'Devi Needs those Rituals!' Ontological Considerations on Ritual Transformations in a Contemporary South Indian Srividya Tradition

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Hirmer
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Representational Practices ◽  
Genealogical Analysis ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Meditative Practices ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

Negotiations between continuity and discontinuity have characterized Srividya traditions for centuries; these are primarily studied through texts or the juxtaposition of textual prescriptions with observed practices, leaving the process of how Srividya practitioners negotiate esoteric and orthodox tendencies unexplored. Building on extensive fieldwork among practitioners of a contemporary South Indian Srividya tradition, I present the dynamics animating such transformations. Focusing on kalavahana, one of the tradition's central rituals aimed at identifying with Devi, I trace the underlying forces that gradually replace its most esoteric aspects (centred around the body and pleasure) with conventional worship (external or meditative practices), refashioning the tradition as part of mainstream Saktism. While some practitioners conform to the new canon, others, for whom the changes diminish ritual efficacy, secretly continue embodied practices. Through a Foucauldian archaeologico-genealogical analysis, I investigate which regimes of truth and ontological coordinates allow the ritual to change, and which diminish its efficacy. While at first negotiations between continuity and discontinuity appear driven by socio-political motives, ultimately they are governed and legitimized by fundamentally diverging modes of being. A pre-objectified worldview demands embodied experiences (including unconventional practices invoking pleasure) while a dualistic framework endorses representational practices (such as meditation and idol-worship).

scholarly journals Heart, Mind and Body: #NoMorePage3 and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062199450
Author(s):  
Lauren McCarthy ◽  
Sarah Glozer
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Emotional Energy ◽  
Online Abuse ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Feminist Organization ◽  
Online Misogyny

Emotional energy is key to disruptive institutional work, but we still know little about what it is, and importantly, how it is refuelled. This empirical paper presents an in-depth case study of ‘No More Page 3’ (#NMP3), an Internet-based feminist organization which fought for the removal of sexualized images of women from a UK newspaper. Facing online misogyny, actors engage in ‘emotional energy replenishment’ to sustain this disruptive institutional work amid emotional highs and lows. We introduce ‘affective embodiment’ – the corporeal and emotional experiences of the institution – as providing emotional energy in relation to disruptive institutional work. Affective embodiment is surfaced through alignment or misalignment with others’ embodied experiences, and this mediates how actors replenish emotional energy. Alignment with others’ embodied experiences, often connected to online abuse, means emotional energy is replenished through ‘affective solidarity’ (movement towards the collective). Misalignment, surfaced through tensions within the movement, means actors seek replenishment through ‘sensory retreat’ (movement away from the collective). This study contributes to theorization on institutional work and emotional energy by recentring the importance of the body alongside emotions, as well as offering important lessons for online organizing.

‘The sickness stands at your shoulder …’: Embodiment and cognitive metaphor in Hornbacher’sWasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Senkbeil ◽  
Nicola Hoppe
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Eating Disorders ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Marya Hornbacher ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

This paper applies cognitive linguistic approaches, particularly conceptual metaphor theory, to the study of literature, and analyses how Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (1998) by Marya Hornbacher communicates embodied experiences such as sickness, hunger, and (self-)loathing with the help of conceptual metaphors. It explores how the author renegotiates and partly recontextualizes highly conventionalized metaphors around eating disorders, mental illness, and identity to create new meaning, and how this strategy helped explain the mindset of a person with anorexia and bulimia to a broad critical readership in the late 1990s. This paper hence hypothesizes that the book’s emphasis on metaphors as a means to articulate bodily experiences surrounding a mental disorder may hint towards larger trends concerning the representation of the body–mind relationship in literature and culture in the last two decades.

Quiltmakers’ meaning-making in Aotearoa New Zealand: Social interactions, embodied experiences and material mediation

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-78
Author(s):  
Linda Claire Warner ◽  
Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen ◽  
Kai Hakkarainen
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Informal Learning ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Community Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Craft Knowledge ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Embodied Experiences

The research study focuses on the phenomenon of informal learning and teaching, as it materializes through the quiltmakers’ engagement in idiosyncratic community practices. The present study considers the construction of craft knowledge from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on social and material mediation, and embodiment as a form of meaning-making for quiltmakers. The ethnographic data were collected from two quilting communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and in total 66 quilters volunteered to participate. The fieldwork extended over an eight-month period with data consisting of interviews, observations, fieldnotes and reflective diaries including the visualization of interactive happenings in situ. Chronological content logs were created, and data were analysed by qualitative content analysis. The primary interest was on the verbal (i.e. social), non-verbal (i.e. embodied) and material (inter)actions that were central to the quilters’ meaning-making processes. This praxis and process of informal learning usually make it invisible because it is a ubiquitous element embedded in the quilting community context. Identifying different aspects of multimodal making foregrounds how the quilters’ learning is socially interactive, with ‘hands on’ and ‘minds on’ processes tied to their bodily experiences and material world. This study demonstrates the significance of the ongoing communicative (inter)actions for meaning-making, highlighting the role of the body, mind and environment in shaping quilting practices and appropriating craft knowledge.

Good Pain, Bad Pain: Dancers, Injury, and Listening to the Body

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Jen Tarr ◽  
Helen Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Learning To Listen

While pain is generally considered unpleasant, pain associated with exercise and physical activity is sometimes classed as good. Good pain is usually associated with training, while bad pain is associated with injury. However, the boundary between good and bad pain is a narrow one. We examine this boundary, using interviews with 205 dancers, dance students and related professionals. A cultural phenomenological approach is adopted to understand dancers' embodied experiences and how they describe physical sensations. We highlight the variety of their descriptions of different kinds of pain and its association with injury, as well as how they conceptualise its role within their careers. The three primary dimensions to dancers' distinctions between good and bad pain, also have a moral dimension in relation to the concern to be seen as hard-working and committed. We suggest that the process of distinguishing between good and bad pain is as much a process of not to hear as it is of learning to listen to the body.

scholarly journals An embodied approach to consumer experiences: the Hollister brandscape

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 806-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna Stevens ◽  
Pauline Maclaran ◽  
Stephen Brown
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
The Body ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Consumer Experience ◽  
Sensory Marketing ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Consumer Experiences ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
On Line ◽  
Sensory Activation

Purpose This paper aims to use embodied theory to analyze consumer experience in a retail brandscape, Hollister Co. By taking a holistic, embodied approach, this study reveals how individual consumers interact with such retail environments in corporeal, instinctive and sensual ways. Design/methodology/approach The primary source of data was 97 subjective personal introspective accounts undertaken with the target age group for the store. These were supplemented with in-depth interviews with consumers, managers and employees of Hollister. Findings The authors offer a conceptualization of consumers’ embodied experience, which they term The Immersive Somascape Experience. This identifies four key touch points that evoke the Hollister store experience – each of which reveals how the body is affected by particular relational and material specificities. These are sensory activation, brand materialities, corporeal relationality and (dis)orientation. These may lead to consumer emplacement. Research limitations/implications The authors propose that taking an “intelligible embodiment” approach to consumer experiences in retail contexts provides a deeper, more holistic understanding of the embodied processes involved. They also suggest that more anthropological, body-grounded studies are needed for the unique insights they provide. Finally, they note that there is growing consumer demand for experiences, which, they argue, points to the need for more research from an embodied experience perspective in our field. Practical implications The study reveals the perils and pitfalls of adopting a sensory marketing perspective. It also offers insights into how the body leads in retail brandscapes, addressing a lack in such approaches in the current retailing literature and suggesting that embodied, experiential aspects of branding are increasingly pertinent in retailing in light of the continued growth of on-line shopping. Originality/value Overall, the study shows how an embodied approach challenges the dominance of mind and representation over body and materiality, suggesting an “intelligible embodiment” lens offers unique insights into consumers’ embodied experiences in retail environments.

Embodied well-being through two media technologies: Virtual reality and social media

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 1734-1749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaylee Payne Kruzan ◽  
Andrea Stevenson Won
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Immersive Virtual Reality ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Embodied Experiences

How the body is perceived through media is key to many well-being interventions. Researchers have examined the effects of platforms on users’ self-perceptions, including immersive virtual reality, nonimmersive virtual worlds, and social media such as Facebook. In this article, we use several conceptions of levels of embodiment to compare empirical work on the effects of virtual reality and social media as they relate to perceptions and conceptions of the self and body. We encourage social media researchers to utilize research on embodiment in virtual reality to help frame the effects of social media use on well-being. Similarly, researchers in immersive media should consider the opportunities and risks that may arise as embodied experiences become more social. We conclude our discussion with implications for future applications in mental health.

scholarly journals Knowledge and attitude of South-Indian smokers towards smoking associated health risk

2017 ◽  
Vol 07 (02) ◽  
pp. 024-030
Author(s):  
Ananya Madiyal ◽  
Vidya Ajila ◽  
G. Subhas Babu ◽  
Shruthi Hegde
Keyword(s):  
Oral Cavity ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Intentions To Quit ◽  
Knowledge And Attitude ◽  
High Level

Abstract Aim: To assess the knowledge and attitude of South-Indian smokers towards health effects of smoking and their intentions to quit. Study design: A cross sectional questionnaire based survey was conducted among 550 smokers hailing from South India who reported to the out-patient department of the dental hospital. Results: Highest incidence of smoking in men was seen in those who received moderate level of education and those residing in rural areas. In female smokers, the highest incidence was seen in those residing in urban areas (53.8%) with a high level of education (38.4%). We found that males continued their habit mainly to destress while females used it to socialize. Majority of the participants were aware that smoking causes a host of problems in the oral cavity and 68.18% were aware that passive smoking was injurious to the body. Most of the responders admitted to having observed warnings on tobacco products and were willing to quit the habit with help from their dentists. Conclusion: Smokers are at risk for various diseases that include the cardiovascular, respiratory and reproductive systems as well as the oral cavity. This study sheds light on the level of awareness among current tobacco users and the areas of deficiency in patient education which should be addressed by clinicians.

scholarly journals An Autoethnography of Fat and Weight Loss: Becoming the Bw0 with Deleuze and Guattari

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie M Sheach Leith
Keyword(s):  
Weight Loss ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
Fat Bodies ◽  
The Biggest Loser ◽  
Political Value

This article experiments with some of the insights provided by the work of Deleuze and Guattari as a move towards deterritorializing fat bodies. This is necessary because in contemporary Western society the fat [female] body is positioned and frequently experienced as lacking in social, cultural and political value and as being in need of surveillance and control, not least by the neo-liberal ‘self’. This article is a response to Deleuze and Guattari's plea to ‘think differently’, in this case about fat and weight loss. The article eschews the paradigmatic form of the traditional academic research paper, adopting a semi autoethnographic approach to present an analysis of my engagement with the Biggest Loser (diet) Club. Thinking through rather than about the body it focuses on embodied experiences of fat and the on-going process of cutting that body down to ‘normal’ size. By utilising two central concepts in Deleuzoguattarian thought – ‘becoming’ and the ‘body – without – organs’ (BwO) - I seek to demonstrate the embodied, theoretical and ethical potential of utilising Deleuze and Guattari's work to explore fat and weight loss and how this might productively serve to deterritorialize contemporary discourses which stigmatise fat bodies.

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