Laying claim to yoga: Intellectual property, cultural rights, and the digital archive in India.

摘要

This dissertation explores how intangible cultural knowledge is managed through legal and quasi-legal forms by focusing on one key mechanism - intellectual property rights. The project addresses how proprietary claims to yoga intersect with the transnational circulation and commodification of this South Asian traditional health system as well as the resultant ramifications this has for specific communities of practice. Ethnographic fieldwork is focused in India, but includes research segments in California, Hong Kong, and Switzerland.;In the following manuscript, "transnational commercial yoga" is offered as an example of the rapid transformation that forms of cultural knowledge undergo as they are increasingly offered in commoditized form to consumers in affluent and cosmopolitan markets. Two US federal district court cases, Bikram v. Schreiber-Morrison and Open Source Yoga Unity v. Bikram, serve as the catalyst triggering open conflict concerning the proprietary nature of yogic knowledge. In researching the resulting dispute, two sets of reactions are tracked. The first are those of a group of transnational yoga schools, which have also adopted proprietary claims to their signature styles of practice. The second is that of the Indian central government, which is concerned with what it perceives to be the on-going piracy of its national-cultural heritage. Specifically, the research focus here is upon the crafting of a national claim to yoga and the attempt to protect this claim through the construction of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. In tracing these relationships I investigate how not only yoga, but also conceptions of ownership and property rights, are contested and reconfigured.;In exploring the emerging consciousness of cultural knowledge as a legal entity that can be effectively managed through intellectual property claims this study addresses two fundamental and related questions: What are the unique characteristics of the contemporary moment that have made it possible to conceive of cultural practices, like yoga, as property? And, conversely: If other types of information and knowledge-making activities, such as writing or scientific discovery, can become the subject of ownership, what is it about yoga that makes so many people think it cannot be treated in a similar manner?