Modern Yoga Research as a Discursive Formation

The practice of yoga is on the rise, as much as its academic scrutiny. Scholars, especially within the disciplinary boundaries of religious studies, South Asian studies, Indology, anthropology, and sociology, have recently started to critically inquire into the birth and transnational developments of modern forms of yoga, tracing their genealogies and textual roots. This expanding literature has in turn contributed to the constitution of the emergent and multidisciplinary field of modern yoga research, or yoga studies. The primary aim of this article is thus to analyze the field of modern yoga research as a ‘discursive formation’ (Foucault [1971]1972), that is, an ensemble of texts constituting – or contributing to the constitution of – a specific object of analysis, namely modern yoga. In so doing, it also aims to contribute to the advancement of the discursive study of religion more in general. The article relies on a ‘discursive study of religion’ approach (e.g., von Stockrad 2003, 2010, 2013) with a focus on its archaeological leaning (e.g., Foucault 1965, 1972, [1963] 1973, [1966] 2002). More specifically, I underline the affinity that modern yoga research’s discursive references have with a number of discursive currents that characterize the disciplines it emerged from, such as radical historicism, cultural relativism, modernism, Orientalism and neo-colonialism. Finally, I conclude by summarizing the main results of this contribution and exploring their relevance to the self-reflexive development of the overlapping fields of cultural analyses and the study of religion.

MIKHAIL FREIDENBERG AND HIS FAMILY: THE ODESSA TRACE IN RUSSIAN CULTURE

Research traditions that have developed in relation to certain cultural phenomena are often limited by the framework of national cultures, the specifics of the studied personality and its creative activity. At the same time, the cultural and social demands underlying these studies do not actually imply the conversion of the identified cultural values from one national (cultural) tradition to another. Thus, it is unlikely that representatives of border territories, as well as territories that had actual ex-territoriality and freedom to choose cultural identification, can give in to an unambiguous definition of cultural identity. Odessa was good example of it. Here the marginality of the frontier cultural zone created its own unique cultural topos, with its “mixed” identity, for which the territorial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic boundaries were not absolute, were mobile, created conditions for the formation of seemingly contradictory ideas about the “eastern West”, about “imperial Jewishness”, “Jewish Russianity”, etc. For the Jewish citizen of Odessa, the national (Jewish) or imperial (Russian) component played a great role. The internal contradictions that exist in these identification models were either resolved in favor of one of the models, or removed due to the local identification model provided by the immediate environment, which we called the environment. In this article, we would like to show this environmental influence through the personality of Mikhail Filippovich Freidenberg, who is known to historians of science and technology as an inventor, but little known to literary historician (mainly as the father of Olga Mikhailovna Freidenberg and the uncle of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak). In our opinion, the description of the artistic and journalistic, as well as satirical works of Mikhail Freidenberg deserves attention. With his name, the intellectual environment of Odessa at the end of the XIX century takes on a holistic appearance, at the same time exposing the problem of “intellectual crowding” of the imperial province. The phenomenon of the environment is conceptualized by the example of the family of Mikhail Freidenberg and relations with relatives, as well as by describing the influence of this environment on Russian culture in the late XIX – first half of the XX century through the formation of the personalities of Olga Freidenberg and Boris Pasternak. It is important to overcome disciplinary boundaries and show how the environment promotes the realization of creative opportunities and how it sets these opportunities. We do it based on the available biographical data, memoirs, diaries and other documents.

Strengthening health promotion practice: capacity development for a transdisciplinary field

The growing burden of non-communicable and newly emerging communicable diseases, multi-morbidity, increasing health inequalities, the health effects of climate change and natural disasters and the revolution in communication technology require a shift of focus towards more preventive, people-centred and community-based health services. This has implications for the health workforce, which needs to develop new capacities and skills, many of which are at the core of health promotion. Health promotion is thus being mainstreamed into modern public health. For health promotion, this offers both opportunities and challenges. A stronger focus on the enablers of health enhances the strategic importance of health promotion’s whole-of-society approach to health, showcases the achievements of health promotion with regard to core professional competencies, and helps build public health capacity with health promotion accents. On the other hand, mainstreaming health promotion can weaken its organizational capacity and visibility, and bears the risk of it being absorbed into a traditional public health discourse dominated by medical professions. To address these challenges and grasp the opportunities, it is essential for the health promotion workforce to position itself within the diversifying primary care and public health field. Taking the transdisciplinary status of health promotion and existing capacity development systems in primary and secondary prevention and health promotion as reference points, this paper considers the possibilities to integrate and implement health promotion capacities within and across disciplinary boundaries, arguing that the contribution of health promotion to public health development lies in the complementary nature of specialist and mainstreamed health promotion.

Framing and facilitating complex problem-solving competences in interdisciplinary megaprojects: an institutional strategy to educate for sustainable development

Purpose Problem-based learning (PBL) has been suggested as an approach to education for sustainable development (ESD); however, the integration of interdisciplinarity is continuously challenged as it requires transfer and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, as well as integration into an often already-overflowing curriculum. Even in formalized PBL universities emphasizing student responsibility for defining relevant problems, envisioning sustainable solutions and developing transversal competences, interdisciplinary collaboration is still often “relocated” to extra-curricular activities. This paper aims to explore Aalborg University (AAU) Megaprojects as a case for systematically integrating principles of ESD, and particularly interdisciplinarity, into PBL at scale. Design/methodology/approach The paper proposes a framework for analysing potentials and challenges concerning interdisciplinary framing and facilitation in large-scale projects based on PBL- and ESD-related research and presents findings from a case study on the first three rounds of megaprojects at AAU in 2019 and 2020. Findings The findings indicate that interdisciplinary megaprojects have the potential to motivate students to engage in sustainable development; however, they require systematic framing and guided facilitation, particularly in the early stages, for students to take ownership, prioritize collaboration and see the contribution to and connection between disciplines. They also need prioritization at all institutional levels to succeed as an institutional strategy of ESD. Originality/value The paper provides insights into the potentials and challenges of framing and facilitating large-scale megaprojects as an approach to integrate the SDGs and interdisciplinary collaboration into higher education. Hence, it aims to provide new insights, concepts and practices for ESD and PBL for sustainability.

Trust, Transparency and Transnational Lessons from COVID-19

The article engages in an exercise in reflexivity around trust and the COVID-19 pandemic. Common understandings of trust are mapped out across disciplinary boundaries and discussed in the cognitive fields in the medical and social sciences. While contexts matter in terms of the understandings and uses made of concepts such as trust and transparency, comparison across academic disciplines and experiences drawn from country experiences allows general propositions to be formulated for further exploration. International health crises require efforts to rebuild trust, understood in a multidisciplinary sense as a relationship based on trusteeship, in the sense of mutual obligations in a global commons, where trust is a key public good. The most effective responses in a pandemic are joined up ones, where individuals (responsible for following guidelines) trust intermediaries (health professionals) and are receptive to messages (nudges) from the relevant governmental authorities. Hence, the distinction between hard medical and soft social science blurs when patients and citizens are required to be active participants in combatting the virus. Building on the diagnosis of a crisis of trust (in the field of health security and across multiple layers of governance), the article renews with calls to restore trust by enhancing transparency.

Introduction: Charting Provocations and Exploring New Directions for Pacific Research in Aotearoa–New Zealand from Pacific Early Career Academic (PECA) Perspectives

“Uplifting Moana Perspectives: Emerging Pacific Researchers and New Directions in New Zealand-Based Pacific Research” presents a shared vision for the future of Pacific research by Pacific early career academics (PECA) primarily based in Aotearoa–New Zealand. The task of charting new directions in imagining possibilities for Pacific research is a critical one, which speaks to our communities’ long and storied history in Aotearoa: a reality incongruent with the lack of Pacific scholars employed in permanent positions in New Zealand universities.[i] This special issue challenges the idea that there is a dearth of Pacific research, asserting rather that our underrepresentation in academia is a structural issue, not necessarily one of scarcity. As special issue editors, we intentionally draw in a cross-section of emerging Pacific researchers in our country to confidently write with emerging Pacific scholars on the other side of our Moana-Oceania region, writing back to the exclusionary nature of conventional disciplinary norms and divides that we are forced to navigate. In doing so, our contributors challenge and transcend disciplinary boundaries and push against the Eurocentrism of our tertiary education system. This work is crucial, as the ability to build an academy that prioritises and centres our ways of knowing, doing, relating, and being is a key component of addressing cultural safety and inclusiveness in university lecture theatres, curriculums, and epistemological norms for both PECA and Pacific students in Aotearoa–New Zealand.

We God's People

Cesari argues that both religious and national communities are defined by the three Bs: belief, behaviour and belonging. By focusing on the ways in which these three Bs intersect, overlap or clash, she identifies the patterns of the politicization of religion, and vice versa, in any given context. Her approach has four advantages: firstly, it combines an exploration of institutional and ideational changes across time, which are usually separated by disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, it illustrates the heuristic value of combining qualitative and quantitative methods by statistically testing the validity of the patterns identified in the qualitative historical phase of the research. Thirdly, it avoids reducing religion to beliefs by investigating the significance of the institution-ideas connections, and fourthly, it broadens the political approach beyond state-religion relations to take into account actions and ideas conveyed in other arenas such as education, welfare, and culture.

The Politics of Musical Time in the Everyday Life of Ballet Dancers

This chapter discusses disagreements and misunderstandings about musical time in the context of ballet classes and rehearsals, and the degree to which musicians’ metric-counting is regarded by both musicians and dancers as more correct than ‘dancers’ counts’. Metrical anomalies in music by Tchaikovsky, Bizet, and Verdi used in children’s ballet classes are examined in the light of research by William Rothstein on national metrical types and Franco-Italian hypermetre, and found to be less anomalous than they might seem at first. The problems of representation and human movement in these examples are discussed with reference to debates about dance in non-representational theory (NRT), and conceptual and disciplinary boundaries in music and dance scholarship.

Editorial: Collaboration in higher education: Partnering with students, colleagues and external stakeholders

Welcome to this Special Issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP). This editorial provides an overview of Collaboration in Higher Education. Humans are social, inter-dependent beings, needing to be and communicate with each other. Being with other people provides an opportunity to grow and develop, creating a sense of self and identity. Together we construct, structure and restructure the stories that build the larger narratives of who we are, what we do and how we live, act and behave as people, professionals and larger communities. It is through our collaborations that we come together, and construct meaning and ourselves. As Higher Education continues to exclude and sideline, as it constrains and removes spaces and places for collaboration between service staff, faculty and students within institutions, between institutions, and with other stakeholders, there is a need to rediscover the power of collaboration. The articles included, build on practical experience, research data, personal and collective reflections, to outline how the contributors have navigated this tension to create spaces of voice and hope. Presented are case studies that are boundary crossing: across disciplinary boundaries; cross-institution collaboration; cross-boundary working; pedagogical co-creation and the re-conceptualising of learning; and students as partners, co-researchers and co-authors. Together they showcase refreshed notions of collegiality and collaboration in Higher Education that support new and more nuanced, and dynamic models of co-creation. We hope the Special Issue helps seed an ecology of collaborative practice for social justice – a more humane academia.

What has Royal Society Open Science achieved in its first few years?

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as the first Editor-in-Chief of Royal Society Open Science for the past 6 years. I step down at the end of December 2021, having completed two 3-year terms, and am taking the opportunity here to reflect on some of the successes and challenges that the journal has experienced and the innovations that we have introduced. When I was first approached back in 2015, the breadth of the journal, covering the whole of science, resonated with my own interests: my research career has ranged across the entire landscape of chemistry, while my leadership roles have embraced all of science, technology and medicine. The open access ethos, the objective refereeing policy that rejects the idea of only publishing what is in fashion, and the opportunities offered by a new venture that could transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries also all appealed to me. Among our successful innovations are Registered Reports, Replication Studies and the new ‘Science, Society and Policy' section. The challenges have included the transition to paid article processing charges (APCs), whether to resist pressure to retract a controversial paper, and bullying of young female authors by established senior males in the same field. I explore all of these below, provide some statistics on the journal's performance, also cover some of the notable papers we have published, and provide some concluding thoughts.