Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The globalization of Yoga is a phenomenon that has only recently caught social scientists attention although it could be traced back to the British colonization of India and to Swami Vivekananda’s famous speech at the Parliament of the World Religion in Chicago (1893). Historically as today, the globalization of Yoga is characterized by a double movement, or dialectical exchange between the West and the East, based on extremely interlinked migratory, cultural, and economic flows. Contemporary, globalized or modern Yoga, is thus a hybrid in nature and it is no surprise that social scientists have been so far mainly focusing on Yoga commodification, marketization, and popularization. In this framework, modern Yoga is seen as reinforcing the neoliberal imperatives of individualism, consumption, rationality, and self-care, thus substantially displaying it as a form of biopolitical self-governance. This work critically discusses and unpacks the political potentials of contemporary global Yoga, especially in relation to the alternative conception of subjectivation and identity that it may foster once its ethical principles and philosophical roots are seriously taken into account. The empirical material, constituted by non-structured interviews to Yoga teachers and practitioners and participant observations of a Yoga course in Milan, Italy, is analyzed through the employment of an intertwined reading of Pleyers’ subjectivation, Foucault’s biopolitics and neoliberal governmentality, and different Yogic conceptions of the Self. This study is intended as a departing point for future analysis and not as a finite contribution.