Conditioning Weapons: Ethnography of the Practice of Martial Arts Training

Abstract

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.

Self-Defence with a Walking-stick: Revisited

“…Domaneschi conducted an ethnographic study of an Italian Wushu Kung Fu association with the aim of investigating in depth the relationship between habitus and materials [Domaneschi 2018]. Such a study of the walking stick in jujutsu is complicated.…”

‘A Punch Has No Paternity!’: techniques, belonging and the Mexicanidad of Xilam

“…The reinvention of objects such as clubs and shields in Xilam is also an important aspect of martial arts cultures that take these primarily hand-to-hand martial arts into the realm of weapon-based training expressing unique warrior identities. Research examining the body techniques through such objects and materials (following Domaneschi, 2018) and the development of specific ethnic, national and warrior identities are highly pertinent projects. Future research on such reconstruction of martial arts and their practitioners within wider era of reinvention (Elliot, 2012) might consider historical studies on the transmission and evolution of technique – exploring how and why techniques change from society to society and from generation to generation.…”

Physical Culture

“…Invoking nine categories of movement including bodies, memories, places, and objects, their article highlights the need for a more refined sensitivity towards the significance of movement in the emergence of physical culture. Lorenzo Domaneschi's [51] article analyses how specific affective cultural practices with martial arts weapons facilitate movement-sensation and change in ways that are only possible through the intimate experience of harmonising one's own movement with the movement of a weapon. This creates a field of emergence that serves as an affective source for collective sensual solidarity and identity within Wushu kung fu.…”