Graduate Thesis
My dissertation project examines the labor employed in the contemporary production of Yoga in South India through sustained ethnographic research. I will engage in participant observation and conduct interviews with people in various roles in the Yoga economy, including Yoga teachers, students, cooks, cleaning staff and other laborers, in ashrams, Yoga centers and resorts. Building on anthropological critiques of global capitalism and its impact on gendered dimensions of labor, this project will offer an ethnographic perspective on patterns of relations intrinsic to the production and consumption of a globalized spiritual practice. Through research in sites in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, this work will address both the intimate spaces and local productions of Yoga.