Orientalism and Wellness in the United States

Abstract

This article explores how consumer practices tether Orientalism to wellness. Relying on ethnographic research, the author uncovers how racialization and racialized expressions of gender are produced by and through performative and discursive practices of wellness. Such practices, which are also sometimes described as mindfulness techniques, encourage participants to understand wellness as a state of mind wherein if a person mirrors the behavior or speech of what qualifies as wellness, then they will also become well themselves. Drawing on methods from critical consumer studies as well as critical race feminist theory, the author argues that contemporary wellness practices expose somatic, rather than literary, forms of Orientalism.