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Introduction : The politics of culture and medicine -- Āyurvedic acupuncture--transnational nationalism : ambivalence about the origin and authenticity of medical knowledge / Joseph S. Alter -- Deviant airs in "traditional" Chinese medicine / Vivienne Lo and Sylvia Schroer -- Reinventing traditional medicine : method, institutional change, and the manufacture of drugs and medication in late colonial India / S. Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina -- Health and medicine in British India and the Dutch Indies : a comparative study / Deepak Kumar -- Nationalism, transnationalism, and the politics of "traditional" Indian medicine for HIV/AIDS / Cecilia Van Hollen -- Mapping science and nation in China / Nancy N. Chen -- Sanskrit gynecologies in postmodernity : the commodization of Indian medicine in alternative medical and new-age discourses on women's health / Martha Ann Selby -- China reconstructs : cosmetic surgery and nationalism in the reform era / Susan Brownell

Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Preface; Part I. Bal Kand / The Book of Childhood; Chapter 1. Dil Das-Enslaved Heart; Chapter 2. Woodstock School: Protestants, Peasants, and Ethics; Chapter 3. A Tiger's Tale; Part II. Aranya Kand / The Forest Book; Chapter 4. Coapman's Fall; Chapter 5. Hearts of Darkness; Chapter 6. Land Masters: Purebred History; Part III. Shram Kand / The Book of Labor; Chapter 7. Dairying: An Untold Story; Chapter 8. Slippage: Out of Work, Through Hunting; Chapter 9. The Terms of Friendship; Part IV. Uttarkhand / Himalaya; Chapter 10. The Heart of the Matter

AbstractThis article is focused on problematic distinctions of difference among animals in the lineage of great apes. It combines several theoretical perspectives on evolutionary relationships, technological innovation, the development of body parts as tools, and a semiotic interpretation of what André Leroi‐Gourhan called technicity. Foundational questions in social theory are developed using biosemiotics, particularly as concerns a materialist understanding of religion and the magical aspects of cultural representation. This, it is argued, provides a framework for theorizing social history in terms of real ecological relations, embodied meaning, and the transference of meaning onto objects. Understood semiotically, the material history of Hominidae, encompassing animals with different kinds of motility, dexterity, and techno‐semiotic orientations towards the world, is inclusive and relational rather than exclusively anthropocentric, as is the case for social theory based on the artifice of language and articulations of belief, creativity, and cultural distinction that are thought to be distinctive of the genus Homo.

Abstract
Drawing on Weber's classic study of religion, salvation, and the motivation to be a successful capitalist, this article problematizes the relationship among competition and the embodiment of success in the practice of yoga in modern India. Contemporary postural yoga has been popularized in ways that fetishize the body and the relation between the body and enlightenment. It has become a sign of self-realization in a mode that reflects the possibility of transcendence. So-called godmen in India, who embody this possibility, popularize yoga in different ways. Contrasting Swami Sivananda's brand of twentieth-century yoga in the context of Nehruvian modernity with Baba Ramdev's yoga as an expression of free market religious nationalism, this article examines the work that embodied competition does in different ideological contexts.

An anthropological perspective on biosemiosis raises important questions about sociality, ecology and communication in contexts that encompass many different forms of life. As such, these questions are important for understanding the problem of religion in relation to social theory, as well as understanding our collective, biosocial animal history and the development of human culture, as an articulation of power, on an evolutionary time scale. The argument presented here is that biosemiotics provides a framework for extending Talal Asad's genealogical critique of religion to culture more broadly, providing an important perspective on power in relation to communication and in relation to the 'supernatural' attributes of language in a multi-species environment of signs and sign relationships.

AbstractIn the view of many people, Baba Ramdev embodies the practice of modern yoga in twenty-first century India. A tremendously successful entrepreneur, infamous 'godman' with political ties, and a highly visible TV personality, he is also a vocal supporter ofpahalwani(Indian wrestling) as a way of life and of wrestling in India as a national sport. Beyond sponsorship of tournaments and support for a new professional wrestling league, he promotes a form of modern, nationalistic masculinity that draws on the 'ideals' of yoga, competitive athleticism, 'Hindu' conceptions of embodied power, and fetishized Vedic asceticism. In complex and often contradictory ways, Baba Ramdev's embodiment of these ideals shapes the bio-morality of wrestlers as they train, compete, and endorse his products. Critically analysed in terms of gender theory, his sponsorship of wrestling belies deep contradictions in religious nationalism, middle-class modernity, and in the gendered morality of both wrestling as a sport and yoga as a form of practice.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a staunch advocate for nature cure. He promoted the use of earth, air, sunlight, water and diet not only to treat medical problems but also as an integral feature of a programme for comprehensive public health reform. As such, Gandhi conceptualised healthcare as an encompassing, biomoral project designed to produce Swaraj in the broadest sense of the term. Nature cure was, in other words, fundamental to sarvodaya as a form of praxis. This essay focusses on Gandhi's establishment of Nisargopchar, a nature cure ashram in the Uruli Kanchan village, and the conceptualisation of the ashram within the framework of the constructive programme and rural development more broadly. This focus not only highlights fundamental tensions and contradictions of social class within the Gandhian project but also sheds light on the way in which Gandhi's vision of biomoral reform provides a perspective on how these contradictions and tensions, which are especially visible in contemporary India, reflect larger, more encompassing global problems of consumption, development and progress measured in terms of material wealth.

Nationalism can be closely associated with powerful feelings about the relationship among cultural heritage, identity and embodied experience. Almost by definition this relationship is expressed in terms of continuity, distinctiveness and the purity of tradition, to an extent that nationalistic sentiments can be said to be 'visceral.' Contrasting the way in which the body is implicated in nature cure and Ayurveda, two forms of medicine closely linked to nationalism in India, this article presents an analytical perspective on the embodiment of viscerality to provide a more nuanced understanding of how these experiences blur distinctions of cultural continuity and how an ecology of the body shapes the cultural politics of tradition in India.

Sinister Yogis—in the Eye of the Beholder. David Gordon White. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 376pp. ISBN: 978-0226895147 (pbk). $25.