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

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 batizado, drawing on Glaser, Strauss and Katz compared to van Gennep, Turner and MacAloon.

A Typology of Martial Arts Scholar–Practitioners: Types, Transitions, and Tensions in Capoeira

“…These dynamics are very productive when different types of scholar-practitioners associate with each other to support their research processes or compensate for the disadvantages of their positions in the field of tension. An outstanding example of this form of collaboration is the ethnographic work of Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens, and Claudio Campos, who have worked together respectively as a Supportive Scholar, an Immersed Apprentice, and an Inquisitive Teacher, respectively, to research Capoeira in the UK [78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85].…”