Yogafobi : en diskurskritisk analys av tidningarna Dagen och Världen idag av dess kritik mot yoga i Sverige utifrån historiebruk

Sammanfattning

This Master’s thesis is a study of the existence of yogaphobia in the swedish debate between the years 2012 and 2020 concerning the religious nature yoga. Via deconstructing misconceptions of yoga from a historical standpoint combined with the use of critical discourse analysis, the thesis explores the arguments found in news articles and submitters from the swedish newspapers Dagen and Världen idag to see if the source material’s discourse on yoga corresponds to yogaphobia. With the aid of history use the thesis underlines the issues a yogaphobic view brings to the debate, what implications yogaphobia has on the understanding of yoga and the practice’s place in swedish culture. The relevance of the study is thus to shift from a polarized debate, driven by religious fundamentalism and orientalism, and to introduce a revisioned understanding of yoga based on current data in the field of yogic research to avoid what has been named ”The yoga culture wars” within a swedish context.