Papers by Theodora Lefkaditou
The thesis is an inquiry into the social and cultural implications of the Bahian Capoeira teacher... more The thesis is an inquiry into the social and cultural implications of the Bahian Capoeira teachers' transnational mobilities and consequent immobilities. Following the trajectories of young male teachers-in different instances and places-their transactions and encounters with various 'others', the study analyzes how the meanings given to their practices and the particularities of their socialities, are constantly transformed. Capoeira becomes the lenses to understand a fluctuating society with its historical and social particularities as Bahians, foreigners, researchers, Capoeira apprentices, young teachers and older mestres evaluate the possible outcomes of their actions, interests and identifications. Mobility and movement are examined both inside and outside Capoeira's ring (roda). They include Capoeira's game (jogo), tourist and migratory practices and everyday economies. From crossing national boundaries, the focus shifts on how people in the field define, affirm and challenge boundaries in different social and geographic scales that eventually implicate the boundaries of the self and its definition. The study illuminates processes of boundary negotiation, of opening up and at the same time, of closure as mobility brings into forth questions of relatedness and processes of becoming. The challenges and conflicts that both older mestres and younger teachers face are connected to deeper issues of belonging and affective relationships; of how gender, ethnicity, desires, human value and worth are experienced in today's changing world. Finally, the thesis is a reflection on methodological and theoretical uncertainties regarding the anthropological study of the 'Other'.
Bahia of all Saints, enchantments and dreams: Female tourists, Capoeira practitioners, and the exotic
The article explores the mutuality of exoticisation and self-exoticisation in Bahia, and in parti... more The article explores the mutuality of exoticisation and self-exoticisation in Bahia, and in particular the role of the exotic in the encounters between foreign female apprentices and Bahian Capoeira teachers. I focus on the construction of the exotic as a reciprocal process that generates self-reflection and anxieties. While black Bahians in general are associated with stereotypically exotic imaginaries, Capoeira teachers hold a critical and transformational relationship with such imaginaries in an attempt to assert control over their lives. Their relationships with foreign tourists and their alternative, counter-exoticising discourses point to their complex relationship with history, their mobile experiences and aspirations, and the transforming renegotiation of the exotic in everyday life. (under review)
Conference Presentations by Theodora Lefkaditou
Together, we survive? Understanding vulnerability and precarity in refugee camps in Northern Greece
The so called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 coincided with great economic and social upheavals in Gree... more The so called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 coincided with great economic and social upheavals in Greece. In this context, the refugees’ arrival was seen as an employment opportunity for many Greek people who were soon hired in law rank positions in INGOs. This paper is based on long term working and research experience in refugee camps in Northern Greece and focuses on the encounter between refugees and Greek humanitarian aid workers. It explores how the social subjects’ position and their experiences of both vulnerability and precarity shape relationships and guide action; at times, facilitating communication across boundaries, synergies and collaboration and at times, leading to conflict. By acknowledging agency, limitations and possibilities, the paper addresses the interplay between larger economic and political realities, humanitarian discourses and INGO politics at a camp level, and links them to individual aspirations and projects.
Learning Together: Field research and Inquiries among Capoeira Practitioners in Salvador da Bahia and Barcelona
The present paper aims to discuss the creative process of carrying out field research and theoret... more The present paper aims to discuss the creative process of carrying out field research and theoretical analysis among Capoeira teachers and apprentices in Bahia, Brazil and Barcelona, Spain. As "praxical beings", both anthropologists and the people in the field may think and act together transforming the world. First, I consider the implications of changes in status -from immigrant, anthropologist, white female tourist, and non apprentice to apprentice- as ways of relatedness and involvement in different contexts. Then, I focus on how communication was built and made possible in a series of small and unexpected -for both researcher and social subjects-"discoveries" concerning history, myths, philosophies and human nature. By "(de)mystifying" history, questioning differences and similarities and reflecting on "ones' own philosophy" and desires, the social subjects engaged into conversations that preoccupy people living in today's changing world. By shifting perspective from learning about to learning from, as Tim Ingold argues, I suggest that anthropology's social and political relevance lies in the possibility of learning with the people we meet in the field. (under review)
The Social and Cultural Effects of Capoeira’s Transnational Circulation in Salvador and Barcelona
The aim of the presentation is to discuss questions on methodology and theory related to my PhD d... more The aim of the presentation is to discuss questions on methodology and theory related to my PhD dissertation ‘The social and cultural effects of Capoeira’s transnational circulation in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil and Barcelona, Spain’. It is based on fieldwork research in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil and Barcelona, Spain. Once a marginal and illegal activity, today, due to tourism, local and national policies, Capoeira is subjected to processes of valorization, commodification and bureaucratization. Symbol of the city of Salvador and since 2008 Brazilian immaterial heritage, it appeals to young people from all over the world. Seen as a contested territory, Capoeira offers the lenses through which we comprehend how different agents connect, position and transform their worlds and social and cultural practices.
Thus, I would like to explore the issues that arise when we attempt to conduct fieldwork research in more than one locality and study complex phenomena of social and cultural change. Should our analytical frameworks still be informed by the local/global binaries and how can we be ethnographically specific without losing the big picture? Finally, I examine the challenges in studying other societies in relation to the above mentioned topics. Especially, in the neoliberal era, where the ‘proliferation, commodification and politicization of differences’ prevail, is it possible for anthropologists to avoid cultural essentialism and what are the pitfalls of focusing on difference?
Understanding Agency and Cultural Transformations among Capoeira Practitioners in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
The paper explores how a changing social and cultural reality challenges anthropological knowledg... more The paper explores how a changing social and cultural reality challenges anthropological knowledge practices. Capoeira, a social and cultural practice with a long and controversial history, has been rendered intelligible as 'dance', 'fight', 'sport', 'martial art' and 'philosophy'. Today, it is all over the world appealing to a search for 'authentic' experiences, to certain exotic and sensual imageries and to a need of belonging to and being identified as member of a community. The intense mobility of Capoeira teachers from the state of Bahia to other countries as well as that of foreign apprentices to the city of Salvador is changing the way culture, community, ethnic identity and selfhood are experienced, perceived and discussed among Bahian practitioners. At the same time, their understandings have always been influenced by the way anthropologists and other intellectuals -especially Brazilians- approached 'authenticity', 'afrobrazilian culture' and culture in general. This rapprochement between practitioners and intellectuals becomes even more interesting as discussions on globalization entail a sense of loss and actively shape 'native' understandings and theories on social and cultural transformation and on the very concept of culture. What is more important, however, is to trace how do these 'native' understandings come to challenge and even question the way we do ethnography and reflect upon it.
Capoeira's Transnational Circulation: Anthropological and “Native” Theories to Culture and Change
The paper follows through micro social processes and is based on fieldwork research in the city o... more The paper follows through micro social processes and is based on fieldwork research in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil and Barcelona, Spain. I argue that Capoeira offers the lenses through which we comprehend how a local society and in specific, that of urban Salvador, positions and understands itself in the global scene. In particular, I discuss the solidarities, subversive practices and conflicts that emerge among local society’s members, intellectuals, the State and practitioners in the light of Capoeira’s globalization. Finally, I interrogate how the above mentioned issues are related to race and ethnicity and the ways they both operate as categories of social inequality.
Place(s), Power and Culture: The Case of the Afro-Brazilian Capoeira practitioners from the State of Bahia, Brazil
Capoeira, once a marginalized and illegal social practice, has nowadays attained a radically diff... more Capoeira, once a marginalized and illegal social practice, has nowadays attained a radically different status due to tourism, State policies, local initiatives and the Afro Brazilian Capoeira practitioners' migratory movements. However, new conflicts arise as various agents aim to strategically appropriate it. In this context, Capoeira's origins emerge prominently as one of the most central and controversial issues relating place(s) and people. Africa, Salvador de Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, the urban space, the street, ex slave communities and the Bahian interior have claimed primacy.
Based on thirteen months of fieldwork research in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil and twelve months in Barcelona, Spain, the paper is concerned with the discourses and strategies Afro Brazilian Capoeira teachers deploy as they struggle to assert control over their heritage. Striving to gain recognition they organize commemorative events in politically significant places to express solidarity to certain mestres who are in need. In times of scarce resources these activities are facilitated by the involvement of NGO's and foreign apprentices' participation, giving rise to new interpretations of Capoeira's past.
The paper addresses the following questions: What places do they choose to invest upon with meaning; how do they remember them and how do they associate them with Capoeira's origins and past? Who are the mestres who embody Capoeira's essence and consequently, the essence of a place, and who has the legitimate right to define them as such? Finally, is Capoeira a symbol of the city of Salvador, of Brazil or of the localities in the Bahian interior?
Capoeira Transnational Communities: Identity Politics, Power and Culture
Drawing on fieldwork research from Salvador de Bahia and Barcelona, the paper will discuss the so... more Drawing on fieldwork research from Salvador de Bahia and Barcelona, the paper will discuss the social and cultural effects generated by Capoeira’s transnational circulation. Capoeira, once a marginal and illegal activity, today, due to State’s policies and practitioners’ increased mobility, crosses borders and is appropriated by young people all over the world. Based on fieldwork research in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil and Barcelona, Spain, the aim is two- fold: First, to examine the processes and mechanisms of transnational Capoeira communities’ formation. Then, to explore how the Afro Brazilian Capoeira teachers attain social and cultural power as members of the above mentioned communities. Moreover, how do they negotiate their identity and experience difference as they display and disport themselves through body performances in the above mentioned transnational context?
Capoeira: From an Illegal and Marginalized Social Practice to Brazilian Immaterial Cultural Heritage
Drawing on fieldwork research in Salvador da Bahia, the paper discusses the implication of touris... more Drawing on fieldwork research in Salvador da Bahia, the paper discusses the implication of tourism, transnationalism and state's policies in the everyday life of afrobrazilian capoeira teachers. Once a marginal and illegal activity, today capoeira is perceived as a valuable cultural product to be exported, symbol of the city of Salvador and since 2008, Brazilian immaterial heritage.
The paper explores the conflicts that arise as capoeira practitioners struggle to assert control over their social practices, negotiate the cultural and social meanings attributed to capoeira, and strategically appropriate it as a means of empowerment. Who has the legitimate right to define whether the performative art is Brazilian, afrobrazilian, or has no race or ethnicity? Is it the state, the local or international community that will decide who can or cannot be a capoeira teacher? Is it a local symbol, a national one or the basis on which transnational capoeira communities are structured?
Ιdentity Formation among Afro-Brazilian Capoeira Teachers in a Transnational Context
To fully understand the questions of identity formation in Brazil we have to reflect on the proce... more To fully understand the questions of identity formation in Brazil we have to reflect on the processes that take place outside the national borders, in new public spheres and more transnational contexts. Based on fieldwork research among Capoeira groups in Barcelona, I argue that the rediscovery and re -invention of the Afro Brazilian culture in Europe is not only interrelated with the processes of a 'new black identity' formation in Bahía but also emerges as a new field where these processes can be carried on and reassessed.
Afro Brazilian capoeiras carry along an important cultural baggage. It consists of practices and ideas that serve as means of empowerment and help them reaffirm their collective identities.
I focus on the narratives concerning the art's past and on the materiality and power of self representation through performance. Both are at the core of Capoeira and are related to struggles over ethnic and national identities in Brazil. In Barcelona they are also related to the expectations and the imagery of the European apprentices. As the art reaches wider cultural arenas it receives new meanings that affect the ways it is remembered, passed on and re invented.
By reflecting on 'who embodies the essence of Capoeira', on the reappraisal of the black body and the use of aesthetic elements that are related to the African Diaspora or have strong Afro Brazilian connotations and can be at the same time 'modern' and 'traditional', I explore how essentialist discourses interplay with more cosmopolitan ones forging in the formation of more multifaceted and ambiguous identities.
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Papers by Theodora Lefkaditou
Conference Presentations by Theodora Lefkaditou
Thus, I would like to explore the issues that arise when we attempt to conduct fieldwork research in more than one locality and study complex phenomena of social and cultural change. Should our analytical frameworks still be informed by the local/global binaries and how can we be ethnographically specific without losing the big picture? Finally, I examine the challenges in studying other societies in relation to the above mentioned topics. Especially, in the neoliberal era, where the ‘proliferation, commodification and politicization of differences’ prevail, is it possible for anthropologists to avoid cultural essentialism and what are the pitfalls of focusing on difference?
Based on thirteen months of fieldwork research in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil and twelve months in Barcelona, Spain, the paper is concerned with the discourses and strategies Afro Brazilian Capoeira teachers deploy as they struggle to assert control over their heritage. Striving to gain recognition they organize commemorative events in politically significant places to express solidarity to certain mestres who are in need. In times of scarce resources these activities are facilitated by the involvement of NGO's and foreign apprentices' participation, giving rise to new interpretations of Capoeira's past.
The paper addresses the following questions: What places do they choose to invest upon with meaning; how do they remember them and how do they associate them with Capoeira's origins and past? Who are the mestres who embody Capoeira's essence and consequently, the essence of a place, and who has the legitimate right to define them as such? Finally, is Capoeira a symbol of the city of Salvador, of Brazil or of the localities in the Bahian interior?
The paper explores the conflicts that arise as capoeira practitioners struggle to assert control over their social practices, negotiate the cultural and social meanings attributed to capoeira, and strategically appropriate it as a means of empowerment. Who has the legitimate right to define whether the performative art is Brazilian, afrobrazilian, or has no race or ethnicity? Is it the state, the local or international community that will decide who can or cannot be a capoeira teacher? Is it a local symbol, a national one or the basis on which transnational capoeira communities are structured?
Afro Brazilian capoeiras carry along an important cultural baggage. It consists of practices and ideas that serve as means of empowerment and help them reaffirm their collective identities.
I focus on the narratives concerning the art's past and on the materiality and power of self representation through performance. Both are at the core of Capoeira and are related to struggles over ethnic and national identities in Brazil. In Barcelona they are also related to the expectations and the imagery of the European apprentices. As the art reaches wider cultural arenas it receives new meanings that affect the ways it is remembered, passed on and re invented.
By reflecting on 'who embodies the essence of Capoeira', on the reappraisal of the black body and the use of aesthetic elements that are related to the African Diaspora or have strong Afro Brazilian connotations and can be at the same time 'modern' and 'traditional', I explore how essentialist discourses interplay with more cosmopolitan ones forging in the formation of more multifaceted and ambiguous identities.
Thus, I would like to explore the issues that arise when we attempt to conduct fieldwork research in more than one locality and study complex phenomena of social and cultural change. Should our analytical frameworks still be informed by the local/global binaries and how can we be ethnographically specific without losing the big picture? Finally, I examine the challenges in studying other societies in relation to the above mentioned topics. Especially, in the neoliberal era, where the ‘proliferation, commodification and politicization of differences’ prevail, is it possible for anthropologists to avoid cultural essentialism and what are the pitfalls of focusing on difference?
Based on thirteen months of fieldwork research in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil and twelve months in Barcelona, Spain, the paper is concerned with the discourses and strategies Afro Brazilian Capoeira teachers deploy as they struggle to assert control over their heritage. Striving to gain recognition they organize commemorative events in politically significant places to express solidarity to certain mestres who are in need. In times of scarce resources these activities are facilitated by the involvement of NGO's and foreign apprentices' participation, giving rise to new interpretations of Capoeira's past.
The paper addresses the following questions: What places do they choose to invest upon with meaning; how do they remember them and how do they associate them with Capoeira's origins and past? Who are the mestres who embody Capoeira's essence and consequently, the essence of a place, and who has the legitimate right to define them as such? Finally, is Capoeira a symbol of the city of Salvador, of Brazil or of the localities in the Bahian interior?
The paper explores the conflicts that arise as capoeira practitioners struggle to assert control over their social practices, negotiate the cultural and social meanings attributed to capoeira, and strategically appropriate it as a means of empowerment. Who has the legitimate right to define whether the performative art is Brazilian, afrobrazilian, or has no race or ethnicity? Is it the state, the local or international community that will decide who can or cannot be a capoeira teacher? Is it a local symbol, a national one or the basis on which transnational capoeira communities are structured?
Afro Brazilian capoeiras carry along an important cultural baggage. It consists of practices and ideas that serve as means of empowerment and help them reaffirm their collective identities.
I focus on the narratives concerning the art's past and on the materiality and power of self representation through performance. Both are at the core of Capoeira and are related to struggles over ethnic and national identities in Brazil. In Barcelona they are also related to the expectations and the imagery of the European apprentices. As the art reaches wider cultural arenas it receives new meanings that affect the ways it is remembered, passed on and re invented.
By reflecting on 'who embodies the essence of Capoeira', on the reappraisal of the black body and the use of aesthetic elements that are related to the African Diaspora or have strong Afro Brazilian connotations and can be at the same time 'modern' and 'traditional', I explore how essentialist discourses interplay with more cosmopolitan ones forging in the formation of more multifaceted and ambiguous identities.