Tracing an American Yoga: Identity and Cross-Cultural Transaction

This dissertation looks at the creative identity of an American yoga, both rooted in its Indic origins and radically transformed in its U.S. manifestations. It traces the broad historical transactions of yoga in terms of East and West, Secular and Religious, authenticity and idealized conception, as well as provides a critical historical genealogy of Anusara and Sridaiva yoga. Furthermore, the project relates yoga to the identity, power, and knowledge dynamics of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern histories and interpretations of yoga and Tantra, multiple theoretical discourses, and the embodied practices of individuals within Indian and American contexts. I argue that there is a unique and polysemous yogic identity in America, and that this identity has developed from a messy process of transaction between Indian and Western modes of being and knowing. Furthermore, the current Americanized culture of yoga brings along with it narratives of specific value. American yoga displays a particularly consumptive quality of yogic lifestyle that reflects a cultural atmosphere of reinvention and a merging of profit and personal purpose. American yoga’s identity today is entrepreneurial, branded, business oriented, and marketed for consumption. This dissertation shows how the American yogic identity is in flux, continuously fracturing and multiplying into various and novel understandings that relate to yoga’s past and to the market value for today’s American consumer. It examines the moving nature of yoga in the American landscape as what Jared Farmer calls a “center of creativity” and as a display of excess and choice. The discussion of yoga is further located in John Friend’s styles of yoga and/or lifestyle practices, Anusara and Sridaiva, as they both redefine and further remove yoga from established Indian markers of identity. My locations as American yogi, as comparativist, as ethnographer, and as a Bachelor of Science in Advertising and Marketing also situate this analysis.

Towards the Consideration of the U.S. Community College Model to Address the Need for Higher Education Reforms in Ghana

ABSTRACT The higher education systems throughout the continent of Africa are undergoing unprecedented challenges and are considered in crisis. African countries, including Ghana, all have in common ties to their colonial legacy whereby they are confronted with weak policies put in place by their colonizers. Having gained their independence, Africans should now take responsibility for the task of reforming their higher education system. To date, nothing substantial has been accomplished, with serious implications for weakening and damaging the structures of the foundation of their educational systems. This qualitative, single case study utilized a postcolonial theory-critical pedagogy framework, providing guidance for coming to grips with the mindset posed by Ghana's colonial heritage in the postcolonial era, especially in terms of its damaging effects on Ghana's higher education system. The study explores alternative pathways for secondary school students to transition to tertiary education--a problematic transition that currently hinders open access to all and equality in educational opportunity, resulting in a tremendous pool of discontinued students. This transitional problem is directly related to Ghana's crisis in higher education with far reaching consequences. The alternative pathway considered in this study is an adaptation of the U.S. community college model or an integration of its applicable aspects into the current structures of the higher education system already in place. In-depth interviews were conducted with 5 Ghanaian professors teaching at community colleges in the United States, 5 Ghanaian professors teaching at universities in Ghana, and 2 educational consultants from the Ghanaian Ministry of Education. Based on their perspectives of the current state of Ghanaian higher education, analyzed in terms of pedagogy, structure/infrastructure, and curriculum, the participants provided their perceptions of salient aspects of the U.S. community college model that would be applicable to Ghana's situation, along with other recommendations. Access to all, including equality of educational opportunity, was considered essential, followed by adaptability, affordability, practicality, and quality of curriculum content and delivery. Canada's successful adaptation of the U.S. model was also discussed. Findings can help guide consideration of alternative pathways to higher education in Ghana and Africa as a whole.