Karate as Global Assemblage, an Introduction

My name is Noah Johnson and I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa.  My research explores the place of karate, a now quite well-known martial art of Okinawan origin, in the lives of its practitioners in the United States of America. This page details my dissertation research and writing concerning the ways that karate practitioners in "the West" make use of their martial art in their everyday lives. 

By necessity, this study is thus a study of “globalization,” for karate is only available to those in what is termed “the West” (or the developed nations of Europe and of her settler colonies such as Canada, Australia, and of course the United States) through the transnational connections of transport, information, and commerce which make up globalization.

But globalization is a slippery concept. Nothing is truly global in its reach and spread, not to mention the fact that every time a seemingly similar form appears somewhere specific on the face of this planet, among a particular group of people or peoples with a shared or contested history, the “global” form invariably takes on characteristics reflective of these contingencies that challenge the continuity and dominance of globalization.

My work then is an attempt to understand what it was about the specific historical arrangements of power, history, desire, and connection that led to the spread of karate from a relatively small island chain in the Pacific to the rest of the world. Specifically, I am interested in how the martial art of karate continues to be relevant to its adherents in strip malls, church basements, fitness centers, and health spas all across the U.S. 

Along the way, as karate moves into different sociocultural and politicoeconomic configurations of people in specific communities, it is also inevitable that disagreements, and even cleavages would appear.  As an anthropologist, I have no interest in deciding “what karate is” – but I am very interested in how people who practice the art think about what is meaningful and authentic to them, and the terms they use amongst and against each other in the few (though often heartfelt and long-standing) disagreements that have a place in this martial arts history.

In addition, as instances of acculturation, or the ‘sharing’ of cultural ideas and practices between to cultural groups of people are rarely a meeting of complete equals, I also examine the outcomes of histories of power in the ongoing discussions of ownership and stewardship as regard this cultural heritage of the Okinawan people and its cultural appropriation by others.

To pursue these arrangements of complimentary and antagonistic entanglements, I use assemblage theory as my  over all framework. Likewise, I use practice theory to consider how concepts like globalization, modernity, or tradition are not only better thought of as processes (or even projects) than things in-and-of-themselves, but also how they are created out of the actions of people working - individually or collectively, materially or ideologically, deliberately or unintentionally - toward their own ends. Further dedicating myself to understanding the agentive actors who I learn from, I pair my use of practice theory with Psychological Anthropology to consider the nature of this cultural practice.