Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2013

“It’s time to give back!” Competitive charity in today’s global yoga Anne Koch (University of Munich)
Date: Jan. 9th, 2014 / Time: 17:30-19:00
Room: 10-301, Sophia University

Recent developments in global yoga show a tendency towards social activism in the charity market. In this context the talk will examine the Yoga Aid World Challenge 2012 (founded in 2007 by the Sydney-based couple Eriko Kinoshita and Clive Mayhew). During this 24-h-event yoga is practiced across 25 countries worldwide following the course of the sun. Japan was the third strongest country in rising donations. The underlying event-narrative “to give back” indicates the motivation for partaking in the event and sets the framework of the action as an intercultural obligation. Corresponding social networks and digital media strongly promote the joy of practicing and equate the meaning of life with giving. Competition stands out as an unusual strategy in the predominantly gentle type of modern postural yoga. The talk will analyze the communication and interaction of this event and align the politics of affect of competition, gratitude and a sense of obligation with contemporary spirituality.

Anne Koch is Adjunct Assistant Professor in Cultural Study of Religion at Munich University, Germany. Her main areas of research are contemporary spirituality, alternative healing and economics of religion. Since 2012 she conducts fieldwork on cosmopolitan spirituality at Anglophone yoga institutions in Tokyo. Her books deal with an epistemology of the foreign, body knowledge and the economics of religion. Anne Koch has published numerous articles and is book review editor of the Journal of Religion in Europe and a member of the program group “Religion in Europe” in the American Academy of Religion.

Lecture in English / No registration required ________________________________________
Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2013

Emotions:
Are They the Key to Culture?

Dr. James M. Jasper
Graduate Center of the City University of New York January 14, 2014
18:30-20:00 (Tuesday)
Sophia University Yotsuya Campus, Building 2, Room 508

The cultural turn in the social sciences centers on meaning. Tools such as identities, codes, narratives, and frames have been deployed to understand human action. But all this work rests on the fact that these carriers are meaningful for people. But how? Meaning is more than mere intelligibility. To understand its resonance, we have to see how emotions of various sorts direct and focus our attention, making us care about some things and not about others.

James M. Jasper is a sociologist best known for his research on theories of culture and politics. Not only is he a specialist on nuclear protest movements from a cultural view (The Art of Moral Protest. The University of Chicago Press) but has done in-depth research on energy policies in France, Sweden, and the United States. (Nuclear Politics. Princeton University Press) and the role of emotions in politics (Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. University of Chicago Press).

Lecture in English / No registration required Please contact David H. Slater (d-slater@sophia.ac.jp) for any questions.

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