Hard Play: Capoeira and the Politics of Inequality in Rio De Janeiro
HARD PLAY: CAPOEIRA AND THE POLITICS OF INEQUALITY IN RIO DE JANEIRO KATYA WESOLOWSKI Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2007 © 2007 Katya Wesolowski All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Hard Play: Capoeira and the Politics of Inequality in Rio de Janeiro Katya Wesolowski Capoeira is a game of physical dexterity and cunning that incorporates fight, dance, acrobatics and music. Developed by African slaves in Brazil and once an exclusively male domain, capoeira was viewed as a social threat and severely persecuted through the 19th century. By the mid 20th century capoeira had come to be celebrated as an element of national identity, and today the practice crosses class, ethnic, gender and national boundaries. Among its myriad definitions, capoeira is conceived of as “play”: two participants “play” in a ring, or roda, surrounded by other participants and accompanied by percussive music and singing. Interaction oscillates between playful cooperation and aggressive confrontation as partner-adversaries attempt to outmaneuver each other, claim space, and demonstrate greater corporal expression, intelligence and creativity. A bounded ritual space, the roda is also contiguous with the external world, as is evident in claims that skills learned in the roda carry into everyday life. This ethnographic study, based on two years of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and my ongoing involvement as a practitioner, approaches capoeira as embodied play and a social practice that constitutes a particular type of engagement with the world: cultivating intelligent, expressive bodies through training and play, and forging collective identities and fictive kinship ties through group affiliation, practitioners become “capoeiristas,” and in so doing reshape themselves and their relationships to their environment and people within it.
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