The belts are set out: the batizado as a symbolic welcome to capoeira culture

Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens

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Abstract

In contemporary capoeira groups, newcomers are symbolically ‘baptised’ into the community at a public ceremony called their Batizado (literally baptism) held during a festival. Novices play a game with a guest expert, get their first belt and thereafter they are members of their teacher’s group. Drawing on a long term, two-handed ethnography of diasporic capoeira contemporanea in the UK, including observation of 53 such festivals, their ceremonial features are analysed. At all the stages of the ‘welcome’, before, during and after the batizado, the topic of gender in capoeira contemporanea is explored. In the last 40 years, women have become enthusiastic participants and are core members of the groups we have studied. The article compares the sociological (symbolic interactionist) and anthropological approaches to ceremonies and rituals such as the capoeira batiz
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)351-371
JournalEthnography
Volume22
Issue number3
Early online date20 Aug 2021
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 20 Aug 2021

Keywords

  • capoeira
  • enculturation
  • ethnography
  • initiation
  • rite of passage
  • status passage

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