Cultural Explications in a Martial Art, Taekwondo; Collectivistic, Power-centered, Probabilistic, and Masculine 1
국기원태권도연구, 2013, 제4권, 제1호 pp.1-30Taekwondo Journal of Kukkiwon
2013, Vol. 6, No 1. pp. 1-30
Cultural Explications in a Martial Art, Taekwondo; Collectivistic,
Power-centered, Probabilistic, and Masculine
Lee, Jeong-Dae*(Miami University)·
Todd Gilson(Northern Illinois University)·Yi, Bong(Kyungwon University)[1]
Abstract
Kukkiwon has an accountability for developing right values of Taekwond and excavating new values related to it to train promising Taekwondo instructors. Kukkiwon has recently been criticized for not playing such a role successfully. Thus, the purpose of this study was to analyze the realities of Kukkiwon's promising Taekwondo instructors' courses and propose desirable curricular for the better courses. To achieve the research purpose, open questionnaires were administered to 182 promising Taekwondo instructors and 32 college professors, and 25 research participants were interviewed. The collected data were analyzed by content analysis and domain analysis & taxonomic analysis suggested by Spradley (1979). As a result of analyzing the data, such problems as unclear objectives of the program, unsatisfying selection criteria, worn-out curricular, instructor-centered instruction, no criteria to evaluate the course, and no in-service education. To solve the problems, the following proposals were suggested: establishment of clear objectives, valid standards of selecting processes, development of balanced curricular, variety of teaching methods, evaluation of teaching ability, and obligation to in-service education.
Key words :Kukkiwon Taekwondo, Collectivistic, Power-centered, Probabilistic, Masculine
Cultural Explications in a Martial Art, Taekwondo; Collectivistic, Power-centered, Probabilistic, and Masculine 1
Ⅰ. Introduction
Taekwondo has been announced as one of the best representative images of Korean culture since 1996 by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, Tourism of the Republic of Korea. The ministry introduced Taekwondo on its Webpage as the following;
Korea's traditional martial art taekwondo is a form of wholesome exercise that has taken its place as a sport in worldwide competition. But taekwondo is more than just a sport. It is also a performing art infused with the Korean spirit. The beauty of art is of two kinds, stable and dynamic. Stability is expressed in the contemplation that forms the mental component of taekwondo training with its emphasis on stillness in repose. More than other sports or martial arts, the movement style of taekwondo places mental cultivation above the skill. It has less to do with offense and defense than with the unity of mind and body that arises from the movement itself. When the body moves in union with the mind, we experience stillness in motion and movement at rest. Within this movement lies a mind in repose… The dynamic element in the technique of taekwondo lies in the basic movements of the hands and feet. The fist and limbs are used in the block, punch, thrust, and chop, and the feet in kicking, each with various standing postures (The Ministry of Culture Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, 2010).
As described, Taekwondo not only demonstrates many physical presentations of actions with a body, hands, and legs but also conveys unique philosophical abstractions in its practice as a self defense system. Taekwondo is often showcased with sparring, breaking, forms, and some other types of self-defense skills to demonstrate the primary images of Taekwondo disciplines on physical, mental, and social oneself (K. M. Lee, 2000; K. S. Lee, 1998).
There are two major international Taekwondo organizations: the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) and the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) (Tedeschi, 2003). However, the WTF has been the primary organization to promote Taekwondo as an Olympic event in endeavor with other main Taekwondo organizations, Kukkiwon (the World Headquarters of Taekwondo) and the Korean Taekwondo Federation (KTF). In 1971, Taekwondo was named a, ‘national art’ by the South Korean government, and the major organizations accelerated their institutional efforts to develop promotion processes, game rules, standardized equipment, and many other regulations (J. R. Kim, 1989; Kukkiwon, 2006). Holding several demonstration events at Olympic games (e.g., Seoul, South Korea in 1988 and Barcelona, Spain in 1992), a Taekwondo sparring event was eventually announced to be an official Olympic sport in 1994 at Paris, with the first official Taekwondo event held during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. The Taekwondo organizations put forth a great deal of efforts – aided by the government and the public – because they believed the acceptance into the Olympics would be regarded as the best, most appropriate way for the martial art to be promoted as a mainstream modern combatant sport (S. H. Kim, Chung, & Lee, 1999). Recently the Taekwondo organizations have actively developed and opened other types of competitions such as form and breaking events as well at national and international levels in many different places. As of April 2010, the number of countries that have joined the WTF stood at 191, under the 5 different regional Taekwondo unions (The World Taekwondo Federation, 2010).
As a modern combat sport, Taekwondo practitioners have made a great deal of (hyper-) masculine features during the course of skill acquisition. In fact, many of the promoted disciplinary images of Taekwondo are heavily focused on and tied to many masculine traits with tough, aggressive, vigorous, and robust forms of human movements (Jones, 2002). As an example, toughness is often considered a necessary quality for the performers to demonstrate as an essential part of the disciplinary spirit, so called ‘Indomitable Spirit’. Often times, some type of militaristic warriorship is also associated with the masculinity and many other different masculine characters are excessively promoted (Womack, 2003). Using the discourses on masculinities in Taekwondo, this study explores how culturally perceptual schemes of gender aspects in Taekwondo can pervasively be in favor of masculine domination and how the members are culturally convinced to embrace the symbolic and adversarial divisions of gender ideas and orders in the sport (Bourdieu, 2001). Because Taekwondo conveys many cultural aspects with its ethnic origination, the researchers suggest this sport is a cultural space where distinctive cultural features are practiced in the course of learning (K. M. Lee, 2000). In addition, it is presumed that the gender and masculinities in Taekwondo can be different from many Western- oriented sports (Womack, 2003). Therefore, this study examines the cultural demonstrations of Taekwondo as inherent traditions of distinctive cultural aspects to the sport in which people in Western societies may not experience. As the second facet of the study, this cultural examination will further prompt and frame in-depth and critical analyses on gender and masculinities in discussion.
Studies on Taekwondo have focused mostly on history, philosophy, pedagogy, or injuries in Western scholarly work, and little work has been conducted which explores socio-cultural practices of Taekwondo, especially in regard to gender and masculinities. Therefore, the current study conducts a critical examination of what consider as cultural productions in the lineage of the contemporary social patterns as presented and expressed through Taekwondo as to socio-cultural traditions, gender, and masculinities. Along with it, the present study may aid many Taekwondo practitioners to become more reflective and critical to the sociological realm of human relationships in their sport, Taekwondo, as a humane sport activity for all regardless of any social statuses.
Ⅱ. Contextual Framework: Culture, Gender,
and Masculinity in Taekwondo
1. The culture
Korean culture has traditionally been hierarchical and patriarchal in a structural system and these relationships are still emphasized through the society even if many changes in industry, economy, politics, etc. have influenced the society so that the life patterns become somewhat different from the past. Due to the changes, particularly in extensive aspects of socio-cultural patterns of life, a study may be deserved beyond the limited scope of the paper in the contemporary post-structural society. However, many people in Korea view Taekwondo as one of the few proud cultural means to conserve their cultural traditions from the post-modern society, in which many new and emerging liberal ideologies and circumstances often demand citizens to change traditional ideas or belief systems in terms of the way they live. In Taekwondo, etiquettes, hierarchical ranking systems, and various types of rituals are demonstrated as cultural embracement of the actions and expressions of the society (K. Lee, 1998; K. M. Lee, 2000; The Ministry of Culture Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, 2010). Along with it, the people in Korea explicitly agree that the consent for the belief about Taekwondo as a proud conservative place should be made as an indicator of their significant affiliation to their country (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). In fact, the conservativeness of Taekwondo is rarely criticized or disputed, but rather frequently promoted with much social and cultural consent.
Looking at some studies to aid our understanding of the cultural aspects of Korea in Taekwondo, Gudykunsk’s (2000) study on cultural distinctions amongst different countries was used. According the study, it was argued that Asian culture has traditional tendencies to be collectivistic, probabilistic, power-centered, and feminine as opposed to individualistic, absolute, power-distributed, and masculine in Western culture (Gudykunst, 2001, 2005). In fact, the collectivistic features can be observed in the practice of Taekwondo as the practitioners should wear the same uniforms, train in unison, and follow many ritualistic activities together in a certain common way. With these many actions and behaviors done together, participants become more tied to the ‘We’ consciousness and more likely hesitate to be deviant from others in their actions and behaviors. In Taekwondo, probabilistic features are also shown as another cultural aspect as both physical skills and mental development are often taught with uncertain, indirect, metaphorical, and symbolic Asian ideas. In addition, the power-centered cultural aspect can also be observed with the hierarchical system in Taekwondo. In the practice, students are always asked to bow and respect each other with no highly established self-pride. Additionally, participants should not only show higher person(s) in status respect, but also obey and never challenge by any means. Gudykunsk (2001) also categorizes Asian culture as less masculine than that of Western culture as many more men in Korea do not mind having many traditionally or stereotypically feminine traits in appearance and communication while men in Western culture avoid them in general. However, the current study argues that the culture in Korea also has many masculine characteristics to a similar extent to any other Western cultures. It can be suggested that Korea’s traditional masculinity characteristics are simply expressed differently than those in other cultures and societies. For instance, Korean collectivism could be one of the reasons why masculinity is submerged, because masculinity is often regarded as an individual expression that could be shown as deviant or even threatening to their collectivistic social system at any level. On the other hand, the masculinity could also be less visible because of it being a probabilistic society and culture in expression, communication, and actions. Men in the society do not aggressively need to display or express their masculinities in the already-male-dominated society with a risk of being characterized to be deviant or threatening among other social members.
2. Gender and masculinities
Relating the discussion on masculinities, Yang and Rosenblatt (2001) argue that Confucianism has covertly and overtly influenced a large part of Korean culture about gender in the society. According to them, Confucianism has taught that people have to maintain and reinforce the hierarchical relationships between different genders: for example, women (wives) must obey and submissive to men (husbands). The Confucian principle also teaches that men in the society must control social, political, and economic power pre-dominantly (Yang & Rosenblatt, 2001). Asian writings uses sign characters, “男” and “女,” to indicate ‘man’ and ‘woman’. The former character “男” says ‘man’ and it is a combination of two simpler characters, “田 (a field)” and “力 (power)”. The character describes a man working in a field whereas, the latter character “女” says ‘woman’ symbolizing the figure of a woman’s kneeling position (Cooper, 1978). These characters provide the traditional ideas to define the essential and core characteristics of maleness and femaleness as implying that men are outgoing and powerful and women are domestic and submissive. While Western worlds have also been keeping a certain separate commonality of their own traditional gender ideologies, Cooper (19788) assumes that the those characters played a role to instill and codify traditional meanings of men and women and the construction of traditional gender ideologies in the society. In fact, the ideas of men and women have been enduring and continuing in the Korean society as regarded as indisputable nature of men and women with socially prevalent gender constructions and ideologies (Eccles, 2005). Men and women in sport are no exceptional in this respect. However, the phenomena of gendering in Taekwondo could be more obvious because of its conservative and hierarchical practices with many promoted masculine features of the sport. Reflecting these aspects of gender in Taekwondo, the sport is often regarded as a place where men could mostly play and dominate because they believed that they are physically superior to women. Thus, there are more chances and encouragement for boys and men to play Taekwondo.
Many studies in sports sociology have paid attention to masculinities separately from the issues of gender as arguing that sport genders many aspects of experiences and is overtly developed and ritualized to celebrate various types of masculinities (Connell, 2000; Eitzen, 2009; Hall, 1990; J. Lee, 2008; Messner, 2002). Although various expressions of masculinities such as aggression, toughness, homophobia, violence, etc. are often elsewhere considered deviant against the rules of social conformity and in opposition to societal mores, it would not be deniable to agree that masculinities are normally accepted in sport without question and often promoted and rewarded, especially within the context of competitiveness of highly organized sports (Connell, 2000; Hall, 1990; Tucker & Parks, 2001). Masculinities are symbolically legitimated as a gender norm in sports (Laberge& Albert, 1999), but they are developed as hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2000). For instance, sports often display hegemonic masculinity by demonstrating physical prowess over others (Drummond, 2002; Hasbrook& Harris, 1999; Messner, 2001). Cultural symbolism of the media was also studied arguing that sports reproduce and enhance hegemonic gender ideology with masculinity as it displays symbolic notions of a feminine and masculine bodies, war, success, etc., through the media (Lippe, 2002). Many other studies defined culturally formed characteristics of masculinities with an argument that sports provide men with culturally strengthened and legitimated gender order with the masculine traits of competitiveness and domination (Hall, 1990; Hofstede, 2001; Kidd, 1987). In this sense, Taekwondo can be an interesting space to examine how men culturally take combatant nature of the sport and achieve their masculine desires and prides. Laberge and Albert (1999) argued that society is constructed in prevalently imperative processes of “asymmetry gender relations in a given social order (p.244),” supporting the idea that gender ideologies are constructed and reconstructed in keeping with the characteristics of hegemonic power relations with masculinities within the social structure (Hall, 1996). As far as Taekwondo conserves its hierarchical systems which construct power relationships among the members, traditional masculinity in Taekwondo still can be issued as an observable masculinity to produce the power relationships between men and women within the cultural context.
Ⅲ. Methodology
For this study, regular Taekwondo club classes were observed at a mid-Michigan university for a one-semester term, which was about 4 months. During the study, formal interviews were conducted to examine socio-cultural traditions, gender, and masculinities. Several informal interviews were also done to collect some instance responses to their Taekwondo learning on a daily basis. The formal interviews included eleven students and one instructor while using a semi-structured interview method for 30 to 95 minutes. Among the interviewees, six were male and five were female, and the instructor was male. The students that were interviewed were enrolled at the school and the ages were mostly from 19 to 23, but there was one student age 33. The distributions of race/ethnicity were six whites, three Asians, one African American, and one Hispanic. The instructor that was interviewed was a 4th degree black belt at the time of the observation and interview. He studied Taekwondo for 26 years and began to teach it at the university since he became a black belt – 23 years ago. In terms of socio-economic class status, all the students identified themselves as middle- or upper-middle-class. Their Taekwondo experiences varied from four months to three years. However, it should be noted that these patterns varied in every single class for observations throughout the semester term. Before conducting class observations and interviews, verbal consent was given by the study researchers. The participants for the observations and interviews were told that participation was voluntary but that the study would be very important to help people understand gender and masculinities and how we identify ourselves sociologically within the society we share. In addition, the researcher assured the study participants that they would remain anonymous during and pseudo-named in the field notes and analysis.