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.

Unpacking overtourism as a discursive formation through interdiscursivity

Purpose As tourism destinations grapple with declines in tourist arrivals due to COVID-19 measures, scholarly debate on overtourism remains active, with discussions on solutions that could be enacted to contain the excessive regrowth of tourism and the return of “overtourism”. As social science holds an important role and responsibility to inform the debate on overtourism, this paper aims to understand overtourism by examining it as a discursive formation. Design/methodology/approach The paper explores recurring thematic threads in scholarly overtourism texts, given the phrases coherence as a nodal-point is partially held in place by a collective body of texts authored by a network of scholars who have invested in it. The paper uses interdiscursivity as an interpretative framework to identify overlapping thematic trajectories found in existing discourses. Findings Overtourism, as a discursive formation, determines what can and should be said about the self-evident “truths” of excessive tourist arrivals, the changes tourists bring to destinations and the range of discursive solutions available to manage or end overtourism. As the interpellation of these thematic threads into scholarly texts is based on a sense of crisis and urgency, the authors find that the themes contain rhetoric, arguments and metaphors that problematise tourists and construct them as objects in need of control and correction. Originality/value While the persistence of the discursive formation will be determined by the degree to which scholarly and other actors recognise themselves in it, this paper may enable overtourism scholars to become aware of the limits of their discursive domain and help them to expand the discourse or weave a new one.

Legal Media Discourse: Boundaries, Structure, Categories

The paper considers legal media discourse as a discursive format that arose as a result of the interaction of legal discourse and media discourse. The research is aimed at defining the boundaries, structure and categories of legal media discourse. The material of the research are texts of legal media discourse including analytical articles on legal issues, regulatory legal acts, news materials and other genres implemented within the boundaries of the discursive format under study. The research applies methods of scientific description (systematization and interpretation), discursive analysis, as well as the simulation method. The paper provides an overview of research in the field of legal discourse and media discourse, which helps to get closer to defining the boundaries of the format under study, which represents a promising direction for further research. As a result of the systematization of the theoretical and practical material, the boundaries and structure of legal media discourse are determined. It is established that the boundaries of legal media discourse, which is a hybrid discursive formation, lie within the intersection of legal discourse with media discourse. The resulting discursive space has a field structure (core, periphery) and represents a discourse format that concretizes two types of discourse (legal discourse and media discourse) and is represented in turn by different genres. The article gives the description of the categories of legal media discourse, which is based on the model proposed by V. I. Karasik. The paper reveals typical participants of communication, their possible presuppositions, sphere of functioning, chronotope, goals and strategies, genre organization. The author also discusses the issue of implementing the expressive function in legal media discourse through the use of colloquial and obscene lexemes.

Apuntes para la crítica del discurso progresista históricamente existente

From a dialectical hermeneutic methodology that discusses different ideological texts produced in particular political contexts of power, the objective of the article lies in defining a critical line that points out inconsistencies and contradictions before what generically can be defined without much conceptual precision as progressive discourse, that is: a discursive formation that brings together different social movements, civil organizations and political parties --in theory-- of frank counter-hegemonic character. It is concluded that morally the progressive discourse is not by itself bad, good, or neutral, everything will depend, ultimately, on the tastes and preferences of each person built by their cultural biases and, more specifically, in the heat of the processes of political socialization by which they have been conditioned ontologically. Therefore, rather than a critique of the historically existing progressive discourse, a review must be made of the tendentious way in which certain political actors use this discourse to validate their hegemonic interests in their context of action. In addition, in many verifiable respects this discourse can mean the justification of authoritarian practices that contravene the enjoyment and enjoyment of fundamental rights, which does not mean that the authors bet on conservative political and ideological positions.

Croatianess and Children’s Popular Culture

This paper examines the discursive formation of Croatianness (hrvatstvo) during the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s and the post-war era, focusing mainly on the domain of popular culture. In this analysis of Croatian children’s popular culture, the main emphasis is on chocolate bar stickers and sticker albums manufactured by Kraš. At the time, the company had published Cro-Army chocolate stickers and the accompanying Croatian army sticker album, Knights’ Tales, about Croatian history and various historical events, and Maki, a sticker album of Catholic saints. In relying on theoretical and methodological frameworks of representational and discourse theory regarding national identity and fantasy, this paper shows one of the ways in which Croatianness was formed in children’s popular culture through three main aspects – war, history, and religion

“I Urge Young People not to Rush to Leave for the Great Europe” : On Entrepreneurship in Organic Production in Serbia from an Anthropological Perspective

Our research is based on the assumption that in the period after 2008, designated as the “mature stage” of the second transition, decision-makers and experts in the phenomenon of organic production discursively shaped a common, though fundamentally ambivalent system of cognitive ideas and notions relating to this issue and its various aspects, which is designated in this paper as the concept of entrepreneurship in organic production in Serbia. For the purposes of our research, this concept is understood as a mythical notion, as it were, in accordance with the definition of the concept of the myth put forward by the French semiotician Roland Barthes, for whom the myth is a form of speech, a certain discursive formation, and everything that is discourse-related can be a myth. Through an analysis of structural and semantic aspects of the concept of entrepreneurship in organic production in Serbia, the paper looks at both the mechanism of articulation of this concept within expert and public discourse and at its implications, the way in which it is linked to the concrete entrepreneurial ventures of two migrants-returnees, whose entrepreneurial stories have a significant explanatory value in terms of the topic of this paper. The paper aims to highlight the contradictions involved in the concept of entrepreneurship in Serbian organic production and draw attention to the possibility of their creative resolution on the plane of individual ways of thinking and acting in this sphere of entrepreneurship, and also to point to the relationship between two categories that from an anthropological point of view are mutually permeable, namely, the categories of “myth” and “reality”.

Migrants during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Discursive Class Formation of Returnee Expatriates

Amidst the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, migrants are the most affected parts after the Health and economy. More than half a million migrants have returned from February to May 2020 to Bangladesh. The state and society have stigmatized returnee expatriates as suspected disease carriers. Some of them are being physically assaulted and humiliated by their neighbor and society. Researchers revealed a new dimension of "Othering" discourse; where consent of hate crime formed being solely blamed for bring coronavirus and ignoring mandatory quarantine period. The government officially stigmatized them by putting quarantined seals at their hands and hoisting red flags at their homes. Interestingly, we have found the distinction of stigmatization between returnee expatriates, where returnee workers were being humiliated rather than high-skilled returnee professionals from a so-called developed country. Returnee expatriates experienced a transformation of identity. Researchers argued about the discursive formation of a class of returnee expatriates who were once highly respected and spoiled of their identity as a probable source of virus carrier. Once labeled as a remittance fighter of the economy have to transients their so-called positions, and has to prove their worthiness as a citizen of the state, after starting the pandemic, governments and their developing partners were not humane, concerned about the returnee expatriates' social discrimination, risk of unemployment, uncertainty, economic crisis, and instability. Returnee expatriates' abandonment as a suspected carrier of the COVID-19 virus by the state and society should be worked out more comprehensively to protect them from social and economic exploitation.

INVESTIGANDO A QUESTÃO PEDAGÓGICA À LUZ DA ANÁLISE ARQUEOLÓGICA DO DISCURSO – AAD

Este ensaio registra uma investigação sobre a questão pedagógica. Para isso, recorreu à Análise Arqueológica do Discurso – AAD, de Michael Foucault, às noções arqueológicas de discurso, à regularidade, à dispersão, à formação discursiva e a uma série de escritos freireanos, como fontes da investigação. Com a escavação dos textos-fonte, foi encontrado um conjunto de achados que definiram o corpus da análise, a descrição e a explicitação da questão. Resultou da análise da questão a que a ordem discursiva do saber pedagógico se refere, em geral, a toda ação que produza marcas sobre a formação das pessoas e, em particular, a aspectos pertinentes a processos formativos, a problemas concretos e cotidianos que lhes são inerentes, a visões específicas de homem, de mundo e de sociedade que a orientam, a domínios de saberes que lhe conferem inteligibilidade, justificativa e racionalidade e à educação como prática social exemplar. Concluiu-se que os achados encontrados nos escritos freireanos demonstraram que a questão pedagógica se põe no seio de uma formação discursiva pedagógica definida por uma existência e funcionamento próprios, limites e contornos singulares, passíveis de serem identificados, conhecidos e utilizados em distintas situações e práticas sociais.Palavras-chave: discurso; pedagógico; educação; formação humana.Investigating the pedagogical question in the light of the Archaeological Discourse Analysis – AADAbstractThis essay register a investigation about the pedagogical matter. For this, the Archealogical Discourse Analysis (ADA) was appealed, its archealogical discourse notions, regularity, dispertion and discursive formation and a series of Freire’s scripts, as investigation sources. With the digging of source-texts it was founded a bunch of findings, that defined the analysis corpus, description and explicitation of the question. It was found that the discursive order of pedagogical knowledge refer, in general, about every action that produce marks about people formation and, in particular, about pertinent aspects of formative process, about daily and concret problems, specific man visions , about society and world that are oriented by them, about domain of knowledge that give to them inteligibility, justification and racionality and to education as an examplary social practice. The investigation concludes that findings found in Freire’s scripts demonstrate that pedagogical question put itself in the center of a discursive pedagogical formation defined by an existence and self operation, limits and singular contours, that can be idenfied, known and used in distinct situations and social practices.Keywords: speech; pedagogical; education; human formation.Investigando la cuestión pedagógica a la luz del Análisis del Discurso Arqueológico - AADResumenEste ensayo registra una investigación sobre el tema pedagógico. Para esto, se recurrió al Análisis de Arqueológico Discurso (AAD), sus nociones de discurso arqueológico, regularidad, dispertión y formación discursiva y una serie de guiones de Freire, como fuentes de investigación. Con la excavación de los textos fuente se fundó un conjunto de hallazgos que definieron el corpus de análisis, la descripción y la explicitación de la pregunta. Se encontró que el orden discursivo del conocimiento pedagógico se refiere, en general, a cada acción que produce marcas sobre la formación de las personas y, en particular, sobre los aspectos pertinentes del proceso formativo, sobre problemas cotidianos y concretos, visiones específicas del hombre, sobre la sociedad y el mundo. que están orientados por ellos, sobre el dominio del conocimiento que les da inteligibilidad, justificación y racionalidad y a la educación como una práctica social ejemplar. La investigación concluye que los hallazgos encontrados en los guiones de Freire demuestran que la pregunta pedagógica se coloca en el centro de una formación pedagógica discursiva definida por una existencia y auto operación, límites y contornos singulares, que pueden ser identificados, conocidos y utilizados en situaciones y prácticas sociales distintas.Palabras clave: discurso; pedagógico; educación; formación humana.

Alfabetizar ou não as crianças de seis anos? Uma análise dos discursos especializados no contexto da ampliação do ensino fundamental

O artigo caracteriza os discursos especializados sobre o momento mais adequado para o início da alfabetização das crianças, no contexto da ampliação do ensino fundamental para nove anos, a partir da promulgação da Lei no 11.274 em 6 de fevereiro de 2006. A análise inspira-se na perspectiva teórico-metodológica de análise do discurso de Michel Foucault e incide sobre artigos acadêmicos, documentos oficiais e textos publicados em revistas de divulgação destinadas a professores no período compreendido entre a década de 1990 e a de 2010. A partir do exame das fontes foi possível caracterizar os discursos considerados como sendo pertencentes a uma mesma formação discursiva. Seus enunciados nucleares dizem respeito à necessidade de se respeitar as características das crianças na transição da educação infantil ao ensino fundamental, ao mesmo tempo em que se busca favorecer o seu aprendizado da leitura e da escrita, preferencialmente de maneira lúdica e a partir do seu interesse espontâneo.Palavras-chave: Alfabetização. Educação Infantil. Desenvolvimento Infantil.Literate or not six-year-old children? An analysis of specialized discourses in the context of the expansion of elementary educationABSTRACTThe article characterizes the specialized discourses about the most appropriate moment for the beginning of children's literacy, in the context of the expansion of basic education to nine years, after the enactment of Law 11,274 on February 6, 2006. The analysis is inspired by the theoretical-methodological perspective of Michel Foucault's discourse analysis, and focuses on academic articles, official documents and texts published in magazines aimed at teachers in the period between the 1990s and the 2010s. Based on the examination of the sources, it was possible to characterize the discourses considered as belonging to the same discursive formation. Its core statements refer to the need to respect the characteristics of children in the transition from early childhood education to elementary education, while seeking to promote their learning of reading and writing, preferably in a playful way and based on their spontaneous interest.Keywords: Literacy. Childhood Education. Child Development.¿Alfabetizar o no los niños de seis anõs? Un análisis de los discursos especializados en el contexto de la ampliación de la educación primariaRESUMENEl artículo caracteriza los discursos especializados acerca del momento más adecuado para el inicio de la alfabetización de los niños, en el contexto de la ampliación de la enseñanza básica para nueve años, desde la promulgación de la Ley 11.274 en el 6 de febrero de 2006. El análisis se inspira en la perspectiva teórica-metodológica del análisis del discurso de Michel Foucault y a él están sometidos los artículos académicos, documentos oficiales y textos publicados en revistas de divulgación destinadas a profesores en el período entre las décadas de 1990 y 2010. A partir del examen de las fuentes fue posible caracterizar los discursos considerados como pertenecientes a una misma formación discursiva. Sus enunciados nucleares se refieren a la necesidad de respectarse las características de los niños en la transición de la educación infantil a la enseñanza básica, al mismo tiempo en el que se busca favorecer su aprendizaje de la lectura y de la escrita, preferentemente de manera lúdica y desde su interés espontáneo.Palabras-clave: Alfabetización. Educación Infantil. Desarrollo Infantil.

THE DISCURSIVE FORMULATION OF BREXIT: DECISION, OPPORTUNITY AND NEEDFUL AGREEMENT

This study sets out to examine the British Prime Minister Theresa May’s speeches delivered through her premiership. It aims to unveil the ideological discursive formation of Brexit after the referendum, and to investigate the way May squares the rhetoric to persuade the general public and the British/European political Elites to deliver the Brexit deal, though she campaigned pro-European Britain. I conduct a corpus-assisted discourse study approach, using discourse analysis methods and corpus linguistics tools for a case study of a purpose-built corpus of the Prime Minister speeches (2016-2019). The analysis revealed that the Brexit representation eschewed any identifi cation with ‘Europe’ and boosted Eurosceptic sentiments by (1) rationalizing the decision to leave the European Union; (2) proposing a better future after Brexit; (3) appealing to the British people’s emotion to support the Brexit deal.