. Its limit is that it surveys shamanic tobacco use broadly across many groups, so a claim about one specific community's particular tobacco ritual needs a source focused on that community directly, where this comparative survey may only touch on it briefly.