Seminario parte de la Série de Webinarios de la Red de Investigación en Ciencia, Religión y Salud, coordinada por el ISOR - 27 Feb 2024 - 13h to 14h30 (CET)
Seminario parte de la Série de Webinarios de la Red de Investigación en Ciencia, Religión y Salud, coordinada por el ISOR.
El Webinario será en inglés.Es impriscindible registrarse en el siguiente enalce en para recibir el acceso a la sala Zoom https://forms.gle/PHHLCWNDnH7fWqWF6
Fecha: 27th Feb 2024 - 13h to 14h30 (CET)
Título: Yoga, Science and Health: The Social and Discursive Construction of the Yoga Body
Dr Matteo Di Placido, University of Turin
*Moderated by Dr Stefania Palmisano, University of Turin
Abstract:
Modern yoga, a body-mind practice developed in the last hundred and fifty years, is gaining international appeal largely thanks to its growing scientific legitimacy as a therapeutic intervention and adjunct treatment (alongside traditional biomedical interventions) as well as thanks to the industry’s inclusivist rhetoric about ‘yoga for everybody’. Starting from ongoing ethnographic research on the pedagogies of modern yoga in Italy (2017 – current), this presentation discusses the ways in which yoga intersects with religious, scientific and healthist idioms. More specifically, it will focus on the social and discursive construction of the yoga body, that is, the body cultivated through constant practice, the expert guidance of yoga teachers and the pursuing of well-being and self-actualization. The presentation will provide a brief discussion of the birth and development of modern yoga in the second half of the twentieth century focusing on some of its key actors before moving to the analysis of the evolution of the yoga body and its associated representations in the light of yoga’s explosive transnational diffusion. It will conclude emphasizing the reciprocal and reinforcing relationships between scientific, healthist and religious practical-discursive logics in the construction of the yoga body and its alignment with the current neoliberal zeitgeist and its performative demands.
Author's Bio:
Dr Matteo Di Placido holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Research (University of Milan – Bicocca). He is a cultural sociologist and currently works as a Post-doctoral Fellow (assegnista) for the University of Turin. Matteo was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Political Science and the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California Riverside (UCR) and an Academic Associate at the Cardiff School of Sport and Health Sciences at the Metropolitan University of Cardiff, Wales. His research interests span from the processes of transformation, translation and transmission of yoga and Buddhism, the hybridization between the registers of health and salvation, the discursive study and the politics of scholarly knowledge production and social theory.
