[YRL] "Mixed Yoga" panel at the Finnish Cultural Studies Conference

[Ella Poutiainen]

CALL FOR PAPERS

We seek presentations for our panel "Mixed Yoga" at the Kultut 2025 conference in Turku, Finland, 10-12.12.2025. The call for abstracts is open until 17.3.2025. Abstracts and questions should be sent directly to the contact person of the panel by the dead line. The abstract (max 200 words) should include the title for the presentation and the name and contact details (organisation, e-mail) of the presenter. We hope to get many interesting presentations!

Contact person: Ella Poutiainen, ella.poutiainen at abo.fi
Panel description

Yoga and holistic spirituality compose a culturally hybrid and messy field. While often presented and sold as an authentic Indian tradition, mainstream yoga is a modern invention shaped by Eastern as well as Western influences. The field of yoga and holistic spirituality incorporate many conflicting elements and is both religious and secular, spiritual and commercial, popular and marginal, healthy as well as rife with questionable health claims and unhealthy body ideals. As an international trend, yoga has been repackaged in most imaginative ways for different crowds. However, yoga also invokes mixed feelings. It is not met without suspicion by conservative religious groups. At the same time, the popularisation of yoga has raised questions about on whose terms the ‘cultural blending’ happens, and who gains from yoga’s cultural and financial capital. Furthermore, scholars have been concerned about the somewhat unexpected political and ideological alliances between the field of holistic spirituality and conspiracy theories and the far right.
This panel invites presentations that in different ways inquire into the messiness of yoga and holistic spirituality. We also wish to mix up yoga studies, and welcome presentations from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives as well as presentations that use mixed methods. The language of the panel is English.

All panels and contact details can be founs at the Kultut 2025 website: https://sites.utu.fi/kultut2025/in-english/

Welcome to the twelfth Finnish Cultural Studies Conference! First organized in 2003, the conference this year will be held in Turku in December 2025, under the theme ”Mix”. Mixtures, combinations, and compilations have always been a central interest of Cultural Studies. The premise here is that cultures are always already mixed. As a theme, “mixed” refers not only to the state of the world, but also to a state of mind.

Kindly,
Ella Poutiainen

(they/she)


Postdoctoral researcher

Study of Religions / Åbo Akademi University
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