Communicating New Forms of Belonging in the Transnational Space of Capoeira

• Cristina Wulfhorst ^[1] ; Eurico Vianna ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Western Sydney

     University of Western Sydney

     Australia

     
  2. [2] Griffith University

     Griffith University

     Australia

     
• Localización: Diásporas, migrações, tecnologias da comunicação e identidades transnacionais / coord. por Denise Cogo, Mohammed Elhajji, Amparo Huertas Bailén, 2012, ISBN 978-84-939545-7-4, págs. 85-104
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro
• Resumen

  • In this paper, we address the transverse character of globalization and social-mediated interactions by focusing on Capoeira – a syncretic cultural manifestation blending game, martial arts, dance, music, oral poetry and theatre. Such a perspective makes Capoeira an interesting site for examining the everyday effects of the imbrications between transnationalism, identity reconfiguration and uses of social media. Along with the migration of capoeiristas, other overlapping and disjunctive flows (APPADURAI, 1990), such as mediascapes, have contributed to Capoeira’s globalization since the 1990s, particularly in the international entertainment, leisure and advertising industries. Asignificant turn in Capoeira’s globalization began with the spread of the Internet as a social and interactive tool in a rising network society (CASTELLS, 1996a). We discuss how internationalized cultural practices carry with them different spectrums of “globalization”, and how social media reinforce these multifaceted perspectives, influencing processes of identity formation and belongingwithin the art form. We demonstrate that Capoeira practitioners use social media as a resource to oppose hegemonic forms of globalization that spread a specific and sterilized image of Capoeira as exotic, as well as to contest the structured notion of Capoeira as a diasporic culture. More specifically, we contend that transnationalized cultural practices allow its participants to develop an alternativeform of cosmopolitanism or, in Boaventura Santos’ (2006) terms, an “insurgent cosmopolitanism”.