Abstract
“Martial arts and combat sports” (MACS) are a myriad of systems of embodied movements and underlying philosophy and pedagogies. Due to the intrinsic complexity of MACS, they have the potential to both reshape practitioners’ selves and improve their wellbeing, as well as to hamper the pursuit of sustainable, healthy lifestyles. This article provides an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to critically approach both the “light” and the “dark” sides of martial pedagogies. The model we propose develops the Foucauldian notion of “the care of the self,” which has been considerably overlooked in martial arts scholarship. Furthermore, by viewing health as a goal for cultivation, this proposal places the situated practices linked to materiality and discourses at the centre of the theoretical and empirical analyses. The article thus takes into account the internal diversity and cross-institutional variance of martial pedagogies by allowing scholars to explore four forms of cultivation (self, shared, social, ecological) prompted on a day-to-day basis. To conclude, we discuss the main methodological implications for multimodal research arising from the framework in order to foster future inquiries.
Highlights
Without doubt, with the advent and spread of the COVID-19 virus, the topic of health has become dramatically important in global society
Investigations into martial arts and combat sports (MACS) have been increasing steadily over the last two decades, with specific projects focusing their attention on themes of gender, violence, pedagogy and embodiment
Our article has made a small contribution to the new line of inquiry into health, wellbeing and wellness that adds to the special issue on “martial arts, health and society.”
Summary
With the advent and spread of the COVID-19 virus, the topic of health has become dramatically important in global society. Eichberg (1998) has emphasized the green attitude of certain vernacular forms of wresting in Scandinavian countries, since these body cultures are strongly related to the cultivation of ethnic identity; wellbeing perspectives prompted by these bodily arts consists in caring about the natural environment, considered as a fundamental aspect of the local community growth This point to the importance of considering the MACS setting, where they are carried out and how they develop implicit pedagogies towards the surrounding environment and the kind of relationship and sensibility the practitioners create with the urban as well as rural landscapes. Specific perspectives and experience of health, intended as forms of cultivation, depend on the specific embodied pedagogic logics characterizing each martial art and combat sport in given sociocultural context and institution
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