YOGA ® - om kommodifiering och McDonaldisering av modern hathayoga

Sammanfattning: The authors Jeremy Carrette and Richard King argues that spirituality has become a subject of commodification (i.e. transformed into a commodity) as a consequence of the growing impact of Neoliberalism in the Western world since the 1980´s. These new forms of spirituality substitute traditional religion in secular societies and often operate with a hidden economic agenda. McDonaldization is a sociological theory, whose main thesis is that the process of globalization creates a homogenized world as a cause of impact from the fastfood industry on organizations and companies, in order to increase profit. The characteristics of McDonaldization are efficiency, calculability, predictability, control and irrationality. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether modern hathayoga can be considered a commodified and McDonaldized phenomenon in the Western world, and to discuss the consequences of such a development. Three globally representted schools of yoga; Anusara-, Bikram- and Jivamukti yoga; exemplifies modern hathayoga in the thesis. Collection of data was carried out through several complementary methods (triangulation) including literature searches, literature reviews and fieldwork. The latter was conducted as participant observations in Europe and the US. The collected material was analyzed with the above theories on commodification and McDonaldization. The study also provides an overview of the yoga-tradition from about 300 B.C. in order to place the thesis in an historical context and account for the developments that led to modern hathayoga in the West. The conclusion is that commercialization has increased the more hathayoga integrate with Western culture and Neoliberalistic ideals. Modern hathayoga is commodfied and exhibit, in varying degrees, the characteristics of McDonald-ization. Another conclusion is that yoga should rather be seen as an ongoing evolution as opposed to a static phenomenon. The coalition between commer-cialization and hathayoga is finally a consequence of a widespread development in Western societies, intimately connected with its larger political and economic structures.