***Its Labor Day in the United States and I am currently off on a fieldwork trip. As such this seems like a great time to revisit a post from earlier this year on the importance of guilds and labor... Continue Reading →
“Echoes of Memories” It is the elusiveness of memory that captivates us. People tend to think of their memories as a personal hard drive, always running in the background, silently backing up the minutia of our daily... Continue Reading →
A Sense of Purpose I was taking notes when I heard one of the most interesting comments to come up in the session. “I am not just another person, I have a purpose.” I wasn’t part of this... Continue Reading →
It goes by many names. Organization, bureaucracy…”hard work”… It’s the sort of social effort that defines modern industrialized life. Weber famously termed it the “iron cage” of rationality. We so frequently speak of, or imagine, the martial arts as... Continue Reading →
Matthew Polly. 2018. Bruce Lee: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. 656 pages. $35 USD. Introduction Matthew Polly is perhaps the best known and most popular author writing on the martial arts today. His first two books... Continue Reading →
Rethinking the Conventional Wisdom Our daily conversations are made up of innumerable facts drawn from what might be termed, “the conventional wisdom.” The contents of this warehouse of social knowledge are so widely shared that none of us stop... Continue Reading →
***In honor of the recent celebration of Mother's Day. Enjoy!*** Introduction This post is the third entry in our series examining the lives of female Chinese martial artists. While it is the case that the vast majority of... Continue Reading →
Regulating Kung Fu in Canton The brave new world of electronic databases and digital humanities is certainly opening many doors to new and exciting types of research. Increasingly scholars can sit down at any university terminal and access previously... Continue Reading →
Zhou Kun Min. 2017. Quanzhou Taizuquan: The Art of Fujian Emperor First Kung Fu. Tambuli Media. 241 pages. $32.95 USD. I recently hosted a round table discussion focused on the state of the martial arts publishing industry in... Continue Reading →
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