Selling Yoga
From Counterculture to Pop Culture
Seiten
2015
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-939023-6 (ISBN)
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-939023-6 (ISBN)
Selling Yoga looks at how modern yoga developed into the self-developmental products and services that are widely consumed across the world today.
When we think of yoga today, we envision spandex-clad, perspiring, toned people brought together in a room filled with yoga mats and engaged in a fitness ritual set apart from day-to-day life. Their aim is to enhance something they all deem sacred: their bodies. In Selling Yoga, Andrea Jain looks at the development of modern, popular yoga and suggests that its practitioners are strategic participants in the contemporary global market for self-developmental products and services.
Pre-colonial and early modern yoga systems comprise esoteric techniques that aim at transcendent states of detachment from ordinary and conventional life. In contrast, contemporary popularized yoga aims at immediate self-development through the enhancement of the mind-body complex according to dominant health and fitness paradigms. Postural yoga is prescribed not as an all-encompassing worldview or system of practice, but as one part of self-development that provides increased beauty and flexibility as well as reduced stress; it can be combined with various other worldviews and practices available in the global marketplace. However, Jain argues that yoga systems cannot be reduced to mere commodities--that yoga is, in fact, a religion of consumer culture. It functions as a social ritual that removes individuals from everyday life for the sake of self-development. Yoga brands destabilize the basic utility of yoga commodities and assign to them new meanings that represent the fulfillment of self-developmental needs deemed sacred in contemporary consumer culture.
When we think of yoga today, we envision spandex-clad, perspiring, toned people brought together in a room filled with yoga mats and engaged in a fitness ritual set apart from day-to-day life. Their aim is to enhance something they all deem sacred: their bodies. In Selling Yoga, Andrea Jain looks at the development of modern, popular yoga and suggests that its practitioners are strategic participants in the contemporary global market for self-developmental products and services.
Pre-colonial and early modern yoga systems comprise esoteric techniques that aim at transcendent states of detachment from ordinary and conventional life. In contrast, contemporary popularized yoga aims at immediate self-development through the enhancement of the mind-body complex according to dominant health and fitness paradigms. Postural yoga is prescribed not as an all-encompassing worldview or system of practice, but as one part of self-development that provides increased beauty and flexibility as well as reduced stress; it can be combined with various other worldviews and practices available in the global marketplace. However, Jain argues that yoga systems cannot be reduced to mere commodities--that yoga is, in fact, a religion of consumer culture. It functions as a social ritual that removes individuals from everyday life for the sake of self-development. Yoga brands destabilize the basic utility of yoga commodities and assign to them new meanings that represent the fulfillment of self-developmental needs deemed sacred in contemporary consumer culture.
Andrea R. Jain is Assistant Professor of Religous Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University.
Note on Transliteration ; Preface ; Acknowledgments ; Chapter One: Premodern Yoga Systems ; Chapter Two: From Counterculture to Counterculture ; Chapter Three: Continuity with Consumer Culture ; Chapter Four: Branding Yoga ; Chapter Five: Postural Yoga as a Body of Religious Practice ; Chapter Six: Yogaphobia and Hindu Origins ; Conclusion ; Bibliography
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 12.2.2015 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 11 illus. |
| Verlagsort | New York |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 239 x 160 mm |
| Gewicht | 524 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie |
| Medizin / Pharmazie ► Naturheilkunde | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-19-939023-1 / 0199390231 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-19-939023-6 / 9780199390236 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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