Borayin Larios - Labels and Boxes - The Category of the Scholar-Practitioner in Yoga Studies

Borayin Larios

Labels and Boxes - The Category of the Scholar-Practitioner in Yoga Studies

This talk explores the notion of “scholar-practitioners” of yoga in a globalized context. It will explore how scholars situate themselves with regard to their personal practice and the various traditions, spiritual movements, and institutions of yoga, when they take yoga as a subject of their academic work. How and what kind of yoga-related knowledge is produced within academic institutions? How is this knowledge received by practitioners and other stakeholders? What are the socio-political consequences, and which intersectional dynamics are at play in the production of this knowledge? The talk will interrogate why the label of “scholar-practitioner” exists, and what can we learn from this type of categorization. It will examine how the statuses of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ are negotiated within different academic cultures across the world, the variety of disciplinary and personal positions that are deployed within these frameworks, and the broader socio-political consequences of doing so.

Dr. Borayin Larios teaches at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies of the University of Vienna and is assistant to the Chair of South Asian Studies. He holds an MA in Religious Studies from the Universities of Fribourg and Lausanne, Switzerland and a PhD in classical Indology from Heidelberg University in Germany. He authored ‘Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra’ published by DeGruyter Open Access in 2017. Dr. Larios uses an interdisciplinary methodological approach, combining cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology to understand the contemporary religious traditions of India. His main regional focus is in Maharashtra. He has also been a practitioner of yoga and meditation since he was a child.

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