​“The world cannot be interpreted only once.”
— Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Introduction: The Allure—and Danger—of Metrics
In recent years, international schools have become increasingly invested in frameworks of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ). Accompanying this rhetorical shift has been the proliferation of tools purporting to measure 'intercultural competence'—instruments that typically generate developmental profiles for individuals or groups, often based on their self-assessed orientation towards cultural difference.
These assessments can provoke reflection, expose blind spots, and suggest developmental pathways. Yet they are also symptomatic of a deeper epistemic limitation: the persistent reduction of global complexity to measurable individual traits.

The Illusion of Individual Competence
Such tools assume that cultural competence resides within the individual as a transferable disposition. This psychologisation of difference sidesteps the material and institutional structures that organise inequality in schools. Here, Pierre Bourdieu’s work becomes indispensable. His concepts of habitus, field, and capital allow us to understand how dispositions are produced and reproduced through institutional logics.
Schools are not neutral; they are structured spaces in which particular values and modes of being are validated, while others are marginalised or misrecognised as deviant. To assess whether one is ‘competent’ across cultural differences without interrogating how the field itself is structured—whose norms are dominant, whose knowledge is legitimised—is to risk reproducing symbolic violence under the guise of inclusion.

Beyond the Western Frame
The dominant logics of DEIJ tools—liberal individualism and dialectical Marxism—emerge from Western epistemic traditions. The former prizes empathy and tolerance; the latter frames equity in terms of conflict and redistribution. Both offer insights, yet neither sufficiently addresses the pluralism of global justice. They often rely on binaries: developed/developing, progressive/regressive, West/East. These are not empirical truths but ideological categories born of empire.
A decolonial framing, as articulated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, urges us to reject the idea that the world can be explained through a single civilisational lens. Rather, we must begin to imagine what he calls a pluriverse—a world of many worlds. The globe is not bifurcated; it is circular, entangled, and unfinished.

Learning from Other Philosophies
To move beyond these binaries, we must attend to relational and process-oriented ontologies found outside dominant Euro-American traditions.
The Japanese concept of wa (和), often mistranslated as mere harmony, speaks to a dynamic equilibrium rooted in attentiveness, responsibility, and collective presence. It suggests that equity is a shared rhythm, not a static goal. Closely aligned is kaizen (改善)--kai (改), change; zen (善), good. Kaizen invites sustained, humble practice, where transformation is iterative, grounded, and quietly ethical. It does not demand instant impact but values patient, collective refinement.
In southern Africa, the ethic of Ubuntu—particularly among the Nguni Bantu speakers of isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, and Ndebele—reminds us that personhood is relational. “I am because we are” is not simply a slogan, but an ontological commitment. Ubuntu has underpinned national healing in South Africa, not through amnesia or assimilation, but through recognition, accountability, and connection.
These worldviews do not merely supplement dominant models—they interrupt them. They reject efficiency, linearity, and abstract universality. They assert that justice begins with listening, co-presence, and the slow work of relational repair.

Transitional Ethic: From Inclusion to Praxis
Such relational traditions call for an ethic of praxis, not procedure. They reveal the inadequacy of metrics that assume competence is a cognitive or behavioural outcome. Equity is not a box to be ticked, but a shifting field of relational, cultural, and institutional struggle.
We must ask not how diverse our classrooms appear, but how power circulates within them. Not what policies exist, but whose ways of knowing they reflect. This is the terrain of ethical inclusion—not as measurable output, but as reflexive and situated practice.

On the Commodification of DEIJ
There is a final irony that cannot be ignored. The tools now used to measure inclusion have themselves become market commodities. They circulate within accreditation regimes, consultant packages, and diversity rankings. They generate outputs, produce dashboards, and offer the appearance of movement. But as Bourdieu reminds us, they also serve as symbolic capital—conferring status upon institutions, even when no substantive transformation has occurred.
Even Marxist-inflected critique, once radically situated, has become marketable. Abstracted from its context, it too is now a brand. DEIJ has become a professional sector—an industry that trades in conscience, selling equity in formats that are digestible, reportable, and monetisable.
The desire to simplify—to resolve—belongs to the same managerial logic that produced the crisis. But justice cannot be outsourced. It must be inhabited.

No Silver Bullets: The Community Is Unfinished
There is no metric, no rubric, no five-stage framework that will make us just. There is no toolkit that will inoculate us against complicity and beautiful complexity. To treat justice as a deliverable is to misunderstand it entirely.
Inclusion is not a puzzle with a hidden key; it is a tension to be held, a discipline to be practised, and a field of relationship to be continually renegotiated. The desire for a silver bullet is part of the problem.

An Invitation to Stay With the Trouble
This reflection does not offer closure. It offers questions:

• How are we complicit in the structures we critique?
• What knowledge have we ignored because it does not translate into our frameworks?
• What stories have we silenced in our quest for clarity or control?
• How have we simplified the complex to a dichotomy of us/them?
• To what extent do we live in the illusion that we are free-thinkers in a world dominated by a uni-cultural hegemonic media of news, social platforms and even academic journals?

To practise justice is to remain unfinished. It is to stay with the trouble. It is to listen beyond ourselves, to slow down, and to refuse the seductions of speed, certainty, and saleability.

Conclusion: Remaking the Field
Equity, inclusion, and justice are not policies—they are postures. They demand new grammars of engagement and new ways of reading the world. We must abandon the idea that progress can be plotted on a continuum. Instead, we must remake the fields in which we learn and lead.
It is not transformation we need to measure, but the will to remain transformed.

Epilogue: Can DEIJ Ever Be Global in a Professionally Anglo-centric Field?
The bold ideals of DEIJ are now woven into the mission statements of most international schools. But one must ask: can these ideals be truly realised within systems where the epistemic scaffolding—what counts as valid knowledge, pedagogical authority, and leadership—is so often shaped by educators from a narrow slice of the Anglophone world?
Despite being termed ‘international’, many such schools employ faculty drawn disproportionately from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. These teachers bring with them not just professional credentials, but embedded cultural heuristics: inherited values, educational instincts, and justice narratives shaped by their home systems.
As a result, DEIJ often becomes a projection of these Anglophone frameworks outward—well-intentioned, but epistemologically narrow. One sees this in the prioritisation of English-language literacies, the valorisation of so-called Western liberal movements, and the assumption that justice means granting access to dominant models, rather than interrogating or transforming them. What is just is not a stable uniform but rather a historically shaped context, often defined by those who think they know better!
When DEIJ is filtered through these heuristics, it ceases to be global. It becomes a travelling ideology—less concerned with listening than with exporting. This is not inclusion. It is epistemic colonisation. This is propaganda at its finest.

What might it mean to build DEIJ not from Massachusetts or Melbourne, but from Marrakesh, Maputo, Muscat, or Manila? To begin not with pre-loaded values, but with situated dialogue—honouring the intellectual and spiritual traditions of host cultures, diasporic communities, and Indigenous epistemologies?

Until international schools examine the habitual horizon of their teaching corps, their inclusive aspirations will remain bound by the professional imagination of the English-speaking world. If DEIJ is to be global, it must be multilingual—not just in language, but in worldview. DEIJ is a lived life entrenched is questions but seeking the better of our bothers and sisters as THEY seek to be bettered once they are enabled with an informed potential.

本稿は、国際教育における「多様性・公平性・包括・正義（DEIJ）」の取り組みに対して、現在主流となっている評価ツールや指標に根本的な疑義を呈するものである。特に、いわゆる「異文化理解能力」の発達段階を測定しようとする試みは、しばしば自己申告ベースに依存し、個人主義的かつ心理主義的枠組みの中で文化的差異を扱っている。その結果、制度的・構造的な不平等の根源には十分に踏み込めず、象徴的暴力を再生産する危険すらある。
フランスの社会学者ピエール・ブルデューの概念（ハビトゥス、場、文化資本）を軸に、学校という制度がどのようにして特定の価値観や知を正当化し、他を排除するかを分析する。さらに、国際的な「包括」の語りがしばしば英語圏（特にアメリカ、イギリス、カナダ、オーストラリア）の教育者の認識や経験に強く依存している点を批判する。
その上で、本稿は西洋中心的な枠組みを超えるための哲学的視座として、日本の**「和（わ・和）」と「改善（かいぜん・改善）」、南部アフリカ地域に根ざすウブントゥ（Ubuntu）**の倫理を紹介する。これらは、包括を「結果」や「数値」で測るものではなく、関係性の中で継続的に実践され
References

• Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Stanford University Press.
• Connell, R. (2007). Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Polity Press.
• Santos, B. de Sousa (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Routledge.
• Simpson, L. B. (2017). As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota Press.

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Morgan, K. (2020). Martial Arts, Religion and Ressentiment. Presentation to the 6th Martial Arts Studies Conference, Martial Arts, Religion and Spirituality, July 2020.

Ressentiment and the Martial Arts: Towards a More Fraternal Discourse?An academic review of Kai Morgan’s “Martial Arts, Religion and Ressentiment” (2020).

In her 2020 conference paper Martial Arts, Religion and Ressentiment, Kai Morgan delivers a timely and philosophically informed analysis of a long-familiar pathology within martial arts culture: the persistent rivalries, dismissiveness, and tribalism that can define inter-style relations. Drawing on the philosophical tradition of ressentiment—primarily through Nietzsche, Scheler, and more recently, Tomelleri—Morgan reframes martial rivalries not merely as personality clashes or ideological disagreements, but as deeper, affectively charged expressions of perceived inferiority and inverted values.

Morgan’s paper contributes meaningfully to the maturing field of martial arts studies, particularly the branch that engages with critical theory and philosophy. Rather than focusing on technical efficacy or lineage histories, she explores how martial practice becomes entangled in social psychology, institutional hierarchies, and the ethics of recognition. In doing so, her work stands alongside scholars like Sixt Wetzler and Paul Bowman in framing martial arts not just as embodied disciplines, but as ideologically saturated and ethically contested cultural fields.

Her argument begins with a compelling analogy: just as religious denominations may seek similar ends but fall into mutual mistrust, martial artists often profess to pursue self-mastery, discipline, and growth—yet remain mired in suspicion and critique of others. As Morgan notes, “It’s a very common topic of conversation to say that such and such style is severely flawed and/or would never work on ‘the street.’” This dismissiveness, she argues, stems not only from insecurity but also from a deeper emotional structure: ressentiment.

Drawing from Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), Morgan defines ressentiment as a toxic inversion of values—wherein individuals or groups, unable to match others in strength or success, recast their own weakness as moral superiority. In Nietzsche’s words, this is the “transvaluation of values”—a process whereby “worldly power, wealth and success are seen as ‘bad,’ while meekness, humility and poverty are seen as ‘good.’” Morgan maps this neatly onto martial arts culture: a struggling school may denounce a more successful one as a “McDojo,” regardless of technical quality, thus claiming the moral high ground through critique rather than self-improvement.

Crucially, Morgan distinguishes between valid critique and ressentiment. It is not inherently wrong to criticise poor-quality instruction or commercial excess. The line is crossed, she argues, when “you’re jealous of their financial success, and telling yourself that their focus on money is immoral,” without any objective basis for judgement. This, she notes, is “ressentiment at work.”

Her paper offers several sharp examples. The “keyboard warrior” who lacks practical experience but issues withering critiques online; the teacher who eschews sparring and instead elevates esoteric energy work; or the practitioner who disdains MMA as “brutish,” yet has never stepped into a ring. In each case, ressentiment emerges not from philosophical difference, but from a defensive reframing of inadequacy.

Building on this analysis, Morgan brings in Max Scheler’s critique of Nietzsche. Writing in the early 20th century, Scheler rejects Nietzsche’s claim that Christianity causes ressentiment, instead locating the problem in the dissonance between modernity’s promise of equality and the ongoing reality of economic and social inequality. In Scheler’s view, societies with rigid hierarchies or actual equality suffer less from ressentiment; it festers most where aspiration and opportunity are out of sync. Morgan deftly applies this to martial arts dojos as “mini-societies”—structured but porous, often offering the illusion of empowerment without its lived reality. A black belt may feel powerful within their own gym, yet inadequate in the broader world, or threatened by rival instructors. Here, martial rank masks insecurity, and rivalry becomes psychological compensation.

Yet Morgan’s argument does not end in cynicism. Indeed, the most refreshing turn in her paper lies in her turn to Stefano Tomelleri’s reinterpretation of ressentiment as potentially transformative. For Tomelleri, ressentiment is not the province of the “morally weak,” as Nietzsche would have it, but a universal and even necessary experience. When acknowledged honestly, it can push individuals toward “growth, justice and transformation.” As Morgan writes, “Ressentiment… instead of poisoning the soul becomes the soul’s salvation.”

This transformative vision is rooted in Tomelleri’s concept of fraternity—not as benevolence, but as a mutual commitment to shared vulnerability and dialogue. Morgan aligns this with Ben Spatz’s notion of martial arts practice as a form of research, particularly one in which our training partners are also our rivals. The Japanese term aite (相手), meaning both “opponent” and “partner,” captures this tension beautifully. The dojo, then, becomes a site for ethical inquiry, where practitioners face both their technical limits and their emotional reactivity.

To conclude, Morgan introduces Steven G. Smith’s “bowl climbing” metaphor—a direct challenge to the tired trope of all martial arts being “different paths up the same mountain.” Smith suggests that in both religion and martial arts, we often appear to be asking the same questions, while actually seeking fundamentally different ends. Therefore, meaningful dialogue requires not consensus, but “shared seriousness about seeking what is worthiest to be sought.” This, Morgan argues, is a more honest and productive foundation for inter-style engagement.

Taken as a whole, Morgan’s paper is a rigorous, incisive, and ultimately hopeful intervention in the study of martial arts culture. Her fusion of Nietzschean critique, Schelerian sociology, and Tomellerian ethics offers a valuable theoretical framework for both scholars and practitioners. It also opens multiple pathways for further research. Ethnographic studies could explore how ressentiment operates in different martial subcultures—traditionalist, sportive, or commercial. Pedagogical work might examine how martial educators can cultivate fraternity in their dojos, turning envy into empathy and rivalry into research.

Morgan’s real gift here is to show that martial arts are not just about dominance, lineage, or even self-defence. They are about ethics, power, and meaning. And if we are willing to do the hard internal work, they might also be about transformation. As martial artists and scholars, we are not merely keepers of style or tradition—we are stewards of the culture we create through our interactions.

日本語概要：「武道、宗教、ルサンチマン ― カイ・モーガンによる理論的考察」カイ・モーガンの論文「武道、宗教、ルサンチマン」（2020年）は、武道界における流派間の対立や嫉妬、軽蔑の感情を、ニーチェやシェーラー、そしてトメッレリの哲学的概念「ルサンチマン」を用いて分析する、鋭い理論的アプローチです。
モーガンは、他流派への否定的な態度が、しばしば「道徳的優位性」を装った嫉妬や不安から生まれると主張します。たとえば、成功している道場を「マクドージョ」と軽蔑する態度には、しばしば自己の劣等感の裏返しが見られます。
このような価値の転倒をニーチェは批判しましたが、シェーラーは近代社会の不平等こそがルサンチマンの原因であると反論します。モーガンはこの議論を道場という「ミニ社会」に適用し、階層構造と現実の不一致が感情の歪みを生むと述べています。
一方、トメッレリの現代的な視点はより希望に満ちています。彼はルサンチマンを自己変容へのきっかけと捉え、「共に脆さを分かち合う」フラタニティ（兄弟愛）へと昇華する可能性を示唆します。武道の稽古がまさにそのような実践的・共同的探究の場であるという提案は、実践者にとっても研究者にとっても大きな示唆を与えます。
この論文は、武道を「単なる技術」ではなく、「倫理的・社会的探究の場」として再考させる重要な貢献であり、今後の研究にも応用可能な理論的枠組みを提示しています。

Bowman, P. (2021) The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular Culture Between Asia and America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dedicated to Mike Clarke — mentor, friend, and fellow traveller on the path of Budō (武道).

In The Invention of Martial Arts, Paul Bowman offers a bold and theoretically rich intervention in the expanding field of martial arts studies — a field increasingly shaped by poststructuralist inquiry, cultural theory, and global media analysis. With clarity and provocation, Bowman argues that martial arts as we know them today are not timeless traditions but recent inventions: cultural products forged through 20th-century media flows, nationalist movements, and global capitalism.
Having lived in Japan since 1995 and returned recently to Ireland, I have spent decades immersed in both the practice and pedagogy of Budō (武道). This perspective makes Bowman’s work especially engaging — not because it undermines traditional arts, but because it dares to ask where those traditions come from, how they are framed, and what ideological work they do in the present.
After several months focused on relocation and new professional beginnings, this review marks my return to regular blogging — and it is fitting that I do so with a work that so carefully unpacks the complex intersection of embodiment, representation, and identity within martial arts cultures.

Martial Arts as Discursive Formations
At the heart of Bowman’s book lies a powerful thesis: “Martial arts are not natural kinds of thing. They are invented. They are constructed. They are social, cultural and political inventions and constructions” (2021, p. 9). This claim is not merely provocative — it is deeply Foucauldian, treating martial arts not as stable inheritances but as discursive formations shaped by historical contingency and power.
Bowman insists that “the very terms that we use today (‘martial arts’, ‘martial artists’, and so on) should be understood to be modern—indeed, recent—constructions” (p. 19). What is commonly imagined as an ancient, unbroken chain of warrior knowledge is instead a product of cultural negotiation, institutional framing, and representational repetition. In this sense, martial arts resemble what Pierre Bourdieu might call a “field” — a structured space of positions and struggles over legitimacy, status, and capital.
This approach does not deny the physicality or sincerity of martial practice. Rather, it draws attention to how meanings are made, valorised, and contested — often in ways invisible to practitioners themselves.

Media as a Site of Martial Invention
A standout feature of the book is its deft analysis of how martial arts have been shaped by film, television, advertising, and digital media. Bowman demonstrates that popular media do not merely depict martial arts; they produce them — shaping public understanding, practitioner aspiration, and even institutional structure.
As he writes: “Our ideas of martial arts actually come from media representations” (p. 10). This is not to say that dojos and disciplines are illusions, but rather that the way we imagine and structure them — from what a legitimate form looks like, to what counts as mastery — is heavily mediated.
Particularly compelling is Bowman’s claim that “the spectacular is not supplementary to martial arts. It is constitutive of it” (p. 55). Cinematic spectacle, viral forms, and performative ritual are not just decorative; they actively shape the ontology of martial arts in global consciousness. The flying kick and the choreographed kata (型), the slow-motion shot and the master’s pose — these are not just styles, but structuring myths.
Here Bowman’s work aligns closely with Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital: prestige accrues to those who embody recognised signs of “authenticity,” even when those signs are produced by media rather than lineage.

Challenging Authenticity, Defending Inquiry
Bowman’s treatment of authenticity is among the most intellectually valuable aspects of the book. He critiques the common claim that some martial arts are “pure” or “traditional,” while others are diluted or fake. “Authenticity is always relational and constructed — and often politically mobilised to assert superiority, purity or lineage” (p. 91), he argues. These claims often obscure the very real historical ruptures and reinventions that define most martial arts systems.
This should be of particular interest to Budō (武道) practitioners, especially those working within Japanese (日本) or Okinawan (沖縄) traditions. The image of an unbroken, sacred lineage may be personally meaningful, but Bowman reminds us it is also culturally convenient — often built as much from nationalist sentiment and institutional branding as from spiritual inheritance.

A Call for European Engagement
While Bowman focuses primarily on Anglo-American cultural contexts, the implications of his work reach further. Martial arts in Ireland, the UK, and the broader EU have long been understood as extracurricular, exotic, or recreational. Yet, Bowman’s framework opens new ways of thinking about how these arts might be integrated into conversations about identity, pedagogy, and intercultural ethics.
Catholic and Quaker schools — institutions with philosophical commitments to global citizenship, nonviolence, and reflective practice — have much to gain from re-examining Budō (武道) not as an oriental curiosity but as a disciplined practice of self, community, and ethical development. But this can only happen if educators and practitioners alike are willing to see beyond the myth of martial arts as timeless truths — and engage them instead as living, evolving, and ideologically rich forms.

On the Limits and Potentials
The book’s theoretical sharpness is one of its greatest strengths, but it leaves some areas relatively underexplored. Bowman does not attempt to provide thick ethnographic accounts of practice, nor does he explore non-Western interpretations of martial arts media in detail. These are not flaws, but invitations: openings for future research to examine how martial arts are appropriated, resisted, or reimagined in different socio-cultural contexts — from Brazilian favelas to rural Japanese towns.
Indeed, as Bowman writes in his final chapter: “There is no essence of martial arts, only practices, representations, and negotiations about what counts as martial arts” (p. 153). It is a bracing claim — and a freeing one.

This review is not a first encounter with martial arts thought, nor a re-entry into blogging per se. Rather, it is a resumption — a recommitment to thinking critically, writing publicly, and engaging respectfully with the evolving field of Budō (武道). I remain deeply grateful to my friend and teacher Mike Clarke, who has never stopped asking difficult questions — and who, in his writing and life, reminds me that martial arts must be lived, not mythologised.

I hope this piece sparks dialogue, challenges assumptions, and contributes to what Bowman calls “the permanent negotiation of what counts.” In that negotiation, I believe we all have a role to play — not merely as practitioners, but as thinkers.

ポール・ボウマン著『The Invention of Martial Arts』書評：要点まとめ（日本語）ポール・ボウマンの著書『The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular Culture Between Asia and America』（2021年、オックスフォード大学出版）は、現代の武道や格闘技が「伝統的」あるいは「古来の」実践であるという一般的な理解に対し、それらはむしろ20世紀以降にメディアや消費文化を通じて形成された文化的・言説的構築物であると主張する、画期的な学術研究です。
以下に、本書評の主な論点を整理します。

🔹 武道は「本質的」カテゴリーではない
ボウマンは、武道とは自然発生的なものではなく、歴史的・文化的文脈の中で構築された社会的・政治的実践であると論じます（p. 9）。その意味で、「武道」「武道家」といった用語自体が、近代のメディアや言説によって形成されたものであると明言しています（p. 19）。

🔹 メディアによる武道の構築
映画、テレビ、広告、YouTubeなどのメディアは、単に武道を「描写」するのではなく、むしろ武道の在り方そのものを「構築」してきたと著者は述べます。ボウマンによれば、武道におけるスペクタクル（見世物的演出）は補助的な要素ではなく、「本質的構成要素」であるとされています（p. 55）。

🔹 「真正性」の再考
「正統性」や「純粋性」といった概念は、しばしば特定の流派や系譜に権威を付与する政治的手段として利用されます。ボウマンは、「真正性（authenticity）」は客観的な真実ではなく、関係性と文脈によって構築されるものであると指摘し、その批判的検討を促しています（p. 91）。

🔹 ヨーロッパ文脈における武道の再定位
筆者は長年にわたり日本に在住し、沖縄武道（武道）の実践と教育に携わってきましたが、近年アイルランドに帰国し、教育機関における武道の可能性を再考しています。とりわけ、カトリック系およびクエーカー系の学校において、武道が人格形成や国際理解の実践的枠組みとして再評価されるべきであると提言しています。

🔹 今後の研究への示唆
本書は、非西洋圏における武道の受容、SNSや動画プラットフォーム上での武道的アイデンティティの形成、そして教育現場での活用といった、多くの新たな研究領域を開くものです。ボウマンは最終章において、「武道の本質は存在しない。存在するのは実践、表象、そして『何が武道であるか』をめぐる絶え間ない交渉である」と述べ、議論を結んでいます（p. 153）。

本書評は、筆者が日本から帰国し、再び武道と教育をめぐる言論活動を本格的に再開する中で執筆されたものであり、武道を固定的な「伝統」としてではなく、批判的かつ創造的に再構築されるべき文化実践として捉える重要性を再確認するものです。