Editorial: Martial arts, health, and society

Martial arts have become the center of academic attention this century. Along with groundbreaking monographs, to date, scholars have developed edited books on women in combat sports (Channon and Matthews, 2015) and on theoretical topics pertaining to habitus (Sánchez-García and Spencer, 2013). Collections have focused on the martial arts of specific regions, cultures, and intangible cultural heritage (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge, 2011; Park and Ryu, 2020). Meanwhile, special issues in journals have focused on the relationship between martial arts and society from a qualitative sociological perspective (Spencer and Hogeveen, 2014), and more recently, quantitative and biomedical perspectives on the impact of martial arts and combat sports on health (Dopico et al., 2022).

However, how martial activities might be health giving, dangerous or healing, therapeutic and rehabilitative, and how they connect with specific ideas on body and medicine remain underexplored.