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文化人类学家的民族历史和档案研究，研究瑜伽作为印度后殖民民族主义政府支持和支持的健康科学的社会历史。 该项目将分析瑜伽从体现印度教意识的哲学转变为当代印度明确的反殖民、现代、“世俗”健康科学的过程。 位于印度的瑜伽实验档案文件将被用来研究瑜伽是如何成为西方生物医学研究的对象的。 当代研究者和医生的观点的解释将根据历史材料进行。 这项研究将挑战瑜伽是一种永恒的、神秘的传统的观点，提供有关瑜伽作为政治上的科学知识的信息。 这对于我们理解民族主义、健康与科学知识文化建设之间的关系具有重要意义。

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.