![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Recent developments in global yoga show a tendency towards social activism in the charity market. As part of this, Yoga Aid World Challenge 2012 (founded in 2007) is a good example of how neoliberal organisational culture and generosity may become entangled. Competition stands out as an unusual strategy in the predominantly gentle type of modern postural yoga. During this 24-hour event, yoga is practised across 25 countries worldwide, following the course of the sun. Corresponding social networks and digital media strongly promote, months before the event, the joy of practising yoga and equate the meaning of life with giving. This is interpreted with findings from behavioural economics on altruism and from new institutional economics on the organisers’ communication and event marketing. This article paints a picture of hybrid social network formation and a cluster of affects, including competition, gratitude, and a sense of obligation.
Acknowledgement
The research on which this article is based was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Anne Koch
Anne Koch is associate professor for the cultural study of religion at the University of Munich, Germany, and affiliated with the Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. Trained in philosophy and cultural studies she focuses on methodology and contemporary spirituality in Europe and in global religion, specialising in the economics and aesthetics of religion. She directed an interdisciplinary pilot study with placebo research in order to investigate the efficiency of alternative healing rituals and conducted fieldwork in 2012–13 on global Anglophone yoga networks in Thailand and Japan. Publications have examined an epistemology of what is foreign, body knowledge, and the cultural economics of religion. CORRESPONDENCE: University of Munich, Faculty 02, Cultural Study of Religion, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80359 Munich, Germany.