Patanjali to Lululemon's Gospel of Sweat: Yoga's Transformation from Identity Movement to $60 billion Market

• In Event: 340 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Paper Session. New Research on Consumers and Consumption

Abstract

Lately there has been much interest from scholars in the process whereby social movements lead to the creation of new markets. However, two aspects of this process remain understudied. First, while movements that have leveraged moral capital to achieve their aims have been looked at, those which need to strip such capital to commodify social and cultural practices have received less attention. Second, scholars have tended to focus almost exclusively on the central movement often at the expense of exploring the interaction across parallel movements and how they feed on each other. In this article, we address these aspects of social movements. Specifically, we look at the dramatic transformation of yoga from a spiritual and even religious practice – almost entirely based on meditation and repudiation of conspicuous consumption and vanity – to a $60 billion lifestyle market thriving on body image. We identify and elaborate on three distinct mechanisms that underpin this transformation of yoga. First, we explain how selective desacralization stripped yoga of its religious baggage while maintaining certain rituals and symbols for a veneer of authenticity. Second, we describe how syncretization rendered an austere and moral movement compatible with the excesses of consumer culture. Finally, yoga was de-essentialized cleansing it of its philosophical essence and making it part of the larger fitness field.

Authors

• Deborah Miriam Brown, University of Cambridge

• Shaz Ansari, University of Cambridge

• Kamal Munir, University of Cambridge