Martial Arts As Embodied Knowledge

This landmark work provides a wide-ranging scholarly consideration of the traditional Asian martial arts. Most of the contributors to the volume are practitioners of the martial arts, and all are keenly aware that these traditions now exist in a transnational context. The book's cutting-edge research includes ethnography and approaches from film, literature, performance, and theater studies. Three central aspects emerge from this book: martial arts as embodied fantasy, as a culturally embedded form of self-cultivation, and as a continuous process of identity formation. Contributors explore several popular and highbrow cultural considerations, including the career of Bruce Lee, Chinese wuxia films, and Don DeLillo's novel Running Dog. Ethnographies explored describe how the social body trains in martial arts and how martial arts are constructed in transnational training. Ultimately, this academic study of martial arts offers a focal point for new understandings of cultural and social beliefs and of practice and agency.

The phrase “martial arts studies” is increasingly circulating as a term to describe a new field of interest. But many academic fields including history, philosophy, anthropology, and Area studies already engage with martial arts in their own particular way. Therefore, is there really such a thing as a unique field of martial arts studies? Martial Arts Studies is the first book to engage directly with these questions. It assesses the multiplicity and heterogeneity of possible approaches to martial arts studies, exploring orientations and limitations of existing approaches. It makes a case for constructing the field of martial arts studies in terms of key coordinates from post-structuralism, cultural studies, media studies, and post-colonialism. By using these anti-disciplinary approaches to disrupt the approaches of other disciplines, Martial Arts Studies proposes a field that both emerges out of and differs from its many disciplinary locations.

What is the essence of martial arts? What is their place in or relationship with culture and society? Deconstructing Martial Arts analyses familiar issues and debates that arise in scholarly, practitioner and popular cultural discussions and treatments of martial arts and argues that martial arts are dynamic and variable constructs whose meanings and values regularly shift, mutate and transform, depending on the context. It argues that deconstructing martial arts is an invaluable approach to both the scholarly study of martial arts in culture and society and also to wider understandings of what and why martial arts are. Placing martial arts in relation to core questions and concerns of media and cultural studies around identity, value, orientalism, and embodiment, Deconstructing Martial Arts introduces and elaborates deconstruction as a rewarding method of cultural studies.

Mixed martial arts (MMA) is an emergent sport where competitors in a ring or cage utilize strikes (punches, kicks, elbows and knees) as well as submission techniques to defeat opponents. This book explores the carnal experience of fighting through a sensory ethnography of MMA, and how it transgresses the cultural scripts of masculinity in popular culture. Based on four years of participant observation in a local MMA club and in-depth interviews with amateur and professional MMA fighters, Spencer documents fighters' training regimes and the meanings they attach to participation in the sport. Drawing from the philosophical phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy, this book develops bodies-centered ontological and epistemological grounding for this study. Guided by such a position, it places bodies at the center of analysis of MMA and elucidates the embodied experience of pain and injury, and the sense and rhythms of fighting.

As soon as its first issue was published, readers of the Journal of Asian Martial Arts knew that it was unique in providing reliable materials on the subject. The journal brought a clearer perspective of Asian martial traditions. It presented valuable details on the history, theory and practice of various styles. Of greater importance, the journal set a standard for scholarly research to build the field. This anthology conveniently assembles sixteen journal articles that contain useful academic tools for studying the combative arts. Each chapter will prove special to all interested in the intellectual side to the martial arts. What martial art do you wish to research? Is it really a “martial” art? Or is it a martially-inspired art, practiced only for health or for theatrical performance?—A number of chapters provide fine details for categorizing the variety of what we commonly refer to as “martial arts.” While demonstrating the complexity of the martial arts as a field of study, the authors provide insights and methods that actually clarify and facilitate any discussion of this fascinating subject. Other chapters focus on the martial arts as living culture. We learn about the physical side of these arts just as we learn about other aspects of culture, except that often the martial arts being taught are from Asia. It is extremely important to understand just how a foreign art enters and adapts to another culture minus much of its associated history and culture. The social implications are enormous as shown in some of the chapters. Anyone who practices an Asian martial art may be exposed to related cultural aspects, such as Oriental philosophy and social customs. These can have an effect on the practitioner’s character. When elements of different cultures are absorbed, their embodiment can be seen in the individual’s daily actions. The question of violence is paramount in this potentially activity. With proper instruction, chances are better for a practitioner to experience a self-transformation that improves character, nurturing qualities such as patience and respect. This anthology’s table of contents hints the in-depth material that fills nearly 300 pages. This publication is for those who take researching martial traditions very seriously.

The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to explore the meaning-making and cultivation of Kung Fu within a martial arts club. The inquiry focused specifically on the teachings of Grandmaster Qing Fu Pan, and how these teachings are cultivated and embodied by his students on their path toward transformation of being. Phenomenology was used as both a philosophical orientation and methodology, and Taoist teachings were integrated throughout to add a layer of interpretive understanding. In this dissertation, an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to guide data collection and analysis, involving an abductive process through which analysis of semi-structured interviews and field observations informed the meaning construction process. Participants included Grandmaster Pan and his students. Two core essences describe the depth of the path of the Iron and Silk martial arts of Grandmaster Pan. The first essence-Layers of Knowing: Metaphors for Cultivating and Embodying Iron and Silk-speaks to the cultivation of Iron and Silk as the student engages in the practice of Chinese martial arts training. Within this essence, participants describe their understanding of the Fluid Movement Between Iron and Silk in both martial arts in life, while emphasizing the importance of situating or Embedding Meaning in a Science of Self-Defence. Understanding Iron and Silk as Cultivating a Path of Transformation presents a series of metaphors that describes the path of practice and “Change to in your Body”: Embodying The Way of the Iron and Silk speaks to the internalization of this martial arts practice as Grandmaster Pan uses his own embodied knowledge to strategically cultivate the potential of his students. The second essence-Relationship Cultivates Kung Fu, Kung Fu Cultivates Relationship-describes the importance of relationship in cultivating Iron and Silk. The depth of Grandmaster Pan's roots in the martial arts added a rich narrative of lineage, history, and uses of the practices that was central to the training, making it significantly different from other forms of sport and exercise. The essence begins with an exploration of Cultivating a Kung Fu Lineage and the importance of participants' experiences of their Relationship to a Sifu. Then, Finding a Home: Continuation of Relationship in Physical and Social Space describes the intersubjective space created by Grandmaster Pan and his students. The intimacy of relationship within the club is explored further in “Doing business is easy, having a relationship is hard”: Relationships of Iron and Silk, which describes the respect, cooperation, and humility that manifested in relationships among students and created a united family of practitioners. Consequently, Openness of Learning in the Cultivation of Iron & Silk describes the importance of engaging with openess when immersed in the martial arts. As Taoism focuses on the relationship between individual and the universal, and phenomenology focuses on attempts to make sense of experience and subjective consciousness within an intersubjective world, this study evolved into an exploration of the relationship between intersubjective human experience and the movement toward living in alignment with the totality of universal reality as martial arts practices become abjectively embodied. The martial arts are presented as a cultivated-embodied-relational and intersubjective practice as the martial artist engages in the cauldron in approximation of the universal Tao. A conversation about embodiment, and specifically abjective embodiment, weaves together the interplay between the interdependent essences of cultivation, transformation, and relationship. The discussion is furthered as intersubjectivity and the Taoist concept of Te-moral power or virtue of a person who follows a correct course of conduct, connecting the individual with the cosmos-highlight interdependence on the path of transformation through the embodied practice of cultivating Iron and Silk Kung Fu. Theoretical contributions of this study arise through the engagement of phenomenology and Taoism to develop a holistic understanding of the practice of the traditional martial art of Iron and Silk Kung Fu. As leisure studies expands and grows in its diversity and depth of cultural exploration, it will be essential to develop an broader theoretical and philosophical approach to understanding experience. Insights and reflections presented in this dissertation can be practically applied in three key ways. First, challenging notions of transactional exchange in understanding interpersonal connections, and presenting a relational understanding of intersubjective interaction. Second, the holistic understanding of leadership presented here might inform future generations of teachers and coaches in sport, training, education, and personal development. Third, this dissertation provides on fusion of phenomenology and Taoism that might guide future leisure studies scholars.

Martial arts, once restricted to a few specific locations and practiced by small groups of devotees, have truly spread throughout the world. The plethora of tae kwando and karate dojos in U.S. shopping malls attests to the popularity of various kinds of martial arts in this country. Though generally perceived and advertised as means of self-defense, body sculpting, and self-discipline, martial arts are actually social tools that respond to altered physical, social, and psychological environments. This book examines how practitioners have responded to stimuli such as feminism, globalism, imperialism, militarism, nationalism, slavery, and the commercialization of sport. In a series of chapters devoted to Asian, African, and European systems of the late 19th to early 21st centuries, the authors examine the forces and philosophies that shaped fighting arts in diverse cultural settings. Because of political, social, and economic factors, this period witnessed the spread of martial arts to areas outside of their original contexts. Some of these arts flourished in their new environments, but others did not. The authors demonstrate that martial arts are not the conservative strongholds of tradition posited by conventional wisdom, but are instead responsive and mutable barometers of change. This book is essential for students of multicultural dialogues and devotees of martial arts performance and practice.

The Knowledge & The Power. Martial Arts & The Story of a Grand Master. This eBook is perfect for those wanting to read the real story of Grand Master Daw, President of the MFMA Society. The MFMA is a real martial arts club. Anyone can join. Please note, this eBook does contain some bad language. Anyone can learn, once they have the knowledge and the power

This is a collection of essays based on my 40 years experience in the martial arts. They are intended to cause the reader to think and spark conversation and debate rather than give absolute answers. To teach is to challenge and this collection will hopefully do just that. These esays are also intended to help martial artists from all styles and schools to better understand one another.