The Four Dimensions of Folk Martial Arts Heritage Transmission: An Ethnographic Study of a ^Kung Fu Village^ among the Kam People in China
ZHANG Zhongjie, LONG Yuxiao et al.

School of Wushu, Shanghai University of Sport

Abstract

Drawing on my project research team^s ethnographic fieldwork in an officially-designated ^Kung Fu Village^ named Ganxi among the Kam People, an ethnic group in Southwest China, this article intends to expound the complexity and contingency in the transmission of folk martial art heritages in a cross-cultural setting. Inspired by the association paradigm as illuminated in the Actor-Network Theory of Bruno Latour and the rhizome paradigm in the works of Gille Deleuze and Felix Guattari, this study considers the Kam martial arts heritage as a rhizomatic agent that can be nomadically associated with a wide array of subjects and objects at various levels to form an assemblage contextualized in four dimensions: local, ethnical, national, and global. Symmetrically reassembled into the network of heritage transmission are not only a variety of human actors including local elites, state officials, tourism entrepreneurs, tourists, and common villagers, but also non-human actants such as village landscape, performance stage and plaza, road and bridge, water well, visitor hostel, canteen, rules, and some institutions. The formation of association and assemblage, as demonstrated in this Kam case of ^Kung Fu Village^, is fundamentally contingent on translation, negotiation and compromise between these actors and actants in relation to their interests, power and dispositions, wherein dimensions of locality, ethnicity, nationhood and globalism entangle each other with tremendous intricacies and nuances.

Keywords: Folk Martial Arts- Sport Heritage Transmission- Actor-Network Theory- Rhizomatic Paradigm- Association Paradigm- the Kam People

Topic: Traditional sports and physical culture in Asia