What is Martial Arts?

For a surprisingly long time, the research field which is known today as Martial Arts Studies has flown under the radar of Western sport sciences in comparison to its bold representation in the media (mma, boxing, wrestling). As soon as various authors and martial artists started to get a general idea of the whole spectrum of martial arts, the fundamental question arose how to formulate the specific characteristics which encompass martial arts all over the world. The problem arose how to merge historically, culturally and linguistically different terminological concepts. In this book, firstly the author outlines former attempts of defining martial arts and highlights several core challenges which have hindered to conceptualise martial arts definitions. Secondly, he sets up a new scientific approach to the definition problem by combining empirical, hermeneutical and phenomenological resources. Lastly, the author develops an academically valuable definition model which constitutes a framework of attributes to support researchers who proceed to classify martial arts and similar phenomena.