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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Dear Colleagues and Friends,</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">With apologies for possible cross-posting, I wish to share the following call for papers with you all, hoping to see many exciting contributions from you in the upcoming book!</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Yours sincerely</p>
<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Måns Broo</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Brill Handbook of Contemporary Yoga: Call for Papers</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Yoga is a growing international trend, with estimated 400 million practitioners worldwide. While often presented and sold as an authentic Indian tradition, contemporary yoga is also a modern invention shaped by
Eastern as well as Western influences. Furthermore, the field of contemporary yoga has been shaped by changes in the broader societal, cultural and political contexts, global scale trends, events and trajectories, and the forms they take in diverse local settings.
Since its popularisation from the 1990s onwards, yoga has been repackaged in an increasing number of ways for different crowds and contexts. The popularisation of yoga has also resulted in an increasing amount of research on contemporary variants and developments
of yoga across various disciplinary fields and from different scholarly perspectives. This handbook brings these different perspectives together. It provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse field of contemporary yoga, and introduces current debates
and research perspectives that are significant for understanding its multifaceted and complex character.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">For this handbook we invite contributions to the following five thematic sections:</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">1. Geographical contexts;</p>
<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">2. Yoga styles;</p>
<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">3. Places and spaces of yoga;</p>
<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">4. Perspectives on yoga;</p>
<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">5. The politics of Yoga.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Each section will include 5–10 original contributions by scholars specialised in contemporary yoga from different disciplinary perspectives and in different geographical and cultural settings. All subsections
are described in more detail below. While the main focus of chapter contributions should be on 21st century yoga, they may also discuss the historical background as a context of the development of local manifestations of yoga and styles of practice. Abstracts
of 250 words should be submitted to mans.broo@abo.fi by May 31, 2025. Selected contributors will be invited to submit the first draft of their full chapters (6000–7000 words including references) by 31.12.2025. All contributions will go through a peer review
process and the final selected chapters will be due for submission after revision by middle of 2026.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">The Brill Handbook of Contemporary Yoga will be edited by Måns Broo, Janne Kontala, Ella Poutiainen and Kia Andell, working at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, within the project In the Middle and in the Margins:
Yoga Practitioners in Finland (YOFI).</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">1. Geographical Contexts</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">While contemporary yoga is very much a transnational practice, its local forms are naturally influenced by local traditions and political or other conditions. This section of the book will nuance our understanding
of yoga in the contemporary world by case studies of yoga in different contexts. Is yoga in Los Angeles the same as yoga in Nairobi?</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">To this section, we invite contributions that provide overviews of yoga in different national (e.g., Germany) or regional contexts (e.g., the Nordic Countries). Contributions should include both a historical overview
of the introduction and development of yoga in the context at hand, and a more sociological description of the present situation, focusing on particularly noteworthy traits.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">2. Yoga Styles</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">One of the traits of contemporary yoga is the proliferation of styles, often denoted by their founder (e.g, Iyengar yoga) or the type of practice (e.g., Vinyasa yoga). Such styles may be defined in several ways,
such as through trademarks or lineages, and they may have varying means and levels of organisation or institutional structure.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">To this section, we invite chapters that describe the history and contemporary applications of one or several interconnected styles of modern postural yoga, but also of types of yoga that fall outside of the category
of postural yoga, such as bhakti yoga or tantric yoga.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">3. Places and Spaces of Yoga</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">This section seeks to illustrate how contemporary yoga is shaped by various physical and virtual spaces and sites, from yoga studios to gyms, ashrams to churches, social media platforms to forests. These places
work in different ways to bring together numbers of practitioners, and to produce and circulate cultural representations, affects and emotions around yoga. They have brought about new practices, communities, and extensive social networks. Furthermore, they
have provided spaces for increasing commercialization but also different alternative and anti-consumerist practices and communities. In addition, media targeted to different audiences of practitioners and the broader public shape and establish public imagination
around yoga and the yoga scene.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">To this section, we invite contributions that address different places, spaces and platforms that shape yoga practice, representations, and communities. We also welcome contributions that engage in spatial analysis
or address questions of affect and atmosphere.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">4. Perspectives on Yoga</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Contemporary yoga can be seen as a religion, a form of spirituality, a secular wellness practice or a part of self help culture. In this section, we apply a variety of perspectives on contemporary yoga. How can
we make sense of the diverse ways yoga is understood, addressed and experienced both by scholars and by practitioners? What can we say about the beliefs and values of the practitioners? Is yoga religious, spiritual, both-and, or neither-nor? Does contemporary
yoga stand for a continuum from premodern yoga or as something totally new?</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">To this section, we invite contributions that address yoga from different disciplinary perspectives, such as sociology, psychology, religious studies, health and wellness, or economy. We also welcome contributions
that address different emic perspectives of yoga.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">5. The politics of Yoga</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">Over the past decades, the increasingly westernised and commercialised field of contemporary yoga has become a site of multiple and complex political debates. Some of these debates stem from geopolitical and racial
power relations (e.g., questions of cultural appropriation, decolonisation and whiteness) or the clash between different religious cultures (e.g., Christian "yogaphobia" or the instrumentalisation of yoga by Hindu nationalists). Another set of debates around
the politics of yoga circulate around questions of gender and sexuality (cases of sexual abuse or the cis- and heteronormativity of yoga). Furthermore, the image of yoga as liberal and left-leaning has recently been challenged by the increasing visibility
of the political far right and conservatism. The rise of conspiracy thinking within the yoga scene has also been noteworthy.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Times;">To this section, we seek contributions that in different ways address the politics of yoga and the ways in which yoga has become politized. Contributions can address themes such as gendered, racial or class based
inequalities and power relations within yoga, yoga-activism, the role of yoga in political movements, or the ways in which yoga has become a subject of political debate.</p>
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