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.
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The Art of Losing One's Own Culture Isn't Hard to Master, It's Obviation
Roy Wagner, Gregory Bateson, and the Art of Science Writ Large
Elizabeth Stassinos
Like Gregory Bateson, Roy Wagner leaves no heirs. This is not the curse of Souw, but the curse of original thinking. Like Bateson though, Wagner has bequeathed to a future anthropology a certain style of thinking about Others, an elegant way of dislocating the Western self from its routines, its kinships, its ego, its diaspora. In this paper, and as a student of Wagner’s at Virginia in the 1980s and 1990s, I hope to trace some of Wagner’s work through Bateson’s and to compare some of the habits of mind of these two ethnographers and theorists and relate these back to The Invention of Culture. If I seem to forget that text in places or re-start it in others, it is because I have tried to stay close to that topic that led both in such opposite (one could say complementary schizmogenic) directions, one to biological sciences, the other to science fiction. I section off observations on their ethnographic theory by using poetry to express shifts in topics for, at their best, Wagner and Bateson are poets of that extreme human condition so sought after by ethnographers, culture shock.
Afterword
Comparison in the Anthropological Study of Plural Religious Environments
Birgit Meyer
debated in a special review section of HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory ( Meyer et al. 2017 ). The fact that there are good reasons to be suspicious of certain modes of doing comparison—for instance, those grounded in Eurocentric evolutionary models
European Anthropology as a Fortuitous Accident?
Reflections on the Sustainability of the Field
Čarna Brković
Theory ’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1 , no. 1 : vi – xxxv . 10.14318/hau1.1.001 Dilger , H. ( 2018 ), ‘ More Ethnology – Or Rather Social and Cultural Anthropology? – In the Humboldt Forum! Time for an Intervention ’, How to Move on
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 31–48
Jeanne Favret-Saada’s Minimal Ontology
Belief and Disbelief of Mystical Forces, Perilous Conditions, and the Opacity of Being
Theodoros Kyriakides
functionalism, on the other. Belief and Disbelief in Favret-Saada’s Work and Elsewhere At first impression, Favret-Saada’s (1980) Deadly Words is preoccupied with an ethnographic theory of pragmatics. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that focuses on the
Introduction
Hierarchy, Value, and the Value of Hierarchy
Naomi Haynes and Jason Hickel
Ethnographic Theory 3 , no. 2 : 219 – 243 . 10.14318/hau3.2.012 Haynes , Naomi . 2012 . “ Pentecostalism and the Morality of Money: Prosperity, Inequality, and Religious Sociality on the Zambian Copperbelt .” Journal of the Royal Anthropological
The Anthropology of Ontology Meets the Writing Culture Debate
Is Reconciliation Possible?
Rane Willerslev
. Berkeley : University of California Press . Falzon , Mark-Anthony , ed. 2009 . Multi-sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Research . Burlington : Ashgate . Hastrup , Kirsten . 1993 . “ The Native Voice—and the
Viral Intimacy and Catholic Nationalist Political Economy
Covid-19 and the Community Response in Rural Ireland
David Whyte
Press ), 1 – 27 . Ortner , S. B. ( 2016 ), ‘ Dark Anthropology and Its Others: Theory Since the Eighties ’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 , no. 1 : 47 – 73 , doi: 10.14318/hau6.1.004 . 10.14318/hau6.1.004 Peacock , V. ( 2016
Introduction
(De)materializing Kinship—Holding Together Mutuality and Difference
Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Caroline E. Schuster
Ethnographic Theory 3 , no. 2 : 259 – 270 . 10.14318/hau3.2.015 Butler , Judith . 1990 . Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity . New York : Routledge . Carsten , Janet . 2004 . After Kinship . Cambridge : Cambridge University
Translating Islam into Georgian
The Question of Georgian Muslim Identity in Contemporary Adjara
Ricardo Rivera
Age of the Cross ( Berkeley : University of California Press ). 10.1525/9780520944916 Hanks , W. F. ( 2014 ), ‘ The Space of Translation ’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 , no. 2 : 17 – 39 . 10.14318/hau4.2.002 Manning , P. ( 2012
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 72–78