Transnational Yoga at Work

Laurah E. Klepinger

doi:10.5771/9781793615633

Summary

Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian branches of a transnational yoga institution and about yoga practitioners and spiritual tourists who visualize peace through yoga. Practitioners’ aspirations for peace situate them at the heart of an international movement that has captured the imagination of cosmopolitans the world over, with its purported benefits to mind, body, and spirit. Yoga is thought to offer health, vitality, and relief from depression through control of body and breath. Yet, the vision of peace in this institution is a partial vision that obscures the important but seemingly peripheral others of its self-conception. Through in-depth ethnographic analysis, this book explores the processes through which global spiritual movements can have peace front and center in their vision and yet condone and perpetuate cycles of injustice and social inequality that form the critical and problematic foundations of our global economy. The book privileges the experiences and hardships faced by Indian wageworkers—most of them women —but it also offers a sympathetic portrayal of international yoga practitioners and of the complex patterns of work and worship central to a global mission.

For more information, check out A conversation with Laura E. Klepinger, author of Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-1562-6
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-1563-3
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 256
Product type: Book Titles

1. Dedication No access
2. Contents No access
3. 1. July 1, 2010 No access
  2. Autobiography of a Yogi No access
  3. Notes No access
4. Acknowledgments No access
5. 1. Gender-Inclusive Language No access
6. List of Figures No access
1. Methods and Orientation No access
2. 1. Anthropology of Globalization: Cosmopolitanism and Inequality No access
  2. Cosmofeminism and Transnational Feminism No access
  3. Tourism and Anthropology No access
  4. Peace and Its Lack in New Spiritualities No access
3. Re-Conceiving World Peace: Applying Transnational Feminism and Antiracist Anthropology to an Ethnography of Transnational Yoga No access
4. Outline of the Book No access
5. Notes No access
1. 1. Humble Beginnings: 1947–1957 No access
  2. Growing Up in America: 1957–1977 No access
  3. The Return to India and the Globalized Present: 1978–Present No access
2. 1. Defining Yoga No access
  2. Modern Yoga Studies No access
  3. Guru Devotion and Meditation Movements No access
  4. Post-lineage Yoga and Critical Yoga Studies No access
3. 1. Workers, Staff, Guests: Contact, Community, and the Anthropologist’s Place No access
4. Notes No access
1. Participants and Salient Demographics No access
2. Gateway to Inner Peace No access
3. 1. Gateway: A Close Reading No access
  2. The Language of Tourism No access
  3. Indian Teachers’ Voices No access
  4. Scholarly Approaches to Embodiment and Inequality No access
4. Conclusion No access
5. Notes No access
1. Paid Workers in a Voluntary Ashram No access
2. Gender, Pain, and the Embodiment of Difference No access
3. The Privileged and the Help: Domestic Service and Dividing Lines No access
4. A Worker’s Day No access
5. Voluntary Staff Discuss Paid Workers No access
6. Concluding Thoughts No access
7. Notes No access
1. Health and Home for Shanti No access
2. Conceiving of Servants No access
3. Cooking for God No access
4. Leftovers and Undesirables No access
5. Noncruelty and Its Lack: A Way Forward for Peace No access
6. Notes No access
1. 1. “Out, You Thieves!”: Ashram Impressions of Local People No access
  2. “Avoid Tea and Communists”: Regulating Relations with Local Communities No access
  3. “He Is Not Your Friend!”: Local Limits on Global Identities No access
2. Concluding Thoughts No access
3. Notes No access
1. 1. “The Mind Becomes the Body”: On Ethnographic Listening and Insider Anthropology No access
2. 1. “Clear Intentions” or “Informed Consent” No access
3. Section 3: A Bus Stop in the Village No access
4. 1. Inside/Outside and the Problem of Proximity No access
5. Section 5: In the Hotel Field No access
6. 1. March–April 2021 No access
7. Soft Things, Like Water: A Conclusion No access
8. Notes No access
1. True World Order and a Global Vision: Putting Peace in Practice No access
2. An “Anti-Guru” Guru and His True World Order No access
3. Spiritual Economies in a Neoliberal Context No access
4. Shifting the Vision of Peace No access
5. Notes No access
Glossary No access Pages 219 - 220
References No access Pages 221 - 238
Index No access Pages 239 - 254
About the Author No access Pages 255 - 256