AUTHOR=Antony Mary Grace TITLE=That's a Stretch: Reconstructing, Rearticulating, and Commodifying Yoga JOURNAL=Frontiers in Communication VOLUME=3 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00047 DOI=10.3389/fcomm.2018.00047 ISSN=2297-900X ABSTRACT=

Yoga's immense popularity prompts concerns about the extent to which cultural appropriation has compromised its original philosophy. This research examines how yoga is constructed by mainstream news media discourse, with an emphasis on its religious vs. spiritual attributes. In doing so, I consider yoga as a commodity articulated through globalization, capitalism, and transculturation, the product of cultural appropriation (Rogers, 2006) and symbolic displacement (Wilson, 2012). Findings demonstrate that yoga's discursive detachment from religious origins facilitates its rearticulation as: a means to achieve physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing; a flexible experience amenable to other faiths and creeds; and an elite and exotic commodity embedded within overlapping consumerist structures of capitalism and spiritual renewal. These findings reflect the extent to which its appropriation complicates conceptualizations of cultural ownership and indigeneity that–unlike prior instances of appropriation–specifically commodify yoga for global consumption within contemporary neoliberal contexts.