The cultural politics of contemporary capoeira: an ethnography of Brazilian and Portuguese cases

Abstract

An ethnography of the transnationalization of the Irmãos Guerreiros Capoeira Angola Group (GCAIG) led us to two categories that qualify distinct Capoeira conceptions: “sport” and “culture”. The native use of such notions refers to the existence of disputes within Capoeira which associate “culture” with an appreciation of traditional knowledge and “sport” with an appreciation of a scholarly knowledge. Our purpose in this article is to describe some political implications of these uses in two contemporary contexts: Brazil and Portugal. We conclude that the “cultural” perspective gained strength in Brazil, generating space for the multitude of traditional knowledge, while in Portugal the “sport” perspective prevails submitting groups of different traditions to a single form of organization.