Learning Capoeira

Capoeira is the most elaborate martial art of the African Diaspora, a spectacular combination of dance, acrobatic kicks, and evasive manoeuvres. Typically played as a game in which two players vie to control space, demonstrate superior mobility, and trip, kick, or head-butt each other to the ground at a moment of vulnerability, capoiera resembles a combination of acrobatic dance, slow martial arts sparring, and improvised musical performance. "Learning Capoeira" is an ethnographic study based on participant observation and more than ten years of apprenticeship in the acrobatic martial art. Rather than treating capoeira on a sociological or cultural level, this book takes an experience-centered approach towards exploring the effects of the art on a player's perceptions and social interactions outside the roda, the "ring" in which the game is played. The text is innovative by example, demonstrating how an experience-centered analysis and ethnographic apprenticeship might produce rich, compelling understanding of a distinctive cultural world.

ISBN 0195176979   Pages 286 ISBN13 9780195176971 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press Inc   Weight (grammes) 325 Imprint Oxford University Press Inc   Published in New York Format Paperback   Height (mm) 210 Publication date 14 Apr 2005   Width (mm) 140 Library of Congress GV1796.C14   Spine width (mm) 14 DEWEY 793.31981   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

		Prelude : playing Capoeira		1
1		Inside and outside the Roda		7
2		The significance of skills		22
3		Following in a mestre's footsteps		38
4		History in epic registers		55
5		Singing the past into play		74
6		Hearing the Berimbau		87
7		Play with a sinister past		102
8		The rogue's swagger		118
9		Closing the body		136
10		Walking in evil		153
11		The limits of whitening		169
12		Tearing out the shame		186
		Conclusions : lessons from the Roda		203

"This book is about the changes students undergo as they learn the art. The results are striking. Using phenomoenolgical analysis, exploring physiological memory, and the tried and true personal anecdotes, Downey offers testimony that academia's shift to the personal has benefits."--Joshua M. Rosenthal. Latin American Research Review

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