Michael Staack 
Fighting As Real As It Gets [PDF ebook] 
A Micro-Sociological Encounter

Michael Staack’s multi-year ethnography is the first and only comprehensive social-scientific analysis of the combat sport ‘Mixed Martial Arts’. Based on systematic training observations, the author meticulously analyses how Mixed Martial Arts practitioners conjointly create and immerse themselves into their own world of ultimate bodily combat. 

With his examination of concentrative technique demonstrations, cooperative technique train-ings, and chaotic sparring practices, Staack not only provides a sociological illumination of Mixed Martial Arts culture’s defining theme – the quest of ‘Fighting As Real As It Gets’. Rather further-more, he provides a compelling cultural-sociological case study on practical social constructions of ‘authenticity’.

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Introduction: MMA as ‘Fighting As Real As It Gets’.- Literature on MMA.- Methodical approach, execution of study, structure of the book.- Producing combative causality in technique demonstrations: The setting.- Producing combative causality in technique demonstrations: (Inter-)Actions.- Dyadic emulations of the demonstrated techniques.- Sparring: Setting it up and getting into it.- Sparring: Combative passion and combative actions.- Conclusion.- Prospect: Future lines of research.

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Michael Staack is a Research Associate at the Institute for Sports Sciences, Department ‚Social Science of Sports‘ at the Goethe-University Frankfurt a.M.