Positioning Yoga
OCLC 290552174 | | |
Positioning Yoga: balancing acts across cultures is a 2005 book of
Book
Context
Yoga as exercise is an international practice, specially widespread in the English-speaking world, using yoga postures (asanas) for fitness and health. Yoga originated in India, where it takes many forms, often entirely without the use of asanas.[1]
Sarah Strauss is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, where she states that one of her "ongoing research goals is to understand how different cultures define what it means to be healthy and to live a 'good life'."[2]
Synopsis
Yoga came from India, but how did it change from the solitary practice of Indian mystics to a Western urban method of exercise? Strauss tells the story of modern yoga, starting with
Publication history
Positioning Yoga was published in hardcover by Berg Publishers of Oxford and New York in 2005.
Illustrations
The book is illustrated with 10 figures, mostly monochrome photographs by the author. One figure is an outline map of India, and another shows a 200 Rupee postage stamp commemorating Sivananda seated by the
Reception
The yoga scholar
The yoga scholar
The scholar of Hinduism
The scholar of religion Mark Eaton writes that Strauss's argument in the book depends on her concept of an "oasis regime", where yoga practitioners use yoga to "escape from the demands of their daily lives".[7] In his view, seeing Sivananda yoga as an oasis is "certainly an optimistic perspective".[7]
The anthropologist Thomas Hauschild reviewed the book for Current Anthropology, noting that before it and Joseph Alter's 2004 Yoga in Modern India there had been a "striking" absence of detailed studies of "non-Western movements" such as modern yoga.[8]
The anthropologist Olga Demetriou reviewed Positioning Yoga for Social Anthropology.[9]
See also
- Joseph Alter, author of the 2004 Yoga in Modern India, one of the first books of yoga ethnography
References
- ^ "Yoga". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
- ^ "Sarah Strauss Professor Cultural Anthropology". University of Wyoming. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
- ^ Strauss 2005.
- ^ OCLC 318191988.
- ISBN 9780199340378.
- .
- ^ a b Eaton, Mark E. (2015). "Disciplining Yoga: Foucauldian Themes in Sivananda Yoga Practice". Publications and Research. CUNY Academic Works.
- S2CID 142826972.
- ISSN 0964-0282.
Sources
- Strauss, Sarah (2005). Positioning Yoga: balancing acts across cultures. Oxford and New York: Berg. OCLC 290552174.
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