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.

Re-framing the Crusades: The Representation of Space, Landscape and Architecture in the Comics Series Croisade

In both medieval and contemporary culture, defamiliarization in space frames the imagined relationship with the other in fantasized views of the East. This paper addresses ways the creative imagination functions in the contemporary four-volume Belgian comics series Croisade by Dufaux and Xavier (vol I-IV). They foster a self-reflexive vision of competing universes, from the Celtic to the ancient Roman, from the Moorish to the Gothic. The cultural relativism of our contemporary era seems more relevant than any attempt to historicize faithfully the fictional plot. These comic books exploit the visual evidence of space as emblematic natural sites of heterotopias like the desert, and architectural space like Jerusalem, some burial sites, the sultan’s oriental palace and the Crusaders’ fortress, while assessing the changing representation of space from the medieval era to the present.

Teaching About Female Genital Mutilation: Complex Question of Cultural Relativism and Preventive Movement

This study aims to investigate three things. First, how is the tendency of the perspective used in discussing the issue of female circumcision in society; second, what is the value base that distinguishes the practice of female circumcision in one society from another; and third, how each value base in the practice of female circumcision is realized or transformed in the feminist movement. The research was carried out with a qualitative approach where data were obtained using a literature study method by reading books, journal articles and various reports on the practice of female circumcision. The results show that studies that discuss the practice of female circumcision tend to be discussed in five perspectives, namely in the perspective of gender, culture, health, religion and law. In practice, female circumcision has a different value base from one society to another. The value bases used in female circumcision include women's initiation into adulthood; purification or cleansing, beautification; and female fertility. Different value bases become the basis for feminists to make efforts to prevent the practice of female circumcision, starting from the level of binding regulations to prevent the practice of female circumcision, community participatory dialogue to abandon the practice of female circumcision, and empowering women through education and the economy.

Notes from Belgrade: Social Anthropology for Archaeology Students in a Post-Conflict Society

Social anthropology courses, some elective and some mandatory, for archaeology students at the Department of Archaeology, University of Belgrade, commenced only after 2003. Since Serbian society opened itself from its isolation, the key challenge has been to teach new generations who have grown up during the civil wars in Former Yugoslavia to recognize broader perspectives on human cultures, universalities, and differences. Anthropology has been consequently utilized as a prominent tool for cultural relativism, multiculturalism, ‘Otherness’, and reflexive thinking. However much these facets have all proved necessary, they seem to have fallen to the wayside in ‘post-truth’ world. It has therefore become unclear in teaching how to address the phenomenon. This paper aims to critically discuss anachronous traditions in social and physical anthropology in combination with new challenges of the biologisation of social identities in archaeology and social anthropology.

Interview: Nuno Ferreira

The idea of European values has never played a central role in my research. Being a socio-legal scholar focused on human rights issues in the European context, I have always referred more specifically to particular legal rights, especially in relation to children’s rights, refugee rights and various aspects of the right to equality. Yet rights are inextricably linked to values: European societies like to see themselves as cherishing a catalogue of human rights that is central to their identity and every European country has some sort of bill of rights or text of a constitutional nature that contains various fundamental rights. In that sense, my work is also about values: the value of human dignity, of religious freedom, of equality, and so on.I would have immense difficulties defining European values. I suspect one would get as many different answers as different people asked this question. I would like to think that amongst such European values we can include democracy, equality, human dignity, and so on. But that does not mean these values are only, mainly or particularly European in any sense, as many countries and societies around the world also cherish and share such values. There is nothing intrinsically European about these values, and even history can show this, despite pervasive narratives that try to convince us otherwise. Instead, what matters is that these are values that we espouse and protect.European values inevitably have a personal value – in my particular case for several particular reasons. Having been born and grown up in Portugal, where democracy was only re-conquered in the 1970s and slowly solidified in the 1980s, cherishing the right to vote and freedom of speech was always crucial in my mind. And being gay has meant that I was always acutely aware of the importance of equality and the fight against discrimination, not only on grounds of sexual orientation, but on grounds of all other personal characteristics. Moreover, having had the privilege of taking part in several student exchange programmes and being yet another member of the ‘Erasmus generation’, I value immensely the right to education, the right to free movement, intercultural communication and respect for minorities. Despite the limits of cultural relativism and the need to hold on to human rights standards, we need to strive for much better knowledge and understanding of cultural differences.

Multimodal Modeling: Bridging Biosemiotics and Social Semiotics

This paper explores a semiotic notion of body as starting point for bridging biosemiotic with social semiotic theory. The cornerstone of the argument is that the social semiotic criticism of the classic view of meaning as double articulation can support the criticism of language-centrism that lies at the foundation of biosemiotics. Besides the pragmatic epistemological advantages implicit in a theoretical synthesis, I argue that this brings a semiotic contribution to philosophy of mind broadly. Also, it contributes to overcoming the polemic in linguistics between, loosely put, cognitive universalism and cultural relativism. This possibility is revealed by the recent convergence of various semiotic theories towards a criticism of the classic notion of meaning as double articulation. In biosemiotics, the interest to explicate meaning as multiply articulated stems from the construal of Umwelt as relying on the variety of sense perception channels and semiotic systems that a species has at its disposal. Recently, social semiotics developed an unexplored interest for embodiment by starting from the other end, namely the consideration of the modal heterogeneity of meaning. To bridge these notions, I employ the cognitive semantic notion of embodiment and Mittelberg’s cognitive semiotic notion of exbodiment. In light of these, I explore the possible intricacies between the biosemiotic notion of primary modeling system and concepts referring to preconceptual structures for knowledge organization stemming from cognitive linguistics. Further, Mittelberg’s concept of exbodiment allows for a construal of meaning articulation as mediation between the exbodying and embodying directions of mind.

The Arts of Coexistence: A View From Anthropology

In this perspectives essay, I propose some ways in which current thinking in anthropology might inform the emergent cross-disciplinary field of coexistence studies. I do so following recent calls from within the conservation science community (including this special issue), acknowledging that understanding human-wildlife coexistence in the fractured landscapes of the Anthropocene1 requires being open to alternative approaches beyond conventional frameworks of conservation science and management (see for instance; Carter and Linnell, 2016; Pooley, 2016; Chapron and López-Bao, 2019; Pooley et al., 2020). The essay suggests that relational (non-dualist) ways of thinking2 in anthropology, often building on Indigenous philosophy and expertise, may help ground coexistence studies beyond Euro-Western modernist conceptual frameworks—frameworks that perpetuate exploitative and colonial logics that many scholars from across academia view as being at the heart of our current ecological crisis (e.g., Lestel, 2013; van Dooren, 2014; Tsing, 2015; Todd, 2016; Bluwstein et al., 2021; Schroer et al., 2021). By proposing “relations” rather than objectified “Nature” or “wildlife” as the more adequate subject of understanding and facilitating coexistence in shared landscapes, I understand coexistence and its study first and foremost as an ethical and political endeavor. Rather than offering any conclusive ideas, the essay's intention is to contribute some questions and thoughts to the developing conversations of coexistence studies scholars and practitioners. It does so by inviting conservation scientists to collaborate with anthropologists and take on board some of the current thinking in the discipline. Amongst other things, I suggest that this will help overcome a somewhat dated notion of cultural relativism—understood as many particular, cultural views on one true objective Nature (only known by Science), a perspective that explicitly and implicitly seems to inform some conservation science approaches to issues of culture or the “human dimensions” of conservation issues. Ultimately, the paper seeks to make a conceptual contribution by imagining coexistence as a dynamic bundle of relations in which the biological, ecological, historical, cultural, and social dimensions cannot be thought apart and have to be studied together.