ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contribute to an established yet growing literature that burgeoned from the mid 1990s (including works by Clifford 1997; Gupta and Ferguson 1997; Moore 1996 etc.) on how identities are continually forged through mobility and ‘inter-culturality’. Multiple influences from near and far fashion individual identities, particularly in what Bauman has called our ‘heterophilic age’ (1997:55). So my aim here, to explore ideas about processes of appropriation in the context of martial arts training, is part of a larger project that explores the possibilities of an internal diversity that individuals may attain through the discipline of leisure practice. To understand the way that people may appropriate and come to feel a sense of developing ownership over new ways of moving, interacting, training etc., one must move with people beyond boundaries of home and place.
