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Yoga as a Production Site of Social and Human Capital: Transcultural Flows from a Cultural Economic Perspective

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Yoga Traveling

Abstract

From a cultural economics perspective, transcultural flows in yoga are analyzed using field study data from German yoga institutions and an international Anglophone resort in Thailand. Yoga is seen as a production site of value creation. Through the internalization of the mental model of yoga, several forms of human capital are built up. An eminent external effect of regular yoga practice may be the production of public or social goods, such as a more attentive attitude towards the human and natural environment. On a macrolevel, the partial yoga markets are characterized by diversification dynamics and path dependency. Within the dimension of informal structures, like accumulated body capital, reflexive belief systems are established that also influence, for example, behavior at work or health prevention strategies. Here, materialist interests regularly interrelate with postmaterialist aims, such as increased autonomy. However, the community of practitioners is transient and with a low level of commitment, the experience of like-mindedness is important for the subjective quality of the courses offered.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    De Michelis (2004), Singleton (2005, 2010).

  2. 2.

    Singleton (2010, 289), who borrows Vishnudevananda’s “spiritual relaxation.”

  3. 3.

    A fundamental concept introduced in 1993 by Burkhard Gladigow, a scholar of religion. He assimilated the reconstruction of religious history to the paradigm of cultural history, as developed by historians in the early modern period. Gladigow (1995) recently described in Kippenberg et al. (2009).

  4. 4.

    Schnäbele (2009, 53–56).

  5. 5.

    For an overview of recent research, see Koch (2010, 2011).

  6. 6.

    Brinitzer (2003).

  7. 7.

    Robertson (1992). From the perspective of economics of anthropology, see for instance Comaroff and Comaroff (2009) and Gudeman (2001); from the perspective of economics of sociology, see Bourdieu’s general understanding of sociology as economics of practices (1992, 1997), and on new sociological economics, see Swedberg (2007).

  8. 8.

    For a general introduction see for instance Richter and Furubotn (2005). Other strands of the theory relate to agency (principle-agent relation) and property rights.

  9. 9.

    Interview with J. C., 12 April 2010 at Yoga Thailand.

  10. 10.

    Singleton (2010, 301).

  11. 11.

    Illouz (2007).

  12. 12.

    Altglas (2008) and Singleton (2005): Yoga is popular in the educated middle class as a means of coping with modern life. See also Schnäbele’s contribution in this volume and Schnäbele (2009): Yoga as a means of coping or as an optional exit from capitalism.

  13. 13.

    The delayed obtaining of salvation in the next world as the “salvation good” in many religious doctrines is no reason for postulating a special kind of good, since there is such a delay in many areas, for instance bringing up children, investing in further education, or providing for one’s old age.

  14. 14.

    Merz-Benz (2008). For this “number of actions” aiming at salvation several life styles are possible: The mystical, the ascetic, the experiential etc.

  15. 15.

    See Becker (1976), who was one of the first economists to apply it in a neoclassical framework to families as households.

  16. 16.

    Bourdieu (1992), see also Esser (2000) and Putnam (1993).

  17. 17.

    Coleman (1988).

  18. 18.

    Iannaccone (1995), Urban (2003), and Verter (2003) (for an overview see Elwert 2007). The Metanexus Foundation’s spiritual capital project is very reminiscent of the phenomenological endeavor to describe religion as sui generis.

  19. 19.

    The Yoga Guide is a free brochure assembled by Evi Eckstein and Annet Münzinger and distributed by Munich yoga studios.. It can be assumed that a number of semi-private yoga classes provided by yoga teachers independently from the institutionalized studios can be added to the list.

  20. 20.

    By means of about forty guided interviews and around twenty questionnaires, data were collected from the following Munich providers: A private yoga teacher, Yogavision (yoga and yoga therapy following the Desikachar school), Yoga-Atelier, Münchner Yogazentrum, Luna Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Jivamukti, Wojo, Hier und Jetzt, Elixia Fitnessstudio, Air Yoga, Bikram Yoga.

  21. 21.

    Iannaccone (1998).

  22. 22.

    The guided interview was based on the principles of grounded theory and contained the following initial question per cluster: (1) How did you start practicing yoga? (2) What do you do apart from yoga? (3) Why do you practice yoga? (4) How has practicing yoga affected your daily life? (5). Do any of your relatives or friends practice yoga? (6) What are your future yoga plans? (7) Which yoga studio would you not go to? (8) Who, in your opinion, should practice yoga? Yoga teachers and studio managers were asked additional questions concerning the history of their institution and their interaction with other partial market participants, for instance with regard to pricing or joint marketing.

  23. 23.

    Bourdieu (1992) and Iannaccone (1995).

  24. 24.

    External effect means unintended side effects, e.g. when the social utility is higher than the individual utility.

  25. 25.

    De Michelis (2004, 187–189) roughly separates more postural and more meditative strands of modern psychosomatic yoga that still have to be distinguished from what she calls modern denominational yoga, like Transcendental Mediation or ISKCON.

  26. 26.

    Reasons for this rigidity are discussed for instance in Brinitzer (2003, 76–106).

  27. 27.

    Knauft (2002).

  28. 28.

    On contemporary yoga in Germany, see Fuchs (1990) and Schnäbele (2009, 77–87). There is to date no historical account of the Munich yoga scene.

  29. 29.

    Worldwide chronology, De Michelis (2004, 190–194), Schnäbele (2009, 48–77), and Singleton (2010).

  30. 30.

    One could go into details and compare the products of the different studios. Jivamukti, for instance, offers an “integrated product” consisting of posture practice, singing, meditation, and mantras in every class, while some studios only open the class with a chant and some completely renounce neo-Hindu elements.

  31. 31.

    Interview at Jyotir Yoga, 30 March 2009, age 33.

  32. 32.

    Interview at Jyotir Yoga, 6 March 2009, age 32; interview at Jyotir Yoga, 30 March 2009, age 33.

  33. 33.

    Interview at Anett Yoga, 17 January 2008, age 30.

  34. 34.

    Interview at Jyotir Yoga, 30 March 2009, age 33.

  35. 35.

    Interview at Jyotir Yoga, 6 March 2009, age 32.

  36. 36.

    Interview at Anett Yoga, 17 January 2008, age 30.

  37. 37.

    Interview at Anett Yoga, 17 January 2008, age 30.

  38. 38.

    Interview at Anett Yoga, 19 January 2008, age 58.

  39. 39.

    Interview at Jyotir Yoga, 9 March 2009, age 31.

  40. 40.

    For instance Brinitzer (2003, 161), who considers the uncertainty of existence in another world and of God to be the distinctive feature of religious goods, thus merely repeating the sacred-profane distinction.

  41. 41.

    Seele (2009).

  42. 42.

    Csordas (1993, 1994, 67–70).

  43. 43.

    Csordas (1994, 69).

  44. 44.

    Progressive muscle relaxation, working with images in autogenic training, moving-breath correlation for calming down, etc., Singleton (2005).

  45. 45.

    Interview at Jyotir Yoga, 17 March 2009, age 27.

  46. 46.

    Interview at Anett Yoga, 19 January 2008, age 58. See also Schnäbele (2009, 191–194), whose data also bear witness to this specific experience.

  47. 47.

    Schnäbele (2009, 249).

  48. 48.

    Burger (2006, 93), footnote 36.

  49. 49.

    In so-called Mysore classes every student practices in his own pace the series of Ashtanga as far as he is capable of performing them. The teacher supervises this by correcting some postures and breathing.

  50. 50.

    This and the following quotations: Interview with Paul Dallaghan, 8 April 2010 at Yoga Thailand.

  51. 51.

    See for example De Michelis (2004, 184, 186), Gebhardt et al. (2005, 243–244), and Schnäbele (2009, 239–248).

  52. 52.

    Interview at Yoga Thailand, 6 April 2010.

  53. 53.

    Singleton (2005, 302).

  54. 54.

    Gebhardt et al. (2005).

  55. 55.

    In the Miami Life Center, for instance, the famous yogi Kino McGregor has her home base.

  56. 56.

    On the ritual character of yoga classes see De Michelis (2004, 252–260) and Schnäbele (2009, 117–127).

  57. 57.

    Appl (2010). Unlike psychoanalysis, negative emotions are not treated in the yoga relationship and transferences are not consciously worked with.

  58. 58.

    Schnäbele (2009, 248–251).

  59. 59.

    Interview with Paul Dallaghan 8 April 2010, Yoga Thailand.

  60. 60.

    Inglehart (1977). The materialist-postmaterialist dichotomy and the newer dyad of traditional-sacred versus secular-rational (Norris and Inglehart 2004) has been widely criticized (methodologically, for its linear historical thinking, and its reception of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, according to which postmaterialist needs arise only when material needs have been satisfied).

  61. 61.

    I did not observe a majority of people coming from helping professions; see Strauss (2005, 83).

  62. 62.

    Strauss (2005, 58).

  63. 63.

    Schnäbele (2009, 114).

  64. 64.

    Tambiah (2002, 163).

  65. 65.

    Strauss (2005, 51).

  66. 66.

    On the topos of yoga as a reaction to a religious crisis, see Singleton (2005, 302).

  67. 67.

    Burger (2006, 91).

  68. 68.

    See Carrette and King (2005), Knoblauch (2007), and Zinser (1997).

  69. 69.

    Altglas (2008), Schnäbele (2009), and Strauss (2005).

  70. 70.

    De Michelis (2004, 251). I doubt that yoga today should still be classified as part of the occultist endeavor to solve the sacred-secular crisis. Rather, this was on the agenda at the time of Vivekananda, bringing together diverging tendencies in late nineteenth century societies and helping people to cope with the intensified flows between East and West, colonizers and colonized.

  71. 71.

    Holzer (2006).

  72. 72.

    See Eisenstadt (2002) and Bornschier (2005).

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  1. Interfaculty Program Study of Religion, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, Munich, Germany

    Anne Koch

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  1. Institut für Kultur-, Literatur- und, Musikwissenschaften, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Universitätsstraße 65-67, Klagenfurt, 9020, Austria

    Beatrix Hauser

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Koch, A. (2013). Yoga as a Production Site of Social and Human Capital: Transcultural Flows from a Cultural Economic Perspective. In: Hauser, B. (eds) Yoga Traveling. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00315-3_10

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