Abstract
The chapter deals with the social construction of the menstrual experience through a new discourse created, developed and disseminated in the first Yoga for Women course in Israel. Based on an ethnographic study of this course which the author conducted as part of her Master’s thesis, the paper focuses on three key narratives about menstruation pertaining to issues central to the life of middle-class Jewish Israeli women. The new discourse is described as a hybrid in that it combines a bio-medical discourse with New Age spiritual ideas and establishes a woman’s body as an authoritative arena of self-knowledge. The chapter also presents the ways in which social power bases have succeeded in framing the boundaries of the new menstruation discourse, tempering it to fit the hegemonic discourse in Israeli society about women’s body.
The original version of this chapter was revised. The erratum to this chapter is available at: DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-53913-7_13
An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53913-7_13
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Rosen Even-Zohar, C. (2017). The Menstrual Discourse in Israeli Yoga for Women: Narrative and Ritual, Agency and Control. In: Feraro, S., Lewis, J. (eds) Contemporary Alternative Spiritualities in Israel. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53913-7_10
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