“This is where…I built myself”: A Social Integration Perspective of the Taekwondo Club as a ‘Transcultural Venue’

In this paper we present a collective instrumental case study illustrating how martial arts clubs with certain characteristics can act as transcultural venues contributing to social integration. More specifically, we identify Taekwondo-dojangs (Taekwondo clubs), which comprise practitioners of various ethnicities, religions, genders, and generations, as a ‘transcultural venue’ in and through which Taekwondo practitioners can experience social integration. Interview data with practitioners in three clubs in Wales, UK, are combined ethnographical contextual field notes data from the clubs’ teacher in a thematic analysis. The data illustrate how as a transcultural venue, the Taekwondo-dojang, enables practitioners to experience a process of transculturation occurring between cultures of the art, the practitioners’ cultures and the host culture. This process is enlivened by practices of diversity, inclusivity, and hybridity which lead to a transcultural form of social integration. Accordingly, this study seeks to contribute to the field of martial arts studies by offering an original theoretical development of the concept of the ‘transcultural venue’ and its utility in developing understandings of transculturation, transculturalism and social integration.