Beyond self-Orientalism: Asian masculine landscapes in Chinese and Thai martial arts tourism

Abstract

Martial arts tourism is a burgeoning form of tourism typified by Western ‘martial arts pilgrims’ travelling to Asian ‘martial arts cradles’ for leisure-based learning, training and spectatorship. Despite its growing economic and cultural significance, research on martial arts tourism as a sociocultural practice is scant. This study argues that the intrinsic relationship of martial arts to masculinities and Asian-ness offers the opportunity to study the self-representation of ‘Asian masculine landscapes’ (AMLs) in tourism. By comparing eight destination websites in Thailand and China, this study conceives AMLs as the creative appropriation, transmogrification and hybridisation of divergent images of masculinities circulated at different scales. This conceptualisation speaks to a cultural complexity framework that moves beyond the deterministic and unidirectional paradigm of self-Orientalism by highlighting the productive role of Asian destination ‘image-makers’ as both cultural remediators and improvisers occupying the intermediary position between the homogenising and heterogenising discourses of transnational masculinities.