AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF JAPANESE MARTIAL ARTS

Abstract

This article is an extract from the forthcoming book The Historical Sociology of Japanese Martial Arts by Raúl Sánchez García [forthcoming in 2018, Routledge, ISBN: 978-1-138-57169-3]. It presents Japanese martial arts from a historical-sociology approach. After a brief discussion on the relationship between terminology and social processes, the chapter introduces the main tenets of Norbert Elias’s process sociology and introduces the research strategy of the book. It has been edited and reprinted here with kind permission of the publisher with the aim of forwarding the research agenda of a historical-sociology approach to martial arts studies.