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‘A Punch Has No Paternity!’: techniques, belonging and the Mexicanidad of Xilam
Abstract
This article combines ethnographic and netnographic data to explore the relationships between body techniques and a sense of belonging through the contemporary Mexican martial art of Xilam. This art, founded by a female Mexican martial arts veteran, is slowly developing as a hand-to-hand sport, and has attracted critics for its supposed use of East Asian fighting techniques. Netnographic data reveal online debates on the origins and ‘true belonging’ of specific techniques while ethnographic fieldwork in a Xilam school demonstrates how the art is made ‘Mexican’ through specific accompanying practices and philosophy surrounding the movements. The movements of sitting, punching and standing are selected as key examples as understood through Mauss’s classic thesis. I conclude that Xilam follows a philosophical pedagogy that associates these techniques with a sense of Mexicanness – Mexicanidad.
... This is despite the fact that there is a strong online and media presence from the Xilam leaders stemming back to the 1990s, which is increasing in its international scope. Many in the Mexican martial arts online community regard Xilam with scorn for using practices and techniques that appear to be Asian in origin (Jennings 2021), but these critics often overlook the rich pre-Hispanic philosophy behind these movements and methods. From George's analysis of the Xilam organisation and its public videos, the viewers were clearly not listening, but merely watching. ...
Xilam es un arte marcial moderno inspirado en las culturas guerreras mesoamericanas prehispánicas, especialmente en la cosmovisión azteca. Como sistema de desarrollo humano, Xilam pretende formar una joven generación de mexicanos dignos como guerreros modernos, orgullosos de su herencia y ascendencia indígena. Su filosofía también hace hincapié en la naturaleza étnica y cultural híbrida de México, mezclando influencias indígenas, europeas y asiáticas. Este artículo utiliza un enfoque crítico y poscolonial de la tesis posrevolucionaria La raza cósmica del filósofo mexicano José Vasconcelos para analizar los posibles significados filosóficos de prácticas concretas dentro del Xilam. Examinando datos de entrevistas y vídeos recogidos hacia el final de un proyecto etnográfico, se adopta el arte de escuchar para mostrar cómo Xilam reinterpreta la raza cósmica en el siglo XXI. Nuestra investigación encuentra paralelismos entre las ideas de los practicantes de Xilam y a la tesis de Vasconcelos. Destaca cómo la recuperación de las nociones filosóficas prehispánicas da lugar a formas “otras” de problematizar el racismo en México sin el mesianismo utópico de Vasconcelos. En este sentido, “remover la piel” (Dzilam) se presenta como una alternativa a “la raza cósmica”; “Diversópolis” como una alternativa a “Universópolis”.
p>Taekwondo has been popular for decades and its practice has become part of Western countries. One of its lines of expansion and introduction in the West, like other martial arts, was the philosophical-religious sphere, which has been promoted by the sports federations, and has emphasized aspects related to Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Korean national religions. I rely on a study of documentary sources, contextualized within an ethnographic investigation, to analyze the religious elements that appear in the material culture, values, techniques and practices that have been developed in the gymnasiums, as well as the symbolic exegeses that are made from official institutions.</p
A large majority of practioners prefer to sit cross-legged on the mat/carpet or on a chair for doing their meditation. Standing meditation posture has been found to be more convenient and hence more beneficial as compared to the 'sitting meditation' by some people, particularly those practioners who are suffering from physical ailments like arthritis, blood pressure, numbness in the body, or have tendency to feel sleepy while sitting for a long duration. The techniques for sitting meditation, like focusing on breathing, chanting mantras, mindful-meditation etc. can be adapted to 'standing meditation' as well. Most of the standing meditation techniques like Qigong, Zhang Zhuang, Wuji, and Yiquan are popular in Chinese tradition. The closest Indian/Hindu equivalent posture for the standing meditation is 'Tadasana'. We compare some these standing meditation techniques and also describe their benefits in this paper in order to highlight this form of meditation posture as an effective alternative.
Based on two-year ethnography of boxe popolare—a style of boxing codified by Italian leftist grassroots groups—and participant observation of a palestra popolare in an Italian city, the article purports to (a) deepen understanding of the nexus between physical cultures and politics and (b) contribute to understanding the renewal of political cultures by overcoming the disembodied perspectives on ideology. The first section of the paper tracks down the relation that ties boxing to the sociocultural matrix of the leftist grassroots groups. Boxing draws its significance from the antagonistic culture of the informal political youth organisations in which the practice is embedded and reflects the main changes that have been occurring in the collective action repertoires of the street-level political forces over the past few decades. The second section analyses the daily activities of boxe popolare. The paper thereby demonstrates how training regimes manipulate the bodies to inculcate a set of corporeal postures and sensibilities inherent to a mythology of otherness peculiar to the far-left ethos. In conclusion, the lived experience of boxe popolare addresses the importance of placing the situated practices and the socialised body at the centre of the study of political cultures in the contemporary post-ideological era.
Drawing on the inspiring work by Wacquant about apprenticeship in boxing, I present data generated from a five-year ethnographic study of one Wushu Kung Fu Association in Italy. Drawing on a Bourdieusian version of theories of social practice, the aim is to investigate in depth the relationship between habitus and materials, as it seems an underestimated issue both in Wacquant’s presentation and in most martial arts studies developed from his work. The aim is to explore the relationship between the practitioner and the set of weapons—a chief part of the martial art training—as an endless work of conditioning. To this aim, according to what Wacquant calls “enactive ethnography”, I completely immersed myself inside the fieldwork in order to be able to explore the phenomenon and to personally test its operative mechanism. The challenge here is to enter the theatre of action and, to the highest degree possible, train in the ways of the people studied so as to gain a visceral apprehension of their universe as materials and springboard for its analytic reconstruction. Drawing on the difference between the cognitive, conative, and emotive components of habitus through which, according to Bourdieu, social agents navigate social space and animate their lived world, I show how conditioning works not only on the conative or cognitive components (learning techniques and incorporating kinetic schemes), but how a deeper psychological form of conditioning also comes into play, which aims to neutralize the shock due to the fear generated by the threat of a contusion. It is at this point, therefore, that the affective component of the habitus becomes crucial in constructing a sort of intimacy bond with the tool. The detectable transformation in the habitus of the practitioner, eventually, can be deciphered, starting from the characteristics of the tool that produces, in the ways and limits given by its material features, such a transformation. In the end, I stress the relevance of recognizing the active role of objects in transforming the habitus and I briefly discuss the potentiality of enactive ethnography in analyzing social practices.
There are numerous ways to theorise about elements of civilisations and societies known as 'body', 'movement', or 'physical' cultures. Inspired by the late Henning Eichberg's notions of multiple and continually shifting body cultures, this article explores his constant comparative (trialectic) approach via the Mexican martial art, exercise, and human development philosophy-Xilam. Situating Xilam within its historical and political context and within a triad of Mesoamerican, native, and modern martial arts, combat sports, and other physical cultures, I map this complexity through Eichberg's triadic model of achievement, fitness, and experience sports. I then focus my analysis on the aspects of movement in space as seen in my ethnographic fieldwork in one branch of the Xilam school. Using a bare studio as the setting and my body as principle instrument, I provide an impressionist portrait of what it is like to train in Xilam within a communal dance hall (space) and typical class session of two hours (time) and to form and express warrior identity from it. This article displays the techniques; gestures and bodily symbols that encapsulate the essence of the Xilam body culture, calling for a way to theorise from not just from and on the body but also across body cultures.
The decrease in touch has been explored in recent literature in relation to child protection discourses and no touch policies and it has been suggested that Physical Education (PE) has been weakened by the lack of touch. Significantly, the issue of touch has remained largely unexplored in Latin societies, which are characterised by an amplified tactile approach to people and comparatively little personal space. This paper examines how a group of pre-service PE teachers in Spain responded to, acted and negotiated touch with primary school students. It draws on data generated from body journals and the concepts of risk society, surveillance and moral panic. The findings indicate that touching school students is still common practice in Spain and was considered something positive. The influence of other individuals and certain spaces was also noted by participants, who felt more surveilled and distressed on particular occasions and some of them strategically introduced touch with students in a progressive manner. The results of the study invite us to reflect on the possibility of doing more harm than good by presenting topics about touch to pre-service teachers and how pre-service teacher educators may need to provide PE students with proper resources and understandings to successfully negotiate touch with school students.
This research looks at the effects of 'kalaripayattu' and Fitzmaurice Voicework techniques as a training methodology for the contemporary actor, redefining the fundamental principles that already exist within the two forms and placing its emphasis on the articulation of the imagination through their combination. Fitzmaurice Voicework was inspired by yoga, shiatsu, and bioenergetic psychotherapy, and its methods include releasing patterns of habitual holding within the viscera causing an autonomic response known as a tremor. Training in 'Kalaripayattu', an ancient South Indian martial art, is a preparatory tool for the body to develop a kinesthetic awareness: an organic ability to be in the optimal state of readiness. In the process of defining our research findings, we created a systematic methodology that consisted of four stages: 1) Studio training combining Kalaripayattu and Fitzmaurice Voicework; 2) Training with Kalaripayattu masters in Kerala, India; 3) Experimentation and exploration of the two forms of collaborative training; and 4) Analysis and dissemination of findings at a conference of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association London Conference. This systematic approach provided us with the framework to answer our research questions: 1) Can combining techniques from Kalaripayattu and Fitzmaurice Voicework lead to an effective new cross-cultural methodology for professional actor training? 2) What kinds of psychophysical and somatic affect can arise from the combination of these two forms?
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0891241616680721
Drawing on sociological and anthropological theorizations of the senses and “sensory work”, the purpose of this article is to investigate via phenomenology-based auto/ethnography, and to generate novel insights into the under-researched sense of thermoception, as the lived sense of temperature. Based on four long-term, in-depth auto/ethnographic research projects, we examine whether thermoception can be conceptualized as a distinct sense or is more appropriately categorised as a specific modality of touch. Empirically and analytically to highlight the salience of thermoception in everyday life, we draw on findings from four auto/ethnographic projects conducted by the authors as long-standing insider members of their various physical-cultural lifeworlds. The foci of the research projects span the physical cultures of distance running, mixed martial arts, traditionalist Chinese martial arts, and boxing. Whilst situated within distinctive physical-cultural frameworks, nevertheless, the commonalities in the thermoceptive elements of our respective experiences as practitioners were striking, and thermoception emerged as highly salient across all four lifeworlds. Our analysis explores the key auto/ethnographic findings, centring on four specific areas: elemental touch, heat of the action, standing still, and tuning in. Emerging from all four studies were key findings relating to the valorization of sweat, and the importance of “temperature work” involving thermoceptive somatic learning, and physical-culturally specific bodily ways of knowing and sense-making. These in turn shape how heat and cold are actually “felt” and experienced in the mind-body.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0891241616680721
Reflexivity
This paper uses documentary research techniques to analyse the use of kata, forms, in the Japanese martial arts. Following an introduction on the existence of kata practice, using existing sources of information the paper first examines the spiritual developments of bushido, secondly, the social changes that led to the redevelopment of bujutsu into budo is scrutinsised. Next, the position of kata in relation to budo martial arts is explored followed by a discussion on the use of kata as a pedagogy. Finally, kata is repositioned in light of the contextual expansion investigated demonstrating how kata could represent the intended essence of budo as well a culturally‐valued, spiritual pedagogy.
Social scientific research into martial arts and combat sports (MACS) — now labelled ‘martial arts studies’ (Bowman, 2014b) — commonly examines specific martial arts movements throughout dynasties and periods (Shahar, 2008), or ethnographically illuminates popular contemporary movements such as Capoeira (Downey, 2005) and Krav Maga (Cohen, 2010). Studies of Xilam (pronounced ‘shi-lam’) requires both approaches, as it is a contemporary martial art based on ancient traditions that can be considered through anthropological, historical and sociological lenses. Founded in 1986 (and registered as a social association in 1992) by a Mexican woman, Marisela Ugalde, it draws on three ancestral Mesoamerican warrior cultures: the Mexica (Aztecs) of central Mexico, the Maya of Southern Mexico and Central America and the Zapotecs of the coastal state of Oaxaca.1 Although all pre-Hispanic (pre-Columbian) societies in Mesoamerica possessed warriors (Hassig, 1992), these three are noted — albeit through limited historical sources — for the development of specific martial arts and warrior classes. The Mexica and the Maya systems are extinct, although there have been some non-academic efforts to ‘rediscover’ the Mexica art of Yaomachtia in the United States. Despite these controversies, the Federación Mexicana de Juegos y Deportes Autóctonos y Tradicionales
2 currently protects and promotes two native wrestling styles practised today in remote communities: The Zapotec Chupaporrazo and the Lucha Tarahumara in Chihuahua.
This paper uses documentary research techniques to analyse the use of kata, forms, in the Japanese martial arts. Following an introduction on the existence of kata practice, using existing sources of information the paper first examines the spiritual developments of bushido, secondly, the social changes that led to the redevelopment of bujutsu into budo is scrutinsised. Next, the position of kata in relation to budo martial arts is explored followed by a discussion on the use of kata as a pedagogy. Finally, kata is repositioned in light of the contextual expansion investigated demonstrating how kata could represent the intended essence of budo as well a culturally-valued, spiritual pedagogy.
Xilam is a modern Mexican martial art that is inspired by pre-Hispanic warrior cultures of ancient Mesoamerica, namely the Aztecs (Mexica), Maya and Zapotec cultures. It provides a noteworthy case study of a Latin American fighting system that has been recently invented, but aspires to rescue, rediscover and relive the warrior philosophies that existed before the Spanish Conquest and subsequent movements beginning in 1521. Using the thought-provoking work of anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, Mexico Profundo, I aim to analyse the Xilam Martial Arts Association through the way that they represent themselves in their three main media outlets: the official webpage, the Facebook group and the YouTube channel. Overall, the data suggests that certain elements of Mesoamerican civilisation may be transmitted to young Mexicans through a mind-body discipline, which in turn acts as a form of physical (re)education. Overall, xilam is both an invented tradition (in a technical sense) and a re-invented tradition (in a cultural sense) that provides lessons on the timeless issues of transformation, transmission and transcendence.
In Carrying the Word: The Concheros Dance in Mexico City, the first full length study of the Concheros dancers, Susanna Rostas explores the experience of this unique group, whose use of dance links rural religious practices with urban post-modern innovation in distinctive ways even within Mexican culture, which is rife with ritual dances. The Concheros blend Catholic and indigenous traditions in their performances, but are not governed by a predetermined set of beliefs; rather they are bound together by long standing interpersonal connections framed by the discipline of their tradition. The Concheros manifest their spirituality by means of the dance. Rostas traces how they construct their identity and beliefs, both individual and communal, by its means. The book offers new insights into the experience of dancing as a Conchero while also exploring their history, organization and practices. Carrying the Word provides a new way for audiences to understand the Conchero's dance tradition, and will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary Mesoamerica. Those studying identity, religion, and tradition will find this social-anthropological work particularly enlightening. © 2009 by the University Press of Colorado. All rights reserved.
Apprenticeship, the process of developing from novice to proficiency under the guidance of a skilled expert, varies across cultures and among different skilled communities, but for many communities of practice, apprenticeship offers an ideal ethnographic point of entry. For certain kinds of anthropological fieldwork, such as studies of bodily arts, apprenticeship may offer an essential research method. In this article, three anthropologists discuss their experiences using apprenticeship in fieldwork and consider the practical and theoretical issues of apprenticeship as a site of ethnographic inquiry. As a channel for achieving social inclusion, apprenticeship offers anthropologists opportunities to navigate and chart interpersonal power, access to emic types of knowledge, first-hand experience of the pedagogical milieu, and avenues to acquire cultural proficiency. Because apprenticeship itself includes mechanisms to socialize emerging skill, such as disciplining the generation of variation that is inherent in each individual’s rediscovery or reinvention of skill, apprenticeship encourages our subjects to collaborate with us by allowing them to critique the ethnographer’s performance and provide feedback in familiar, locally-meaningful ways.
One of the strongest claims made by proponents of mixed martial arts (MMA) is that the confrontations are more authentic than other types of combat sports or, in the words of one promotion, ‘as real as it gets’. Since the advent of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the United States in 1993, the franchise has become one of the most rapidly growing sports in the world, especially since the take-over of the UFC by Zuffa LLC. Twenty years later, the UFC and its imitators have transformed the global understanding of martial arts and established a successful business model for promoting martial arts-based prize fighting. However, on closer examination, the development of the rules for ‘no holds barred’ fighting demonstrate a desire on the part of the promoters to stage fights that meet audience expectations, including particularly dramatic forms of violence and decisive outcomes. Instead of fighting in some kind of ‘de-regulated’ space, the UFC and other MMA appear to be ‘hyper-violence’, a type of stylized unarmed combat, especially telegenic, that obscures the actual effects of that violence on participants, even as it focuses the camera almost obsessively on particularly dramatic violent moments. Ironically, the regulations of ‘as real as it gets’ fighting seek to produce a confrontation that meets audience expectations, shaped especially by choreographed violence in movies and videogames.
This article contributes to ongoing debates about trends in violence in sport through an examination of the emergence of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). The article counters suggestions that the rise of MMA is indicative of a decivilizing and/or de-sportizing process, arguing instead that the development of MMA can best be explained with reference to the concepts of informalization and the ‘quest for excitement’. More particularly, the article argues that MMA emerged as a global sport as a consequence of the ascendancy of professionalism over amateurism, through a hybridization of Eastern and Western combat styles, and due to participants’ desires to generate increased levels of excitement. The article argues that despite academic and public portrayals to the contrary, considerable self-restraint characterizes the violence in MMA. The sport has, however, oscillated between more and less violent forms as relatively ‘de-sensitized’ participants and wider public lobbies have contested the definition of socially tolerable violence. In order to maintain spectator appeal under increasingly stringent regulation promoters have sought to make ‘cosmetic’ changes to MMA to increase the appearance of de-controlled violence. The article concludes by arguing that combat sports are inherently contentious as they necessarily exist close to the boundary between ‘real’ and ‘mock’ fighting and thus on the margins of modern sport.
Drawing on data generated from a six-year ethnographic study of one Wing Chun Kung Fu Association in England, this article explores the ways in which this martial art is constructed as a form of religion and functions as a secular religious practice for core members of this association. Two key features of this process are identified. The first involves the ways in which Wing Chun evolves from an everyday secular practice into something that takes on sacralized meanings for participants while the second focuses on the development of a Wing Chun habitus over time. The article closes with a discussion of how the findings relate to broader discussions of martial arts practices, religion and spirituality in Western cultures.
The practice of the self-defense martial arts has much to offer physical education. In this paper we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory of the Logic of Practice to present a case that when viewed as a social practice, these movement forms generate certain, specific, practically oriented schemes of dispositions or habitus in the practitioner. We then consider the potential value of using matia1 arts practice in physical education for their ability to offer a glimpse at genuinely alternative ways of relating to oneself and the world through the physical mediunm that would help to compliment and offset the overriding domninance of dualist understandings of the mind /body nexus that currently exists in Western physical education.
The practice of capoeira, the Brazilian dance-fight-game, has grown rapidly in recent years. It has become a popular leisure activity in many cultures, as well as a career for Brazilians in countries across the world including the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. This original ethnographic study draws on the latest research conducted on capoeira in the UK to understand this global phenomenon. It not only presents an in-depth investigation of the martial art, but also provides a wealth of data on masculinities, performativity, embodiment, globalisation and rites of passage. Centred in cultural sociology, while drawing on anthropology and the sociology of sport and dance, the book explores the experiences of those learning and teaching capoeira at a variety of levels. From beginners’ first encounters with this martial art to the perspectives of more advanced students, it also sheds light on how teachers experience their own re-enculturation as they embody the exotic ‘other’. Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diasporic Capoeira is fascinating reading for all capoeira enthusiasts, as well as for anyone interested in the sociology of sport, sport and social theory, sport, race and ethnicity, or Latin-American Studies.
This book is an ethnographic study of the martial art of taijiquan (or 'tai chi') as it is practiced in China and the United States. Drawing on recent literature on ethnicity, critical race theory, the phenomenology of race, and globalization, the author discusses identity in terms of sensual experience and the transmission/receipt of knowledge.
In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie reveals a highly sophisticated and systematic Aztec philosophy worthy of consideration alongside European philosophies of their time. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.
‘Fighting Scholars’ offers the first book-length overview of the ethnographic study of martial arts and combat sports. The book's main claim is that such activities represent privileged grounds to access different social dimensions, such as emotion, violence, pain, gender, ethnicity and religion. In order to explore these dimensions, the concept of ‘habitus’ is presented prominently as an epistemic remedy for the academic distant gaze of the effaced academic body. [NP] The book's most innovative features are its empirical focus and theoretical orientation. While ethnographic research is a widespread and popular approach within the social sciences, combat sports and martial arts have yet to be sufficiently interrogated from an ethnographic standpoint. The different contributions of this volume are aligned within the same project that began to crystallize in Loïc Wacquant's ‘Body and Soul': the construction of a ‘carnal sociology’ that constitutes an exploration of the social world ‘from’ the body. © 2013 Raúl Sánchez García and Dale C. Spencer editorial matter and selection.
In What a Body Can Do, Ben Spatz develops, for the first time, a rigorous theory of embodied technique as knowledge. He argues that viewing technique as both training and research has much to offer current debates over the role of practice in the university, including the debates around "practice as research." Drawing on critical perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, dance studies, enactive cognition, and other areas, Spatz argues that technique is a major area of historical and ongoing research in physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life.
Martial-arts practice is not quite anything else: it is like sport, but is not sport; it constantly refers to and as it were cohabits with violence, but is not violent; it is dance-like but not dance. It shares a common athleticism with sports and dance, yet stands apart from both, especially through its paradoxical commitment to the external value of being an instrument of violence. My discussion seeks to illuminate martial arts practice by systematic contrast to games of sport and works of performance art, especially dance.
This article describes the development and emigration of a Chinese military exercise complex called taijiquan. It traces the genealogy of this practice from sixteenth-century China to twenty-first-century North American and European professional and university theatre programmes. It provides a systemic description of the protocols of taijiquan training in order to analyse its advantages and limitations in the contexts of contemporary actor training. Finally, by offering concrete examples of its application by different theatre artists, it presents a portrait of both its current use and future potential as a major component of actor training.
This article explores the carnal dimensions of existence through ethnographic research in a mixed martial arts club. 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. Through data gathered from in-depth interviews with MMA practitioners and participant observation in an MMA club, I elucidate the social processes that are integral to the production of an MMA fighter habitus. I examine how body techniques are learned and become attached to the identity of mixed martial arts fighters. Using Crossley’s concept of reflexive body techniques, I examine how MMA fighters engage in body callusing through use of reflexive body techniques thereby allowing them to withstand the rigors of the sport.
Este artículo examina la manera en que los atributos del cuerpo son cultivados y “disciplinados” para ser reconocidos como miembro de un grupo social. Ubicado en el noreste de Venezuela, este artículo examina el modo de pelea con palos, machetes y cuchillos transmitido por medio de un grupo social particular. Siguiendo una descripción de los distintos contextos donde se desarrollan estos métodos locales de combate armado identificados como “Garrote de Lara.”, este artículo sugiere que pisar y ver no son sólo atributos físicos pero “técnicas del cuerpo.” Ellos son modos socialmente mediados para mirar, sentirse y moverse en el medio ambiente. Se parte de la idea de que las respuestas habituales de una comunidad hacia acciones violentas interpersonales, están determinadas por factores históricos y ecológicos específicos.
This article looks at the way that bodily attributes are cultivated and disciplined in the process of being recognized as a member of a restricted social group. This study took place in northwestern Venezuela, and looks at the role of stick, machete, and knife fighting as it has been refined and transmitted by a group of men. Following a description of the different contexts where these local armed combative methods (known collectively as “Garrote de Lara”) developed, this article suggests that stepping and seeing are not merely physical attributes, but “body techniques,” or technical and efficient ways of looking at, moving through and belonging to a world. Where contingent historical and ecological factors shape a community's traditional habitual responses toward acts of interpersonal violence.
In this article I use a case study of capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art/dance/game) in Canada to bring together sport and transnationality literatures. I show that understandings of transnationality can be extended through both investigating people born and raised in the North, since they play an important role in creating transnational spaces, and attending to the corporeal means that people deploy to connect to a homeland or ‘travel’ to a foreign country. Through adopting a particular racialized/ national style of movement, those who ‘stay put’ in the North can ‘move’ across ethnic boundaries, if not geopolitical borders. Real (international), imagined (virtual and emotional), and corporeal (embodied) ‘travel’ to Brazil are key experiences of the senior capoeirista (capoeira devotee). Sporting activities provide an exceptional window onto transnationality studies, given that ways of moving are fundamental to social, cultural and national identities.
Exploring lived heat, "temperature work", and embodiment: Novel auto/ethnographic insights from physical cultures
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The rhythm of combat: Understanding the role of music in the performance of traditional Chinese martial arts and lion dance
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traditional Chinese martial arts and lion dance. MUSICultures, 42(1): 2-23.
Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer
- Ljd Wacquant
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Institutionalized religion in sports federations: Anthropological analysis of the links between taekwondo and Eastern religions
- Martínez Guirao
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of the links between taekwondo and Eastern religions. Revista de Artes Marciales Asiáticas,
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Seeking identity through the martial arts: The case of Mexicanidad
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The social logic of sparring: On the body as practical strategist
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Chinese Gung Fu: Philosophical Art of Self-Defense
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