Griffith, L. M. (2023). Graceful Resistance: How Capoeiristas Use Their Art for Activism and Community Engagement. University of Illinois Press

Griffith, an anthropology professor in the United States, has an established reputation in martial arts studies and personal experience in capoeira. Compared to her previous books, Griffith focuses solely on the U.S. context in this book, where she positions capoeira as a serious leisure activity. The pedagogical significance of leisure activities is often underappreciated. Presenting capoeira as a serious leisure activity, Griffith challenges this assumption, contending that a liminal space is created for learning and consciousness raising outside traditional academic settings which is refreshing. A strength of this book is how Griffith consistently brings to life the learning practices and community spaces. For instance, learning from embodying the words of songs during practice times or through discussion in after-class spaces. Consequently, Griffith’s research is valuable in understanding how learning is life wide and life deep. Griffith uses an expository style to explain and analyze her ethnographic experiences and interactions with capoeiristas from interviews, attending capoeira events and rallies, and close reading of literature. In line with the book’s title, Griffith “gracefully” shifts between different methods of presenting her data and arguing her points with personal vignettes and academic engagement with history, theory, and literature. Her tone is eloquent, informative and engaging, particularly in the sections that describe the educational practices and their impact. Griffith concludes that the potential of capoeira to support social justice varies because learning outcomes are influenced much by instructors and contexts. For instance, she discusses some mestres holding class discussions on political issues and giving written assignments, and others keeping their capoeira spaces apolitical. A potential weakness in her argument for capoeira as a global resistance art is that the text only examines U.S. contexts. Framing learning through the hidden curriculum may also be limiting. If the social justice education in capoeira is not necessarily apparent to practitioners, how transformative is it for society? By acknowledging these points in the text, Griffiths avoids making claims of ultrarelativism. Her critical analysis and examples remind us of the impact even one educator can make and the need for ongoing reflection and attention to pedagogy and praxis. Although Griffith writes in first-person at times, I felt she was always in the shadows, a potential limitation given the social justice focus of the book. I anticipated a more robust and prominent statement of her researcher positionality, yet finished her book not fully certain of her personal investment and what was at stake for her in writing on this topic. An absence of her own politics and investment creates a feeling of disjuncture within work on social and racial justice and serious political subjects. Moreover, her potential biases as a White woman with U.S. academic privileges pose a limitation to her overall approach for studying an Afro-Brazilian martial art, as they may cast her as an outsider doing research on a community and raise concerns about her legitimacy in telling these stories. Accordingly, Griffith acknowledges, by citing Tuck and Yang’s (2012) concerns for “settler adaptation fantasies,” the need for caution, and that White researchers do not assert their interests on communities. This could explain her withholding from being more assertive in her positionality. Considering power and privilege differentials is important for researchers interested in working internationally in different countries, cultures, and communities for decolonizing research and practice and Griffith does well to acknowledge it. This consideration connects to sentiments that “dominant onto-epistemologies and methodologies in comparative and international education (CIE) need to be unsettled” (Manion, 2019, p. 18), and recommendations in anthropology to recognize “colonial politics that underpin our theoretical categories and ethnographic practice” (Faier & Rofel, 2014, p. 364). Although …