Indian State Nationalism and the Science of Yoga: A Cultural Analysis of Biomedical Research on Indiana Physiology; 1900-1998

该项目涉及匹兹堡大学一位文化人类学家的民族史和档案研究，他研究瑜伽作为一门健康科学的社会史，受到印度后殖民民族主义政府的青睐和支持。该项目将分析瑜伽在当代印度从一种体现印度教意识的哲学转变为一种明确的反殖民主义、现代、“世俗”的健康科学的过程。位于印度的瑜伽实验的档案文件将被用来研究瑜伽是如何成为西方式生物医学研究的对象的。将根据历史材料对当代研究人员和内科医生的观点进行解释。这项研究将挑战瑜伽是一种永恒的、神秘的传统的观点，它将提供有关瑜伽作为政治背景的科学知识的构建信息。这将对我们理解民族主义、健康与科学知识文化建设的关系作出重要贡献。

This project involves the ethnohistorical and archival research of a cultural anthropologist from the University of Pittsburgh, studying the social history of yoga as a health science favored and supported by the Indian post-colonial nationalist government. The project will analyze the process of yoga's transformation from a philosophy of embodied Hindu consciousness to an expressly anticolonial, modern, `secular` science of health in contemporary India. Archival documents on yoga experimentation situated in India will be used to study the way in which yoga has been made the object of Western-style biomedical research. An interpretation of the views of contemporary researchers and physicians will be undertaken in light of the historical material. The research will challenge the view that yoga is a timeless, mystical tradition by providing information on its construction as politically situated scientific knowledge. It will make an important contribution to our understanding of the relation between nationalism, health, and the cultural construction of scientific knowledge.