is to describe the religious foundations of a capoeira style called Angola from a perspective that questions many of the cultural and historical assumptions that academics have made about this Afro-Brazilian art. 1 Although I am aware that being
The Religious Foundations of Capoeira Angola
The Cosmopolitics of an Apparently Non-religious Practice
Sergio González Varela
Educating the Eyes
Biocultural Anthropology and Physical Education
Greg Downey
Diverse forms of physical education form in their participants' skills, perceptual abilities and physiological adaptations that distinguish them from practitioners of other activities. These traits, many unconscious, are little studied in sociocultural anthropology in spite of their widespread prevalence. This article specifically explores how practitioners of capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian dance and martial art, learn to do a bananeira, a form of handstand. Its form, practical demands and training techniques make the bananeira a radically different exercise than other forms of handstand, such as that done by gymnasts. Capoeira practitioners develop a distinctive sense of balance—a dynamic assembly of perceptual skills and motor responses—that they use to keep upright while inverted. Across all cultures, forms of physical education and apprenticeship assemble distinctive physical skills, forms of cultural difference that should be defended as ardently as other forms of distinctiveness.
Mandinga
Power and Deception in Afro-Brazilian Capoeira
Sergio González Varela
This article is about the meaning of mandinga in Afro-Brazilian capoeira as it is practiced in the city of Salvador, Brazil. Capoeira is an art form that combines elements of ritual, play, and fight. My main argument focuses on the mandinga as an indigenous form of power that shapes social relations, bodily interaction, magic acts, and the definition of a person. The concept of mandinga offers an understanding of the deceptive logic of capoeira and contributes to the development of an ethnographic theory of power. The emphasis here is on the importance of mandinga as a strategy for fighting and as a principle for social interaction with strong ontological implications. It is considered a cosmological force that affects the foundations of subjective reality and the perception of the world.
Introduction
Religions, Histories, and Comparisons
Simon Coleman, Ruy Llera Blanes, and Sondra L. Hausner
provides an original analysis of the Afro-Brazilian tradition of capoeira, one that contains an analytical metaphor, memorably termed “foundations in motion,” to help comprehend both the frames and the flexibilities of change. Another of Varela’s themes is
Amy Cox Hall, Sergio González Varela, Jessica S.R. Robinson, Peter Weisensel, and David Wills
, such as Afro-Brazilian capoeira, Brazilian zouk, ballroom dance, and Asian martial arts. Underlying the book's theoretical argument is the premise that skill and a search for expertise is a strong motivation for people to move beyond their local
Communities of Practice at the Cidade do Saber
Plural Citizenship and Social Inclusion in Brazil
Carla Guerrón Montero
social inclusion. The CDS is divided into three coordinating units: Culture and Art, COART; Sports and Leisure, CODEL, and Pedagogy. It offers more than fifty musical, artistic, language and athletic activities, from ballet and capoeira to violin and
Emergent Police States
Racialized Pacification and Police Moralism from Rio's Favelas to Bolsonaro
Tomas Salem and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
cultural expressions such as capoeira ( Holloway 1989 ), the police prohibited funk parties in pacified favelas. Being one of the most contested ordinances at the UPPs, many residents saw funk parties as a nuisance, while others viewed them as an
The Power of Silence
Sonic Experiences of Police Operations and Occupations in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas
Sterre Gilsing
mission” ( Oliveira 2014 ; Silva 2016: 339 ). The prohibition of funk is a hedonopolitical process that connects to a history in which the Brazilian state has prohibited capoeira and samba ( Lopes and Facina 2012 ; Silva 2016: 318–319 ). All are cultural