Joseph Alter

Joseph S. Alter is an American medical anthropologist known for his research into the modern practice of yoga as exercise, his 2004 book Yoga in Modern India, and the physical and medical culture of South Asia.

Biography

Joseph S. Alter was born in Landour, Uttarakhand, in the north of India.{{cite web |title=Joseph S. Alter |url=https://penguin.co.in/author/joseph-s-alter/ |publisher=Penguin India |access-date=9 February 2019 |date=2019}} He gained his PhD in 1989 from the University of California at Berkeley.{{cite web |title=Prof. Joseph S. Alter |url=http://www.modernyogaresearch.org/people/a-b/prof-joseph-s-alter/ |website=Modern Yoga Research |access-date=9 February 2019}}

He is a professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.{{cite book |title=Yoga in Modern India The Body between Science and Philosophy {{!}} Joseph S. Alter |date=19 September 2004 |url=https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7886.html |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=9780691118741 |access-date=9 February 2019}}

He is known for arguing, in his own words, that "The invention of postural yoga in late nineteenth- and early twentieth century India is directly linked to the reinvention of sport in the context of colonial modernity and also to the increasing use of physical fitness in schools, gymnasiums, clinics, and public institutions."{{cite web |last1=Alter |first1=Joseph |title=Yoga, Bodybuilding, and Wrestling: Metaphysical Fitness |url=https://www.asanajournal.com/yoga-bodybuilding-wrestling-metaphysical-fitness/ |publisher=Asana International Yoga Journal |access-date=9 February 2019 |date=2017}} from {{cite book |title=Yoga: The Art of Transformation |url=http://asia.si.edu/support/yoga/cataloguepreview.asp |editor=Debra Diamond |date=2013 |publisher=Arthur M Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution}}{{efn|Other authors who share this approach to yoga as exercise include Norman Sjoman and Mark Singleton.}} Alter further suggests in his Yoga in Modern India that "Yoga was modernized, medicalized, and transformed [by Yogendra, Kuvalayananda and others] into a system of physical culture."{{cite book |last=Jain |first=Andrea R. |author-link=Andrea Jain |title=Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iucwBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT54 |year=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-939026-7 |page=54}} quoting Alter 2004, p. 10 He calls the fusion of yoga's subtle body and its yogic physiology with modern anatomy and physiology a "mistake".

Reception

= ''Yoga in Modern India'' =

File:Swami Vivekananda-1893-09-signed.jpg brought yoga to the West in the 1890s, but without asanas.]]

Alter's 2004 book Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy examines three main themes in the history and practice of yoga in the 20th century: Swami Kuvalayananda's medicalisation of yoga;{{sfn|Alter|2004|pp=73-108}} naturopathic yoga;{{sfn|Alter|2004|pp=109–141}} and the influence of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on the development of yoga as exercise.{{sfn|Alter|2004|pp=142–177}}

Stuart Ray Sarbacker, reviewing the book in History of Religions, found the book illuminating on the historical background of yoga, complete with "acerbic asides, including several humorous references to Yoga Journal and its sociological and ideological placement in American consumer society." In his view, the examples were well-researched and brought to life with suitable photographs.{{cite journal |last1=Sarbacker |first1=Stuart Ray |title=Joseph S. Alter, Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy |url=https://www.academia.edu/3839467 |journal=History of Religions |pages=278–281 |date=2007|volume=46 |issue=3 |doi=10.1086/513263 }}

Cecilia Van Hollen, for The Journal of Asian Studies, writes that the book aims to correct the popular tendency to imagine an Indian, spiritual yoga opposed to a corrupt, materialistic American yoga, by examining what Indian texts from the 20th century say about yoga, and constructing a social history of the subject. In her view, what emerges is yoga "as a transnational system of knowledge and practice that emerged in the interstices of colonialism, anticolonial nationalism, and postcolonial Hindu nationalism."{{cite journal |last1=Van Hollen |first1=Cecilia |title=Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy. By Joseph S. Alter. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. |journal=The Journal of Asian Studies |date=May 2007 |volume=66 |issue=2 |pages=562–564 |jstor=20203182 |doi=10.1017/s0021911807000757|s2cid=162812282 }}

The yoga scholar Mark Singleton calls the book one of the main (early) studies of the development of modern yoga, but not explaining either why asanas were absent at the start of the 20th century, or how they became rehabilitated. Singleton however endorses Alter's methodology, namely to examine modern yoga's truth claims critically while studying the context and reasons for those claims.{{cite book | last=Singleton | first=Mark |author-link=Mark Singleton (yoga scholar) | title=Yoga Body : the origins of modern posture practice | url=https://archive.org/details/yogabodyoriginsm00sing | url-access=limited | publisher=Oxford University Press | year=2010 | isbn=978-0-19-539534-1 | oclc=318191988 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/yogabodyoriginsm00sing/page/n14 4], 1 16}} The scholar Andrea R. Jain broadly agrees, noting that posture "only became prominent in modern yoga in the early twentieth century as a result of the dialogical exchanges between Indian reformers and nationalists and Americans and Europeans interested in health and fitness".{{cite journal | last=Jain | first=Andrea R. |author-link=Andrea Jain | title=The Malleability of Yoga: A Response to Christian and Hindu Opponents of the Popularization of Yoga | journal=Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies | publisher=Butler University, Irwin Library | volume=25 | issue=1 | date=2012| doi=10.7825/2164-6279.1510| doi-access=free }}

The book won the 2006 Association for Asian Studies' Coomaraswamy Book Prize.

=''Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism''=

File:Gandhi suit.jpg's obsession with food and sex with his idea of truth. ]]

Alter's Gandhi's Body connected Gandhi's practices of fasting, diet, and exercises with biopolitics and biopower. Alter explains Gandhi's lifelong obsession with food and sex as a way to reach his religious idea of Truth.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2U_SqENK3T8C&q=sex |title=Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism |first=Joseph |last=Alter|date=7 June 2011 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011 |isbn=978-0812204742}} The American Historical Review said that Alter's book helps researchers study Gandhi's biopolitics without falling into the trap of seeing "faddish" tendencies in him. It said that Alter offers original interpretations of Gandhi's practices, including his sexual experiments.{{Cite web|url=https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/106/5/1784/191082|title= The American Historical Review, Volume 106, Issue 5, December 2001, Pages 1784–1785|website=academic.oup.com}}

Notes

References

Works

{{cite book | last=Alter | first=Joseph | title=Pehlwani : identity, ideology and the body of the Indian wrestler |publisher=University of California, Berkeley (thesis) |year=1989 |author-mask=0 |ref=none}}
{{cite book | last=Alter | first=Joseph | title=Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press | year=1999 |author-mask=0 |ref=none}}
{{cite book | last=Alter | first=Joseph | title=Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press | year=2000 | isbn=0812204743 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2U_SqENK3T8C |author-mask=0 |ref=none}}
{{cite book | last=Alter | first=Joseph | title=The wrestler's body : identity and ideology in north India |publisher=University of California Press |year=2003 |author-mask=0 |ref=none}}
{{cite book | last=Alter | first=Joseph | title=Yoga in modern India : the body between science and philosophy | publisher=Princeton University Press | year=2004 | isbn=0691118744 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o6anlz6i71oC&pg=PP1 |author-mask=0}}
{{cite book | last=Alter | first=Joseph | title=Asian Medicine and Globalization |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press | year=2005 |author-mask=0 |ref=none}}
{{cite book | last=Alter | first=Joseph | title=Moral Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India |publisher=Penguin | year=2011 |author-mask=0 |ref=none}} {{ISBN|978-0-14-341741-5}}.