Eastern Movement Forms as Body-Self Transforming Cultural Practices in the West: Towards a Sociological Perspective

TLDR

Eastern movement forms such as martial arts, yoga, and Tai Chi have quietly integrated into everyday Western life over recent decades, contrasting with the more visible spread of Western sports. The article aims to examine how long‑term Western practitioners of Eastern movement forms experience and respond to cultural forces, using a structurationist lens that links macro, meso, and micro levels. The study analyzes data from practitioners alongside media and documentary sources, focusing on three Western social forces—Orientalism, reflexive modernization, and commodification—to understand their impact on these practices. The analysis shows that these forces intensify the (re)invention of tradition, creating transformative tensions, and reveals three dispositions—preservationism, conservationism, and modernization—that shape individuals’ responses.

Abstract

Unlike the spectacular diffusion of modern Western sporting forms, Eastern movement forms (martial arts, Eastern dance, Yoga, meditation, Tai Chi Chuan, Qigong, etc.) have been quietly entering the fabric of everyday Western life over the past few decades. Adopting a structurationist approach that seeks to retain relationships between macro-, meso- and micro-levels of culture, this article considers data gathered from a range of long-term Western practitioners of a variety of Eastern movement forms in juxtaposition to broader media and documentary data also gathered on these practices. The analysis explores three Western social forces (Orientalism, reflexive modernization and commodification.) identified as acting on these movement forms in ways that intensify the process of (re)invention of tradition with particular transformative tensions. In conclusion, we identify three dispositions (preservationism, conservationism, and modernization) emerging from our analysis of these movement forms that seem to drive how individuals respond to the transformative Western social forces highlighted.