Browsing by Author "Kuosmanen, Matias"

This thesis is a study on Japanese martial art called iaidō, which is a form of Japanese fencing and explore the somewhat underdeveloped social scientific study of martial arts and combative sports. This paper will begin with an introduction on how martial arts and specifically Japanese martial arts have been studied previously is the field of anthropology, sociology, philosophy and history, and will also discuss the problematics of these previous approaches. The research data is based on an ethnographic fieldwork that was conducted in Japan for a period of six months in 2013-2014. The research methodology utilizes phenomenological approach and the researcher positioned himself as part of the training group that was the object of study. This sort of methodological approach can be described as apprentice anthropology or enactive ethnography, in which the researcher is part of the training group that he studies. The main concern in this paper will be how a specific kind of habitus is created in the context of iaidō. The analysis will be based on phenomenological approach combined with the concept of habitus as developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The theoretical framework provided by Bourdieu will be further elaborated through the works of Loïc Wacquant, who has applied Bourdieu’s concept to the study on how habitus is created in a boxing gym. The creation of habitus in the context of iaidō will be revealed through descriptive analysis on how the bodily and mental dispositions are acquired in the training process. The training session works as a platform in which the kinesthetic skills can be acquired. The pedagogy is based on emulating the teacher movements as well as on oral transmission of knowledge. The transmission of knowledge happens through the social context of dōjō, which is formed by individual practitioners. The data is further analyzed to reveal how the habitus changes according to individual practitioner and during the transmission process. This social context does not only exists for the current practitioners, but it is also an historical process. A martial art school is an institution that spans historically and socially through different generations of practitioners. Similarly, the iaidō habitus is formed through these social and historical processes. However, it can never remain exactly the same, but it is instead prone to changes.