Habit(us), Body Techniques and Body Callusing: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts

Abstract

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.

The Rules of Engagement: Negotiating Painful and “Intimate” Touch in Mixed-Sex Martial Arts

“…Hence, exploring touch helps highlight embodied opportunities and tensions in mixed-sex martial arts training, and given the relative centrality of touching in many of the disciplines explored here, this provides an interesting medium for investigating martial artists' experiences (e.g. Green, 2011;Spencer, 2009). The types of touching involved in martial disciplines are varied, ranging from short bursts of explosive, dynamic touch via punches, kicks and other striking methods ("hitting"), to the struggling, wriggling, body-to-body contact of "grappling", and also "soft" forms of partnered practice where touching is sustained, slow and subtle.…”

Sociología contemporánea y el cuerpo

“…Aunque este capital pueda ser empleado creativamente, tiende a reforzar la manera en la que la cultura dominante los ha definido como el cuerpo. El trabajo de Wacquant ha inspirado a otros a estudiar las masculinidades deportivas como subjetividades encarnadas (ver Bridges, 2009;Spencer, 2009) y examinar los procesos en que las construcciones de género/sexo persisten como los probables principios de organización más esenciales de los cuerpos en la esfera del deporte. Otras cuestiones como dolor/placer en la práctica del atletismo, el surgimiento de los deportes de alto rendimiento, las limitaciones humanas y la contribución del deporte a la noción contemporánea del 'cuerpo perfectible' traen las conexiones entre el deporte y las otras instituciones sociales, como la medicina y la educación, y otras industrias, como la moda, la salud y el fitness (Lupton, 2003).…”

Intense Embodiment

“…Here, we are in agreement with Potter (2008) in theorising sensory experience and knowledge as subculturally, as well as culturally specific, including in relation to specific physical subcultures, such as running and boxing. Ethnographies and autoethnographies of boxing (Wacquant, 2004), mixed martial arts (Spencer, 2009), capoeira (Downey, 2005), running (Allen-Collinson and Hockey, 2001;Nettleton, 2013), and dance (Potter, 2008), provide just some examples of richly-textured and detailed auto/ethnographic research that embraces and vividly portrays the sensory experiential specificities of physical practices and cultures. As heat, the focus of the current article, has been conceptualised as a specific mode of haptic sensory perception, we now address this particular element of the traditional 'Western' sensorium.…”