The Commodification and Exchange of Knowledge in the Case of Transnational Commercial Yoga
- 1 May 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in International Journal of Cultural Property
- Vol. 13 (02), 189-206
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0940739106060127
Abstract
The practice of yoga outside India and for commercial exchange (transnational commercial yoga) is a multibillion-dollar industry that has been the site of increasing formal regulation. The primary questions these regulations are meant to resolve include the following: (1) What is yoga? (2) What is its proprietary nature? and (3) Who has the right to manage its expression? Two recent U.S. federal district court cases involving the Bikram Yoga College of India, a yoga franchise based in Los Angeles, have drawn international attention to the debate on whether yogic knowledge or practice resides in the public or private domain. This article asks, if given the monetary value at stake, did the global market for transnational commercial yoga set the stage for claims to individual IPRs? Furthermore, this article analyzes how yoga, due to its unique characteristics as an embodied practice and intangible form, serves as a platform for experimentation from which new meanings of open source, IPRs, and information management strategies emerge.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to thank the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Center for Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, for their funding support.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- Scientific Imaginaries and Ethical Plateaus in Contemporary U.S. ToxicologyAmerican Anthropologist, 2005
- Constructing a Global Law-Violence against Women and the Human Rights SystemLaw & Social Inquiry, 2003
- Where it Hurts: Indian Material for an Ethics of Organ TransplantationZygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 2003
- Sanctioned identities: Legal constructions of modern personhoodIdentities, 1995