Intimate Multiculturalism: Transnationalism and Belonging amongst Capoeiristas in Australia

Abstract

Capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian dance-cum-martial art, has acquired a worldwide popularity. In this paper, we explore the relationships established by Australian students and Brazilian masters of Capoeira. We draw on and extend Wise and Velayutham's notion of everyday multiculturalism. This concept points to the need to research informal vernacular intercultural negotiations that happen at an everyday level. However, we wish to drill down beneath the surface of everyday public cultural negotiations to recognise the transactions that take place in relatively intimate settings. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from 2006 to 2010 in Australia, we coin the concept of intimate multiculturalism to argue that it is in very close intercultural encounters that people reinvent themselves, question their belonging to one national imagined community and embody other forms of being. We also show that practices brought by migrants are not only intercultural (such as people from different cultural backgrounds practicing Capoeira) but also transnational. In this sense, this responds to the recent call for scholars to switch the focus from diaspora studies to everyday practices of intercultural encounters and to how we live with difference in intimate ordinary situations.

Keywords:

• Intimate Multiculturalism
• Capoeira
• Globalisation
• Diaspora

Notes

[1] This is consistent with Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, a concept that challenged the idea of closed linguistic systems and recognised the polyphonic, improvised and fluid character of cultural production despites at efforts at closure (Bakhtin [1930] 1981).

[2] The 2011 census counted 14,509 Brazilian-born people living in Australia and 6503 in New South Wales, a 93.6% increase on the previous census in 2006 (Department of Immigration and Citizenship n.d.). While there are no specific figures for Sydney, anecdotal evidence suggests that very few settle outside the metropolitan area. However, official statistics probably greatly underestimate the nation's Brazilian-born population, as many Brazilians are reluctant to complete census forms because of a generalised distrust of government. Australian Education International (a Federal government organisation) found that a total of 10,296 Brazilians were studying in the country in 2012 (AEI 2013). A survey conducted by the Brazilian Ministry for Foreign Relations counted 45,300 Brazilians in Australia (MRE 2011).

[3] The social networking site Orkut, established in 2004, was widely popular in Brazil and has only recently been overtaken by Facebook. More than 12 million unique users were reported to have accessed Orkut in Brazil in December 2007, 68% of the total number of Internet users in the country. Many Australian capoeiristas joined Orkut in order to communicate with Brazilian capoeiristas.

[4] For more on mandatory loyalty to teachers see de Campos Rosario et al. (2010, 104) and Downey (2005).

[5] Fortier (2008) uses multicultural intimacy to describe what she sees as a tendency in official discourse and media representations to persuade citizens to embrace new immigrants in ways that go beyond the relatively shallow, formal bonds of citizenship. The key metaphor is one of hosts and guests. Ultimately this involves an asymmetrical and assimilationist frame in which (as Hage 1998 has also observed) newcomers are tolerated and received by their hosts, rather than exercising an equal right to participate in the imagined community. Our ethnography challenges this host–guest frame by indicating that Australians' participation in Capoeira can actually invert the relations of domination associated with intercultural encounter.

[6] Batizados (lit., baptism) are common in Capoeira Regional, while in Capoeira Angola mestres nominate their best students trainels, and allow them to stand in for the mestre when he (and it is mostly a ‘he’) is not in school.

[7] Ginga is usually the first move taught to beginners, and is the basic move in Capoeira. It consists in rhythmically moving from one side to the other. It also relates to the way a person walks or dances, having the ‘swing’. All moves flow from ginga and the qualities of the ginga inform all moves a player makes. It is like the ‘alpha and omega of capoeira, the first thing learned and the ultimate signature of the expert’ (Lewis 1992, 98).