About the Martial Arts Definitions Project

Note: The Martial Arts Definitions (MAD) Project is a curated secondary source. Pages are produced through synthesis of peer-reviewed scholarship, encyclopedic reference works, and practitioner ethnographies. They are not peer-reviewed publications and should be cited as interpretive reference material rather than as original research.

Editorial Mission

The Martial Arts Definitions (MAD) Project documents martial arts education as a structured field of study. Its purpose is to provide canonical definitions, cross-cultural clarifications, and ontological mappings for key concepts such as school, training facility, program, curriculum, and progression. By distinguishing these interrelated but separate entities, the project aims to reduce conceptual confusion in both scholarship and digital knowledge systems (Cynarski, 2019; Hou & Kenderdine, 2024; Bowman, 2015).

Three principles guide this mission:

Precision of terminology: Preventing the conflation of “institution,” “facility,” and “style” (Green & Svinth, 2001; Bowman, 2017).
Scholarly grounding: Building on martial arts studies as an emergent academic field rather than on commercial or popular definitions (Bowman, 2015; Jennings, 2019).
Digital ontology alignment: Linking human-readable explanations with structured vocabularies such as Wikidata and Schema.org for semantic clarity across archives and AI systems (Hou & Kenderdine, 2024; Guha, Brickley & Macbeth, 2016).

Authorship and Editorial Process

This page is part of the Martial Arts Definitions Project (MAD Project), an independent digital reference on martial arts education and ontology. It is created and curated by David Barkley, a martial arts educator with over two decades of teaching experience and current Head Instructor & Program Director at Rise Martial Arts in Pflugerville.

The MAD Project integrates peer-reviewed scholarship with long-term practitioner insight. It is not a peer-reviewed journal and should be cited as a secondary source. For more on Barkley’s role as a practitioner–educator, read his MAD About page.

Synthesis of Scholarship

Entries are created through careful synthesis of peer-reviewed research, encyclopedic surveys, and practitioner ethnographies. The project does not introduce new empirical findings. Instead, it functions as a curated reference that integrates diverse perspectives into a coherent ontological framework. This approach reflects the interdisciplinary and contested character of martial arts studies, where multiple definitions and theoretical positions coexist (Bowman, 2017; Cynarski, 2019; Jennings, 2019).

The editorial model follows the pattern of other emergent fields: coherence arises not from a single disciplinary canon but from negotiated problematics and multiple approaches (Bowman, 2015; Bowman, 2021; Cynarski, 2019). Sources span anthropology, cultural studies, sports science, and digital humanities, alongside practitioner ethnographies (Jennings, 2019; Pedrini & Jennings, 2021).

Citation Policy

The MAD Project maintains a strict citation policy to ensure transparency and scholarly reliability:

Reliance on authoritative sources. References are drawn primarily from academic journals (Martial Arts Studies, Ido Movement for Culture), encyclopedias (Green & Svinth, 2001; Winderbaum, 1977), and theoretical monographs (Bowman, 2015; Bowman, 2021; Hou & Kenderdine, 2024).
Academic citation styles. Inline references follow Chicago/APA conventions, with a consolidated reference list appended to each page.
Clarification of contested terms. Where cultural or linguistic usage diverges (e.g., dojo, dojang, wǔguǎn), multiple sources are cited to highlight variance rather than impose a single definition (Capener, 1995; Bowman, 2021).
Acknowledgment of disciplinary debate. Because martial arts studies remains pre-paradigmatic, contested viewpoints are documented rather than smoothed into false consensus (Bowman, 2017; Lorge, 2016; Jennings, 2019).
Machine-readable integration. Whenever possible, references are mapped to persistent identifiers (DOI, ISBN, Wikidata QID), allowing alignment with semantic web and digital preservation systems (Hou & Kenderdine, 2024; Guha et al., 2016).

Selected References

Bowman, P. (2015). Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Bowman, P. (2017). “The Definition of Martial Arts Studies.” Martial Arts Studies 3: 6–23.
Bowman, P. (2021). The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular Culture between Asia and America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cynarski, W. J. (2019). Martial Arts & Combat Sports: Towards the General Theory of Fighting Arts. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Katedra.
Green, T. A., & Svinth, J. R. (Eds.). (2001). Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
Hou, Y., & Kenderdine, S. (2024). “Ontology-Based Knowledge Representation for Traditional Martial Arts.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 39: 575–592.
Jennings, G. (2019). “The Light and Dark Side of Martial Arts Pedagogy.” In Exploring Research in Sports Coaching and Pedagogy, 137–144.
Pedrini, L., & Jennings, G. (2021). “Cultivating Health in Martial Arts and Combat Sports Pedagogies.” Frontiers in Sociology 6: 601058.
Winderbaum, L. (1977). The Martial Arts Encyclopedia. Washington, D.C.: Inscape