Front and Back Covers,Volume 33, Number 4. August 2017

Front and back cover caption, volume 33 issue 4 Front cover A depiction of the West African storm goddess Oya at Oyotunji Village in South Carolina, 2011. In parts of the US South where people are confronted by the risk of hurricanes, and where Vodou and hoodoo are practised, this deity has become an important part of religious life and worship. During the yearly hurricane season in New Orleans, rituals are held and sacrifices offered to appease the spirits of the storm. In this issue, Maria Elisabeth Thiele considers the coping strategies and the cultural creativity of the most vulnerable (African American religious or spiritual) communities in New Orleans today and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Back cover: YOGA A student at a yoga school in Mysore (in the southern Indian state of Karnataka) practises the techniques of asana (poses or postures which are combined with focused gaze and patterned breathing). Its practitioners insist that these are not just physical manipulations of the body but rather a form of spiritual exercise through which it is possible to train, to cultivate and ultimately to transform the self. In this issue, Jack Sidnell considers these techniques as a form of ethical practice as conceptualized in the later work of Michel Foucault. Foucault suggested that ethics be understood in terms of the self's relation to itself and the various methods, practices and techniques by which persons attempt to cultivate themselves in relation to a teleological model. At the school, and within the tradition of Ashtanga yoga as developed by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, students begin by learning basic techniques in order to increase flexibility, strengthen the body and purify it of toxins. With diligent practice, they come to experience other dimensions of yoga. Specifically, practitioners report experiences of self‐ effacement and ego dissolution. They believe this is induced through the training involved in performing increasingly difficult forms of asana such as the one pictured here, called Viranchyasana A. Virancha or Viranchi is one of the names of Brahma, the Supreme Being. In this pose, from the third series of asana collectively known as Sthira Bhaga (‘strength and grace’), the practitioner must first place one leg in lotus and then place the other behind the head while breathing calmly. The practitioner pictured here (Renato Libonati, aka Kranti) is an experienced senior student who has achieved the highest level of accreditation possible at the school in Mysore.