(Dis)owning Bikram: Decolonizing vernacular and dewesternizing restructuring in the yoga wars. Vats, A. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 13(4):325–345, October, 2016.
(Dis)owning Bikram: Decolonizing vernacular and dewesternizing restructuring in the yoga wars [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
Undertaking analysis in the area of critical yoga studies, this article identifies two strategies of anticolonial resistance to Bikram Choudhury's copyrighting of a sequence of twenty-six yoga poses. First, it examines decolonial vernacular, which contests Western commodification of yoga through the use and misuse of terms and phrases, such as “yoga piracy” and “cultural patents,” derived from intellectual property rights, international human rights, and cultural property regimes. Second, it considers dewesternizing restructuring emerging from the creation of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, a database of information on yogic practice and medicine, which uses non-Western classification systems to interrupt the legal and economic structures through which patents and copyrights are enunciated. Together, these anticolonial strategies force intellectual property rights regimes to integrate Otherness, making space for the recognition of Indian agency in knowledge production.
@article{vats_disowning_2016,
	title = {({Dis})owning {Bikram}: {Decolonizing} vernacular and dewesternizing restructuring in the yoga wars},
	volume = {13},
	issn = {1479-1420},
	shorttitle = {({Dis})owning {Bikram}},
	url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2016.1151536},
	doi = {10.1080/14791420.2016.1151536},
	abstract = {Undertaking analysis in the area of critical yoga studies, this article identifies two strategies of anticolonial resistance to Bikram Choudhury's copyrighting of a sequence of twenty-six yoga poses. First, it examines decolonial vernacular, which contests Western commodification of yoga through the use and misuse of terms and phrases, such as “yoga piracy” and “cultural patents,” derived from intellectual property rights, international human rights, and cultural property regimes. Second, it considers dewesternizing restructuring emerging from the creation of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, a database of information on yogic practice and medicine, which uses non-Western classification systems to interrupt the legal and economic structures through which patents and copyrights are enunciated. Together, these anticolonial strategies force intellectual property rights regimes to integrate Otherness, making space for the recognition of Indian agency in knowledge production.},
	number = {4},
	urldate = {2017-03-26},
	journal = {Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies},
	author = {Vats, Anjali},
	month = oct,
	year = {2016},
	keywords = {0.Discussed in Workshop, 2.DL\&R participant publications, 5.DL\&R workshop syllabus readings, Yoga, critical race IP, critical rhetorics of race, decoloniality, dewesternization, intellectual property, race, rhetoric, transnational rhetoric},
	pages = {325--345},
}

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