The construction of art in the martial arts. An anthropological approach to Taekwondo

This paper discusses why "martial arts"are called "arts", from an ethnographic study of taekwondo. I believe that both are cultural constructs, studying particularly the development and change of taekwondo in the province of Alicante and in the Spanish context during the last four decades. Today two different discourses are transmitted, one by manuals and the other by the film industry-which is based on a concept of art related to Buddhist and Taoist religions-and what practitioners link more to what we know as Fine Arts, which are a reflection of a culture-adaptation process that tends to emphasize the aesthetic elements of these practices.