Antagonism, collaboration, and skill in martial arts: a cognitive ecological ethnographic approach

Over the past few decades, cognitive science and the philosophy of mind have moved increasingly towards cognitive theories that consider the mind as fundamentally embodied, distributed, and situated. Of the many studies that contribute real-world cases into these frameworks, little attention has been paid to examples of conflict, a ubiquitous part of social, technological, and professional life. This thesis analyses the significance of antagonistic dynamics in extended cognition by examining cases of competition and collaboration in martial arts practices. By adopting a cognitive ecological and ethnographic approach, the thesis explores martial art activities as distributed phenomena in unique sociocultural environments, as practitioners learn, bruise, adapt, and contest martial arts skills and traditions with each other. Specifically, it looks into variations of conflict in two different martial arts practices: Muay Thai, a fast and brutal Thai prize fighting sport and art, and Tai Chi, a slow martial movement art form originating from China. The productive significance of conflict is analysed across different timescales in the thesis chapters. Chapter 1 develops a theoretical and contextual platform for examining martial arts from a cognitive science perspective. Reviewing the dominance of discussion of harmonious action and cooperation in cognitive science highlights the importance of balancing the account of embodied intelligence with a consideration of antagonistic dynamics. Martial arts provide an ideal forum in which to do so. Chapter 2 explores the emergence of the two martial arts traditions in historical time to illuminate the smart structures that organise and constrain martial arts activities today. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the developmental timeframe that facilitates skill development and training. Through close analysis of embodied learning processes, the chapters describe enskilment into the two different training environments; competition is essential to both, but the ways in which it is instituted vary markedly. Chapters 5 and 6 offer microscopic analysis of the compressed timescales of conflict during live combat activities through microethnographic and reflexive approaches. These chapters show cases of skilled distributed activity between coaches, practitioners, and opponents in competitive environments where more or less central control is needed. Chapter 7 reintegrates the fast and slow timescales to re-examine the multiscale and composite martial arts ecologies. By exploring martial arts on multiple timescales and by adding focus to the distributed cognitive dimensions of skilled antagonistic performance, this work shows how performance ecologies produce embodied skills through the interplay of conflict and collaboration.