Journal Archive

International Journal of Martial Arts - Vol. 1

[ Article ]
International Journal of Martial Arts - Vol. 1, pp. 1-24
Abbreviation: injoma
ISSN: 2287-8599 (Online)
Online publication date 27 Aug 2015
Received 27 May 2015 Accepted 10 Aug 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51222/injoma.2015.12.1.1

“Just Be Natural with Your Body” : An Autoethnography of Violence and Pain in Mixed Martial Arts
Magnus Stenius1 ; Ronald Dziwenka2
1Umea University (magnus.stenius@umu.se)
2New Mexico State University (dziwenka@nmsu.edu)


Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate bodily experiences through an autoethnographic fieldwork study in a mixed martial arts (MMA) club, and to analyze what experiences of pain can contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of MMA in general and the violence associated with the sport in particular.

We argue that the experience of pain can give one the opportunity to sense the emotional and instrumental effects of MMA practice. We have crafted a definition of scripted violence in MMA, comprehended the body’s development and evaluated the bodily accomplishments gained from the fighting process.

Informed by Julia Kristeva’s notion on horror and Maurice Merleau-Pontys’ phenomenology of the body, we discuss the concept of “stained-violence” by applying an inter-subjective approach to the notion of a body’s inner abject.

The autoethnographical knowledge we acquired in this study allows us to assert that a researcher’s own bodily reformation is an important asset to apply to examine the consequences of engaging in MMA training. We also apply a body-based method of performing autoethnographic research in order to examine the kinds of bodily improvements that can develop through MMA practice.


Keywords: abject, autoethnography, MMA, pain, stained-violence

References
1. Abramson, Corey and Darren Modzelewski. 2010. Caged Morality: Moral Worlds, Subculture, and Stratification among Middle-Class Cage-Fighters. Qualitative Sociology 34(1):143-75.
2. Almeida, B. 1986. Capoeira: A Brazilian Art Form. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
3. Arvanitis, Jim. 2003. Pankration, the Traditional Greek Combat Sport and Modern Mixed Martial Arts. Colorado: Paladin Press.
4. Atkinson, Paul. 2006. Rescuing Autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35(4):400-4.
5. Barad Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
6. Bar-On Cohen, Einat. 2006. Kime and the Moving Body: Somatic Codes in Japanese Martial Arts, Body & Society 12(4):73-93.
7. Bar-On Cohen, Einat. 2009. Survival, an Israeli Ju Jutsu School of Martial Arts: Violence, Body, Practice and the National. Ethnography 10(2):153-83.
8. Bousfield, Dan. 2009. The Diplomacies of Ultimate Fighting: Resurgent Masculinities of Global Militancy, International Studies Association, 50th Annual Convention, New York, 15th of February, 1:(30)1-18.
9. Buse, G. J. 2006. No Hold Barred Sport Fighting: A 10-year review of Mixed Martial Arts Competitions. British Journal of Sports Medicine 40(2):169-72.
10. Cheever, Nancy. 2009. The Uses and Gratifications of Viewing Mixed Martial Arts, Journal of Sports Media 4(1):1-15.
11. Ching, E. David, and Mayeda, T. David. 2008. Fighting For Acceptance: Mixed Martial Artist and Violence in American Society. New York: IUniverse, Inc.
12. Creed, Barbara. 2009. The Monstrous Feminine – Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
13. Crossley, Nick. 1996. Intersubjectivity - The Fabric of Social Becoming. London: Sage.
14. Crossley, Nick. 2005. Mapping Reflexive Body Techniques: On Body Modification and Maintenance, Body & Society 11(1):1–35.
15. Crossley, Nick. 2012. Towards Relational Sociology. London: Routledge.
16. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 2003. Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. Basic Books, Inc.
17. Csordas, Thomas. 2003. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. New York: Cambridge University Press.
18. Csordas, Thomas J, and Katz, Jack. 2003. Phenomenological Ethnography in Sociology and Anthropology. Ethnography 4(3):275-88.
19. Culbertson, Roberta. 1995. Embodied Memory, Transcendence, and Telling: Recounting Trauma, Re-establishing the Self. New Literary History 26(1):169–95.
20. Davies, Aull, Charlotte. 2004. Reflexive Ethnography - A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London: Routledge.
21. Denzin, Norman. K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
22. Denzin, Norman. K. 2006. Analytical Autoethnography, or Déjà Vu all Over Again. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35(4):419-28.
23. Douglas, Mary. (1966) 2002. Purity and Danger, An Analysis of concept of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge.
24. Downey, Greg. 2005. Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art. New York: OUP.
25. Downey, Greg. 2007. Producing Pain: Fighting Techniques and Technologies in No-Holds- Barred Fighting. Social Studies of Science 37(2):201-26.
26. Du Bois, W.E.B. 1994. The Souls of Black Folk. New York, Avenel, NJ: Gramercy Books.
27. Ferrari, Matthew P. 2013. Sporting Nature(s): Wildness, the Primitive, and Naturalizing Imagery in MMA and Sports Advertisements. Environmental Communications 7(2)277-96.
28. Gentry, Clyde. 2005. No Holds Barred: Ultimate Fighting and the Martial Arts Revolution. St Paul, MN: Milo Books.
29. Gentry, Clyde. 2011. No Holds Barred: The Complete History of Mixed Martial Arts in America. Chicago: Triumph Books.
30. Goodall, Jr. H.L. 2008. Writing Qualitative Inquiry: Self, Stories, and Academic Life. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, Inc.
31. Green, Kyle. 2011. It hurts so it is real: sensing the seduction of mixed martial arts. Social & Cultural Geography 12(4):377-396.
32. Gubrium, Jaber F. and Holstein, James A. 2002. Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method. London: Sage Publications.
33. Hirose, Akihiko and Kei-ho Pih. 2010. Masculinities in Mixed Martial Arts, Men Who Strike and Men Who Submit: Hegemonic and Marginalized Masculinities in Mixed Martial Arts. Men and Masculinities 13(2):190-209.
34. Holt, Nicholas L. 2003. Representation, legitimation, and autoethnography: An autoethnographic writing story. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2(1). Article 2. Retrieved June 1, 2015 from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/2_1/pdf/holt.pdf
35. Jennings, George, Brown, David and Sparkes C Andrew. 2010. ‘It can be a religion if you want’: Wing Chun Kung Fu as a secular religion. Ethnography 11(4):533-57.
36. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
37. Meneley, Anne, and Young J. Donna. 2005. Auto-Ethnographies: The Anthropology of Academic Practices. Canada: Broadview Press.
38. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. Primacy of Perception. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
39. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2002. Phenomenology of Perception. An Introduction. London: Routledge.
40. Messner, Mike. 1990. When Bodies are Weapons. International Review for the Sociology of Sports 25(3):203-20.
41. Milton, Martin. 2004. Being a Fighter: It is a Whole State of Being. Existential Analysis 15(1):116-30.
42. Minge, Jeanine M. 2007. The Stained Body: A Fusion of Embodied Art on Rape and Love. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36(3):252-80.
43. Muncey, Tessa. 2010. Creating Autoethnographies. India: Sage Publications Ltd.
44. O’Connell, Barry. 1997. A Son of the Forest and Other Writings. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press.
45. Olsen, Kevin. 2008. A Narrative Inquiry into an Extreme Sport: The Lived Experience of Skydiving. Master’s thesis. The University of Alberta.
46. Pagis, Michal. 2010. Producing Intersubjectivity in Silence: An Ethnographic Study of Meditation Practice. Ethnography 11(2):309-28.
47. Poliakoff, B Michael. 1995. Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competitions, Violence and Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
48. Russell, G. W. 1992. Response of the Macho Male to Viewing a Combatant Sport. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 7:631-38.
49. Sánchez, García, Raúl and Malcolm, Dominic. 2010. Decivilizing, civilizing or informalizing? The international development of Mixed Martial Arts. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45(1):39-58.
50. Sheridan, Sam. 2007. A Fighter’s Heart: One Man’s Journey through the World of Fighting. New York: Grove Press, Atlantic.
51. Sheridan, Sam. 2010. The Fighter’s Mind: Inside the Mental Game. New York: Grove Press, Atlantic.
52. Sparkes, A.C. 2000. Autoethnography and narratives of self: Reflections on criteria in action. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17, 21-43.
53. Spencer, C. Dale. 2009. Habit(us) Techniques and Body Callusing: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts. Body & Society 15:119-43.
54. Spencer, C. Dale. 2012. Ultimate Fighting and Embodiment: Violence, Gender, and Mixed Martial Arts. New York and London: Routledge.
55. Spencer, C. Dale. 2013. Sensing Violence: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts. Ethnography 0(00):1-23.
56. Spry, Tarni. 2001. Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis. Qualitative Inquiry 7(6):706-32.
57. Stephens, Neil and Sara Delmont. 2006. Balancing the Berimbau: Embodied Ethnographic Understanding. Qualitative Inquiry 12:316-36.
58. Turner, Viktor. 1995. The Ritual Process. New Ed. Chicago, USA. Aldine Transaction.
59. Vaccaro, A. Cristian, Schrock, Douglas P and McCabe, Janice M. 2011. Managing Emotional Manhood: Fighting and Fostering Fear in Mixed Martial Arts. Social Psychology Quarterly 74(4):414-37.
60. Van Bottenburg, Maarten, and Heilbron, Johan. 2006. De-Sportization of Fighting Contests: The Origins and Dynamics of No Holds Barred Events and the Theory of Sportization. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 41(3-4):259-82.
61. Van Bottenburg, Maarten and Heilbron, Johan. 2010. Informalization or De-Sportization of Fighting Contests? A Rejoinder to Raul Sánchez García and Dominic Malcolm. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 46(1):125-27.
62. Wacquant, Loïc. 1995. Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labor among Professional Boxers. Body & Society 1(1):65-93.
63. Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body and Soul: Notes of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford: Oxford University.
64. Woodward, Kath. 2008. Hanging out and hanging about: Insider/outsider research in the sport of boxing. Ethnography 9(4): 536-60.
65. Wolcott, Harry. 2004. The Ethnographic Autobiography. Auto/Biography 12:93-106.