Search Results (6)

Religious freedom, the management of religious diversity, and interreligious dialogue are emerging and closely interconnected phenomena. In the context of increasing religious pluralism, policymakers, religious institutions, and other civil society actors and organizations face challenges, particularly as they strive to legitimize their religious, social, and legal positions in contemporary societies. Drawing on 47 interviews with policymakers (N° 10), privileged informants (N° 15), and religious (N° 18) and interreligious leaders (N° 4), conducted as part of the Project Urban Governance of Religious Diversity (2023–2025), this article examines interreligious dialogue, as a social practice shaped by national legal frameworks on religious freedom and local governance mechanisms regulating religious diversity. More specifically, we analyze the three most relevant themes that emerged from the interview material: first, the limitations and opportunities within the current legislative framework, particularly in relation to local administrations’ efforts to complement national regulations and support religious communities in innovative ways; second, critiques of top-down initiatives on interreligious dialogue, wherein institutional priorities sometimes overshadow the voices and needs of religious groups; and finally, the impact of global events, such as the ongoing genocide in Palestine, on interreligious dialogue and established relationships among different faith communities. The article concludes by summarizing the main findings and outlining potential avenues for future research. Full article

Modern postural yoga, a body–mind practice developed in the last hundred and fifty years at the intersection of therapeutic, fitness and spiritual logics, is experiencing an unprecedented worldwide diffusion, including in Italy. This article, relying on discourse analysis of three yoga manuals and twenty-seven biographical interviews of yoga practitioners, aims at exploring yoga’s positioning in the Italian context, with particular attention paid to its practical–discursive construction as a contemporary form of spiritualities of the body, defined as spiritualities oriented towards practitioners’ ‘unmediated’ relationship with the sacred and the cultivation of well-being through “body work”. More specifically, the article investigates the “cultural pragmatics” of a selection of Italian yoga manuals, scripted performances (regarding health and spirituality) capable of directly influencing and impacting practitioners’ “social imaginaries” of yoga in their everyday practice. In so doing, it also contributes to discussing the circular and reciprocal relationship between “discourses” and “practices” within specific contexts of practice, such as yoga classes and teacher training courses. The article concludes by emphasizing which conceptualizations of health and spirituality are promoted, transmitted and in turn embodied during yoga practice, the role of health discourses and pedagogies in the professionalization of yoga and the growing practical–discursive construction of the yoga teacher as a spiritual director and health expert. Full article

This article dialogues with “yoga studies” and the social scientific study of religion (e.g., the sociology of religion and religious studies), arguing that both substantially neglect a thorough discussion of scholars’ engagement in the field despite being largely composed by “scholar–practitioners”. This is problematic from a methodological point of view as well as from an ethical perspective. Moving in the interstices between biographical reflections, critical social theory and methodological notes on embodied ethnographic research, I self-reflexively discuss my “shifting positionality” from devoted yoga practitioner to critical scholar, mapping the most significant turning points that I encountered during my research on the pedagogies of modern forms of yoga (2017–current). In so doing, I also discuss my overall positioning, participation and ethical reflections in relation to the main object of inquiry of my research. From this, I posit that the positions of scholar and practitioner are, at least in some cases, incommensurable, while the scholar–practitioner may also foster a unique way of knowing based on reflexivity as a living engagement and on the linkages between theory and practice from which there is much to gain. Full article

In this article, we design a preliminary genealogy of yoga in Italy, showing its positioning within the growing field of “contemporary spiritualities”, their premodern, esoteric and theosophical roots and Catholicism. Our main claim is that yoga and contemporary spiritualities as practiced in XXI-century Italy are neither entirely new nor are they clearly an alternative to more established religions. We rely on the methods and tools of a “discursive study of religion” approach to unpack the intricacies, genealogical roots and definitional boundaries that yoga, contemporary spiritualities and religion in Italy share. More specifically, we question the novelty of contemporary spiritualities in Italy, unveiling some of their esoteric, theosophical and anthroposophical roots, presenting, in turn, a preliminary genealogy of yoga in Italy, discussing its positioning amid Catholicism and contemporary spiritualities. We conclude by reflecting on the creation, use and limits of sociocultural theorizing about interpreting and understanding the spiritual and religious field, with a specific emphasis on the overlapping and porous boundaries between the concepts of religion, contemporary spiritualities, Western esotericism and modern yoga. Full article

In this article I discuss how illegal substance consumption can act as a tool of resistance and as an identity signifier for young people through a covert ethnographic case study of a working-class subculture in Genoa, North-Western Italy. I develop my argument through a coupled reading of the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and more recent post-structural developments in the fields of youth studies and cultural critical criminology. I discuss how these apparently contrasting lines of inquiry, when jointly used, shed light on different aspects of the cultural practices of specific subcultures contributing to reflect on the study of youth cultures and subcultures in today’s society and overcoming some of the ‘dead ends’ of the opposition between the scholarly categories of subculture and post-subculture. In fact, through an analysis of the sites, socialization processes, and hedonistic ethos of the subculture, I show how within a single subculture there could be a coexistence of: resistance practices and subversive styles of expression as the CCCS research program posits; and signs of fragmentary and partial aesthetic engagements devoid of political contents and instead primarily oriented towards the affirmation of the individual, as argued by the adherents of the post-subcultural position. Full article

In this paper, I discuss the role of spiritual seekers’ embodiment of karma, jnana and bhakti yoga(s) in the context of a neo-Vedantic, non-monastic ashram located in southern-Europe, an ashram I regard as an example of modern denominational yoga. Methodologically, I rely on an ex-post multi-sensory autoethnography, involving apprenticeship and full participation immersion, and I share with physical cultural studies a commitment to empirically contextualise the study of the moving body. Theoretically, I employ Shilling’s theory of the body as a multi-dimensional medium for the constitution of society, enriched by other theoretical and sensitising concepts. The findings presented in this paper show that the body of the seekers/devotees can be simultaneously framed as the source of, the location for and the means to, the constitution of the social, cultural and spiritual life of the ashram. As I discuss the development, interiorisation and implementation of serving, contemplative and devotional dispositions, which together form the scheme of dispositions that shape a yogic habitus, I also consider the ties between the specific instances under study and the more general spiritual habitus. The paper ends by broadening its focus in relation to the inclusion of Asian practices and traditions into the Western landscape. Full article