Roundtable
ACR-AP 2009, HyderabadIndia
Roundtable Proposal
Re-appropriation in the Global Consumptionscape
Primary Organizers:
Giana Eckhardt, SuffolkUniversity
Søren Askegaard, University of Southern Denmark
ACR members committed to attending
Russell Belk, YorkUniversity
Nikhilesh Dholakia, University of Rhode Island
Humaira Mahi, San FranciscoStateUniversity
Meera Venkatramen, SuffolkUniversity
Julien Cayla, University of New South Wales
Xin Zhao, University of Hawaii
Short Abstract
The contemporary global consumptionscape is characterized by a vast array of global economic, technological and cultural flows. These flows connect different consumer cultures in highly complex ways. One outcome of global cultural flows is the re-appropriation of cultural practices in their places of origin after a process of sanctioning in the Western hotbed of consumer culture production.In this session we will explore how the crossing and re-crossing of boundaries has fundamentally transformed the practices and ideas behind local consumption practices in the Asian marketplace.
Long abstract
The contemporary global consumptionscape is characterized by a vast array of global economic, technological and cultural flows. These flows connect different consumer cultures in highly complex ways. One outcome of global cultural flows is the re-appropriation of cultural practices in their places of origin after a process of sanctioning in the Western hotbed of consumer culture production. In this session we will explore how the crossing and re-crossing of boundaries has fundamentally transformed the practices and ideas behind local consumption practices in the Asian marketplace.
One of the consumption practices where we can clearly see a re-appropriation of the local is yoga. Yoga is a set of physical and mental practices which originated in Indiabetween 200 BC and 200 AD. In its original Indian version, “…yoga was a philosophically grounded set of practices designed to facilitate spiritual enlightenment,” (Strauss 2005, 5). Yoga practice has steadily spread to the West since the 1960s, where Westerners on the “hippy trail” discovered it in India and brought it back home. “Yoga in the western context was seen as a way to reconnect with the spiritual world, reduce stress, and regain health and freedom,” (Strauss 2005, 6.). In the West, yoga was seen as a practical method for acquiring spiritual capital (Bourdieu 1984).
Modern yoga as it is currently practiced in the West, however, tends to have a focus on health and freedom (Strauss 2005). Both health, as manifested in the West as fitness, and freedom are primary markers for modernity, and thus allowed yoga to fit into Western culture by promising a means to physical health as well as freedom to pursue spiritual quests. At the same time, yoga’s association with health and freedom is what is making it re-appealing to modern Indian consumers.
Based on the West’s stamp of approval (Cayla and Eckhardt 2007), yoga has become a trendy activity for the nouveau riche in Asia to take part in (Liechty 2003). As Strauss (2005) points out, although yoga never actually left India, its current popularity follows on the heels of its Western dissemination, and thus yoga in India has been re-appropriated.
Especially important in the re-appropriation of yoga in the Asian context is the legitimacy that is based on the Western adoption of yoga practices as a widely accepted technique for self-management. Yoga in its contemporary form thus becomes a nexus between Western ideals of self-optimization and Eastern ideals of cosmic balance, as well as a space of dialogue between ideologies of inner vs. outer beauty. The re-appropriation of the global yoga industry can be understood through various theoretical lenses. It can be conceived as an(other) example of what Mazzarella termed auto-orientalism, the "use of globally recognized signifiers of Indian tradition tofacilitate the aspirational consumption, by Indians, of a culturally marked self" (Mazzarella 2003, p. 138).But it can be considered a case ofglobal structures of common difference (Wilk 1995) as well asa contemporary marketplace mythology (Thompson 2004).From this perspective, research needs to explore if and how the global yoga structure is becoming homogenized as yoga becomes re-appropriated in India, and how both Eastern and Western yoga mythologies have influenced the re-appropriation process.
We use the example of yoga in the Asian marketplace to illustrate the types of processes we are aiming to discuss during the roundtable under the theme of “re-appropriation.” We will invite reflections on how such processesof re-appropriation are occurring. Furthermore, we will flesh out other contexts in which this is taking place, and from a theoretical perspective discuss how this phenomenon fits into our understanding of the globalization process. In particular, the discussion should increase the focus on global flows between power centers and power peripheries of global cultures, but at the same time it is obvious how the case of yoga and its global popularity challenges too clear-cut notions of center and periphery. With its focus on global cultural flows and on “auto-orientalism”, the roundtable should also be seen as complementary to Dholakia’s proposed roundtable on “hyper-westernization.”These roundtables together will constitute a significant forum for a discussion of contemporary change processes in Indiaand Asiain particular, and in globalizing and marketizing societies in general.
References
Cayla, Julien and Giana M. Eckhardt (2007), “Asian brands without borders: Regional opportunities and challenges,” International Marketing Review, 24(4), 444 – 456.
Liechty, Mark (2003), Suitably modern: Making middle-class culture in a new consumer society, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mazzarella, William (2003), Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Strauss, Sarah (2005), Positioning yoga: Balancing acts across cultures, New York: Berg.
Thompson, Craig J. (2004), “Marketplace mythologies and discourses of power,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31(1), 162 – 180.
Wilk, Richard (1995), “Learning to be local in Belize: Global systems of common difference,” in Worlds Apart: Modernity through the prism of the local, ed. Daniel Miller, London: Routledge, 110 – 131.