Glocal yoga: Re-appropriation in the Indian consumptionscape

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 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 (most often) the western hotbed of consumer culture production. In this paper we explore how the crossing and re-crossing of boundaries has fundamentally transformed the practices and ideas behind local consumption practices in the Indian marketplace; specifically, yoga. We uncover six ways in which middle class yoga consumers in India interpret glocal yoga as it becomes a fashionable practice: yoga as a resource management technique, yoga as a health practice, market oriented yoga, global yoga, global yoga as cultural domination, and yoga as national heritage. We discuss the implications of this re-appropriation process for our understanding of marketplace globalization.