Analysing Duoethnography: Embodiment, Style and Tacit Knowledge in Capoeira

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Student Guide

Introduction Ethnographers are committed to the study of the everyday life of people and groups. Classically, ethnography has been conducted by a single researcher, sometimes called ‘The Lone Ranger Ethnographer’, in a single setting (see Paul Atkinson’s Data Exemplar ‘Working with Ethnographic Fieldnotes: Learning Tango’). Today, two-handed or duoethnographies, where paired researchers are studying one or more sites, are becoming increasingly popular as scholars are encouraged to collaborate. Some of these ethnographers are couples or partners, such as Corbin and Corbin (1987). In this case the two ethnographers are not. The two ethnographers are Dr Sara Delamont and Dr Neil Stephens from Cardiff University, who have studied the African-Brazilian dance and martial art capoeira, popular across Europe and the USA (Delamont and Stephens, 2008; Stephens and Delamont, 2006; Stephens and Delamont, 2009; Stephens and Delamont, 2014). The data in this exemplar are conventional fieldnotes taken by one researcher (Delamont) and the embodied experience of the other (Stephens). Included are four chunks from Sara’s fieldnotes along with one extract from the many recorded conversations between the researchers. All the names used in the exemplar are pseudonyms: places, teachers (who have the names of Greek gods and heroes) and students. The exemplar demonstrates how the two researchers work together to gain analytic insight. The dataset intends to help individuals and research teams explore the first steps in analysing two-handed or duoethnography

Page 2 of 9 Analysing Duoethnography: Embodiment, Style and Tacit Knowledge in Capoeira SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 (Sawyer and Norris, 2013).

Duoethnography Working in pairs or teams is a characteristic of contemporary research practice. In duoethnography, researchers have the advantage of pooling their hypotheses, and observing more activities and/or research settings. Working in pairs or teams is also said to reduce any loneliness and self-doubt that might be a characteristic of single-handed ethnography (Erickson and Stull, 1998). Although there are many approaches to the analysis of data in duoethnography, collecting the data as well as the analysis of the data is often a collective activity. In this example, the two researchers were studying the same setting but had distinctive roles within it. Dr Stephens took a full part in the capoeira classes while Dr Delamont observed them. The analytic work begins with recorded and transcribed discussions between the two researchers, which focused on the fieldnotes and the recollected experience.

Data Exemplar: Capoeira Classes This dataset exemplar is intended to demonstrate how you might go about conducting and analysing a duoethnography. The data used in this exemplar are provided by Dr Sara Delamont and Dr Stephens and are taken from research on the African-Brazilian dance and martial art, capoeira. There are two styles of capoeira, regional and angola. These data come from a three-hour class in a university sports hall organised in Tolnbridge by Perseus, in which two visiting teachers, Ulysses (not mentioned in the fieldnotes) and Diomedes, each led a class of 90 minutes, first an angola class taught by Ulysses, then a regional one led by Diomedes. All three teachers are African-Brazilian men who teach in Europe. Capoeira is done to music, and the key instrument other than drums is the berimbau from Brazil, a five-foot bow strung with wire on which a gourd is tied, and notes come from striking the wire with a thin stick. The fundamental step, the

Page 3 of 9 Analysing Duoethnography: Embodiment, Style and Tacit Knowledge in Capoeira SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 ginga, is a triangular movement of the feet, which done continuously is the base for all the attacks and escapes.

The aims of the research were to discover what attracts UK people to a Brazilian martial art and to determine whether a two-handed approach to data gathering on an embodied activity is productive. Only the latter research aim is dealt with in this exemplar. The dataset is comprised of the ethnographic fieldnotes Sara handwrote during and after a Capoeira class (marked FN) and an extract from a tape-recorded discussion between Stephens and Delamont (marked DISC). The fieldwork began in 2003, and the extracts displayed here come from 2004. In capoeira students have nicknames given by their teacher, so they have pseudonymous nicknames here.

Analysis: Two-Handed Ethnography and Capoeira It is normal when doing fieldwork to discuss a possible theoretical concept in an episode, which can then be an incentive to scrutinize other parts of the data to see if that idea is sustained or not. Looking to see if ideas are not there is also very important. Some of the analytic themes you might look to explore in this data exemplar include teacher-student relations, etiquette, tacit knowledge, performativity, and changed embodiment. Sara and Neil discuss these issues in relation to three issues important to conducting two-handed ethnography.

1. Analysing data when they are collected to ensure that the cycle of ‘ideas – data – initial analysis – reformulate the ideas – collect more (perhaps different) data – do more analysis’ that is essential to ethnographic research proceeds in continuous ‘loops’. 2. Ensuring that the data do not pile up unanalysed (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996). 3. The interplay between the two researchers.

Page 4 of 9 Analysing Duoethnography: Embodiment, Style and Tacit Knowledge in Capoeira SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 They deal with each fieldnote extract in turn.

FN A First we approach analysing fieldnote A. When we discussed playing the berimbau, we drew out some middle-order, analytic categories that we found in the fieldnotes and from our conversation. Three things were recorded in the analytic memo following our initial analysis. First there is the idea of embodiment. Capoeira students have to learn a new embodiment not only by doing the moves, but also by playing the instruments. Perseus appears to be instructing students to handle the berimbau ‘properly’ so that they acquire the ‘correct’ embodiment. Second is the theme of teacher authority. Teachers are experts and give instructions and advice, which are intended as authoritative. Third, novices are not yet ‘ready’ to grasp all the ‘mysteries’ of the teacher’s art, and are expected to obey without explanation. So three conceptual themes were noted after this episode.

This episode is also a good example of why we should not let data pile up unanalysed. An important process in the analysis of this two-handed ethnography has been the taped discussions between Delamont and Stephens that enable the two researchers to pool their knowledge. Here, Stephens explains a great deal about playing the music essential to capoeira and the effect the cabeca has on the sound of the berimbau. However, even having the taped conversation soon after the class, Stephens states that he didn’t remember the event (he was quite rightly engrossed in learning a lesson). That Delamont wrote up the incident in her fieldnotes meant that the event was recorded, and the taped discussions with Stephens meant they were able to draw out some of the themes and meanings of the incident. In their paper, ‘Balancing the berimbau’, Stephens and Delamont (2006) illustrate how Stephens’ experience of learning to play the berimbau as a typical student in a typical capoeira class allowed Delamont to learn about how that skill is acquired, providing an insight neither could have had alone.

FN B Next we focus on fieldnote B. Stephens had not changed his clothes between lessons. At the time of the class we wondered why Raksha had changed into different clothing for regional capoeira and why Perseus reprimanded him. We looked up some of the literature on capoeira and it transpires that strict capoeira Angolan people, purists, train in yellow t-shirts and black trousers rather than in the white t-shirts and trousers that Stephens himself wore. When we discussed the incident in which Raksha changed and then was reprimanded we realised that there were two themes we needed to pursue. First, Raksha, one of the most experienced students present, had displayed his ‘advanced’ status by knowing that the traditional dress for angola classes is a yellow t-shirt and black trousers, while for regional it is white trousers and t-shirt, with the coloured belt marking the level of achievement (like belts in karate). We were thus able to formulate research ideas about one new theme, and one recurrent one. The new theme, based on Raksha’s change of clothes, was in two parts:

a. Students’ knowledge of dress etiquette for angola and regional. b. The amount of money students were able and willing to invest in capoeira clothing.

The second theme related to Perseus’s criticisms of Langhri’s berimbau in FN A, and was a second example of a teacher exercising authority. Again there were two parts:

a. What students understood about respect for teachers and their capoeira practices. b. What students were prepared to accept as appropriate ‘discipline’ from teachers.

Once alerted to these questions, we read up on them, and that sharpened our

Page 6 of 9 Analysing Duoethnography: Embodiment, Style and Tacit Knowledge in Capoeira SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 focus on clothing as part of performativity and the teacher-student relationship (see Stephens and Delamont, 2014 and Campos, Stephens and Delamont, 2010).

FN C The third fieldnote extract concerns Diomedes teaching ginga. The fact that Diomedes did not speak English in the class and everything he said was translated by two Portuguese students (Raksha and Phao) complicated this part of the fieldwork. When we discussed Diomedes’s attempts to improve the style of the ginga, and get it smooth, sinuous and in time with the music, we began a joint analysis of what teachers understood by ‘good style’, how they try to inculcate ‘good style’ in their students, and how dedicated students gradually acquire it. ‘Style’ is a tacit skill, and any study of any learning needs to focus on explicit and tacit skills. So we set out to work on what tacit skills capoeira teachers are trying to impart, contrastive with the explicit, technical ones. The analysis led to another paper (Stephens and Delamont, 2009) on the inculcation of tacit or indeterminate skills.

FN D The final chunk of data is fieldnote D. In this extract, there is speculation about the purpose of the exercise Diomedes is drilling. When we discussed it, Stephens confirmed that he had understood its purpose was to help students learn that in capoeira play, as opposed to drill and practice in class, two people face each other while moving endlessly around each other. So the exercise was not only an exercise in itself but also preparation for games. This was something Delamont did not know, because she does not play in the roda (the circle in which two people play competitive games of capoeira). An observer cannot understand experientially how the exercises translate into moves in a real fight/dance/game. For example, Delamont lacks the embodied understanding of the movements of the game as well as its logic. This provides another good example of how the

Page 7 of 9 Analysing Duoethnography: Embodiment, Style and Tacit Knowledge in Capoeira SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 two-handed ethnography differs from the single-handed ethnography, presenting the researchers with new insights and new opportunities to study the site but also new challenges in how to go about collecting and analysing the work. Our joint analytic work on this episode drew out once again the theme of teacher authority. Diomedes has the ‘right’ to command the exhausted students to stand, not only when teaching but also when he stops. The etiquette of capoeira is that students show deference, respect and awe to their teachers: that is the etiquette of the lessons. The exercise he had been drilling was not explained to the class: we classified it as an example of a physical drill explicitly improving capoeira skill and fitness but also, for those alert to the tacit, designed to make them mentally alert to the forthcoming games in the roda.

In the ten years of research we never discovered what was ‘wrong’ with Lunghri’s berimbau wire. However, we have worked from the initial analytic categories up to analyses of capoeira classes that are fully theorised. Theoretical ideas like habitus do not just appear in or from the data, they have to be built up from middle-order concepts like embodiment and performativity described here. These examples show how the two researchers (one a non-participant researcher, the other a participant researcher) used their different insights to develop analytical concepts to attempt to understand capoeira. In duoethnography, paired or group analytic work is as important as paired or group data collection.

Reflective Questions

1. What were the advantages of conducting a two-handed ethnography over a single-handed ethnography in this setting? 2. It is normal for ethnographers to ask questions in the setting. Come up with a question that you would like to ask a capoeira teacher or student. 3. Why was it important that the two researchers created pseudonyms for

Page 8 of 9 Analysing Duoethnography: Embodiment, Style and Tacit Knowledge in Capoeira SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 the participants in the class? 4. Using the extra data and thinking about the differences between learning capoeira in class and playing it in a roda, how might you approach analysing this data?

Further Reading Stephens, N., & Delamont, S. (2006). Balancing the berimbau. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 316–339.

Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data. Walnut Creek, CA: SAGE.

Campos Rosario, C., Stephens, N., & Delamont, S. (2010). I’m your teacher, I’m Brazilian. Sport Education and Society, 15(1), 103–120.

Corbin, J. R., & Corbin, M. P. (1987). Urbane thought. Farnborough, UK: Gower.

Delamont, S., & Stephens, N. (2008). Up on the roof. Cultural Society, 1(2), 57–74.

Erickson, K., & Stull, D. (1998). Doing team ethnography: Warnings and advice. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Sawyer, R. D., & Norris, J. (2013). Duoethnography: Understanding qualitative research. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stephens, N., & Delamont, S. (2009) ‘They start to get malicia’: Teaching tacit and technical knowledge. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(5), 537–548.

Stephens, N., & Delamont, S. (2014). I can see it in the nightclub. Sociological Review, 62(1), 149–166.

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