ABSTRACT
Capoeira has moved from marginality – it was illegal at the beginning of the twentieth century – to iconic status, protected by the UN and the Brazilian state. The way that practitioners have navigated this transformation of threats and protection prompts the central enquiries of the book. These start with the question of what knowledge is produced, investigated through an examination of capoeira’s discourses of music, movement and ritual (Chapters 5 and 6). This leads to the enquiry into the mechanisms by which security has been distributed through capoeira, and their rationality (Chapter 7), what significance capoeira has to contemporary insecurity in Brazil (Chapter 8) and what implications can be drawn for the theory and practice of security (Chapter 9). The conclusions relate to the implications of capoeira to cultural resistance more broadly and the points of contact with other cultural activities and ways of life (Chapter 10).
