physical education.pdf

GREG DOWNEY

Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira: PhysicalEducation and Enculturation in anAfro-Brazilian Art

ABSTRACT Imitation plays a crucial role in apprenticeship in the Afro-Brazilian performance genre capoeira, as in many skills across

cultures. In this article, I examine the interactional dynamics of imitative pedagogy in capoeira to better understand physical education

as a form of bodily enculturation. The ability to learn through imitation is widely considered a hallmark of our species. Imitative ability,

however, is a social accomplishment rather than a capacity of the learner in isolation. Human models often provide assistance to novices

seeking to imitate, including a variety of forms of what educational theorists call “scaffolding,” which are astutely structured to a

novice’s ability, perceptions, and even neurology. Scaffolding techniques vary. I here examine how instructors reduce students’ degrees of

movement freedom, reorient their model in perceptual space, and parse complex sequences into component gestures. Close analysis of

pedagogical interaction highlights the divergence between forms of instruction and practical skills being taught. [Keywords: capoeira,

sport, training, embodiment, cultural transmission]

T HE MESTRE, or “teacher,” Joao Grande (“Big John”)arrived in New York City in 1990 and soon opened

a school of capoeira. Because he is one of the most re-spected proponents of the Afro-Brazilian martial art anddance, Brazilians lamented to me during field research inBrazil in the 1990s that the mestre resided abroad. In spite oftheir misgivings, however, they still commented buoyantlythat Joao Grande’s school was thriving and that his studentsseemed to learn well from the mestre. Brazilian practition-ers seemed to take vicarious pride in Joao Grande’s success;it signaled increasing international recognition for theirart and the possibility of material success through the art.Andre Luiz Lace Lopes, a long-time proponent of capoeira,for example, wrote in 1994 that he found students in theManhattan school “with a capoeira-like sentiment muchpurer than that of many practitioners that I see playing inRio de Janeiro” (1995:69–70).

Capoeira is an acrobatic, danced game done to distinc-tive vocal and instrumental music. Derived from Africanchallenge dances and shaped by slavery, urban gangs, andofficial repression throughout the 19th and early 20th cen-turies in Brazil, capoeira today has become a form of phys-ical education and martial art found around the world. Ina capoeira “game,” or jogo, two players strive to outma-neuver, trip, or knock each other to the ground using a

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 110, Issue 2, pp. 204–213, ISSN 0002-7294 online ISSN 1548-1433. C© 2008 by the American Anthropological Association.All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00026.x

wide array of kicks, head butts, leg sweeps, and evasive ma-neuvers. At the same time, they balance aggression with aneed to demonstrate dexterity, creativity, and artistic flairin response to changes in music provided by a small orches-tra. The game’s movement repertoire includes difficult acro-batic techniques, and the demanding art typically requiresseveral years of dedicated apprenticeship before studentsreally feel confident to play.1

When I moved to New York City in 1998 and had theopportunity to visit Mestre Joao Grande’s school, I foundthe students’ skills met expectations heightened by acclaimlike that of Lopes, a popular Brazilian writer on capoeira(see, e.g., 1995). The students’ abilities impressed evenmore, however, when it became obvious that the mestrestill did not speak English, and that many non-Brazilianstudents had only rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese, ifany at all. Novice capoeira students always learn a great dealby imitating in contemporary practice—as students do inphysical disciplines across many cultures—but the imitativechannel in Joao Grande’s school was shorn of supportive in-struction for many students. Joao Grande would often call asenior student, signal what he wanted to demonstrate withvague hand gestures and monosyllables, and then perform acomplementary defense and counterattack to the student’sattack, creating an exercise that the students paired off to

Downey • Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira 205

imitate. Demonstration and attempts to imitate took up agreat portion of the communication between mestre andstudents.

Whether they pick the art up informally, as veteranplayers insist was once the norm, or through physicaleducation–style classes, imitative learning forms the back-bone of capoeira apprenticeship in virtually all settings Ihave observed in Brazil, Australia, and the United States.To learn capoeira techniques, novices carefully watch expe-rienced players, haltingly try to copy techniques, rehearsemovements over and over again until they become ex-pert, and, in turn, become models for other novices. Theytend to learn the art’s movements and musical techniquesby seeing and doing them rather than by talking aboutthem—even when instructors and students share a lan-guage. But practitioners do not consider imitation aloneto be sufficient to learn the art. As Mestre Joao Pequeno(“Little John,” in contrast to his close friend, Joao Grande)allegedly told one of my informants: if watching were suf-ficient to learn capoeira, the stray dogs that lazed abouthis academy should long ago have become mestres them-selves. As I observed pedagogical contexts like Mestre JoaoGrande’s academy, where imitation seemed to be carriedout without other forms of communication, I realized thatimitative learning itself was a complex, two-way form of in-teraction, in which the model was far from a simple objectof observation.

IMITATION, ENCULTURATION, AND ENSKILLMENT

Imitative learning in a host of settings demonstrates theextraordinary mimetic facility of humans, a trait thatmany theorists argue is essential to the capacity for cul-ture (see, e.g., Caldwell and Whiten 2002; Donald 1991;Heyes 1993; Hurley and Chater 2005; Tomasello 1999a,1999b; Tomasello et al. 1993). As early as the end of the19th century, psychologist Edward Thorndike (1898) ob-served that imitation, rather than being a trait possessedby many species, was rather rarer than deductive, trial-and-error learning. The ease with which humans imitate maymake practical mimesis appear to be a simple channel forenculturation or learning when it is in fact a signature ofa distinctly human intelligence. Pierre Bourdieu, for exam-ple, although he elsewhere examines physical educationin great detail, in his prospectus for a sociology of sportdescribes imitative learning in almost mystical terms: “theteaching of a bodily practice . . . occurs, in the greatest de-gree, outside the field of conscious awareness, . . . learnt bya silent communication, from body to body one might say”(1990:166).

A close examination of imitative learning in manyethnographic settings reveals that the faculty is not merelya result of the novice learner’s intelligence or observationalskills in isolation, nor is it always “outside the field ofconscious awareness.” Rather, imitation is often supportedby sophisticated, subtle teaching techniques, even in in-formal education. By drawing attention to the forms and

variety of practical support, including conscious elabora-tion, I hope to highlight the social nature of human im-itation and the distinctive forms of intelligence involvedin teaching through modeling and imitation. Psycholo-gists David Wood and colleagues suggest that the abilityto learn is not the only effect of high intelligence, so isthe capacity to teach (1976:89; see also Wood 1986:194–195). The subtle, sophisticated ways in which imitationcan be supported demonstrate pedagogical skill and theinherent self-reflexivity of most teaching, even in phys-ical activities such as dance, sport, and manual skills,and even when no explicit instruction accompanies themodel.

At the same time, ethnographic studies of culturaltransmission reveal that imitation is interactive rather thanunidirectional. What Dan Sperber and Lawrence Hirschfeld(2007) call the “microprocesses of cultural transmission”may include quite complex forms of movement analysis,abstraction, and selective demonstration by teachers. Peda-gogical interaction often demands that the model not sim-ply enact a practice but also provide other sorts of stim-ulation and direction tailored to the novice’s needs. Weimitate well because we typically do not imitate indiffer-ent models.2 Moreover, as I discuss, neurological researchon imitative learning provides inspiration to rethink every-day educational processes, not merely how novices copynew techniques but also how a teacher might facilitate thatlearning through specific forms of bodily interaction.

In his landmark discussion of “techniques of the body,”Marcel Mauss argues that apprenticeship occurs in all bodilyskills, pointing out that even resting postures are “labori-ously acquired” (1973:81). Ethnographic studies of sports,dance, and other physical skills strongly support Mauss’sassertion, showing how techniques of the body are finelytuned and arduously sought, even though the resultingpractice of the expert may appear effortless (see, e.g., Al-ter 1992; Bale 1996; Novack 1990; Wacquant 2003). Just asphysical education necessarily involves cognitive and per-ceptual learning, even such sedentary intellectual tasks asreading entail forms of bodily training: novice readers mustlearn to track lines of text visually and suppress extraneousor disruptive motion (for review, see Rayner 1998). Crit-ical studies of education have amply demonstrated thatclassroom instruction includes significant bodily and be-havioral training, often a mode of social discipline, and astudent’s failure to behave physically in appropriate wayscan be treated as an intellectual inadequacy (see, e.g., Bour-dieu 1984; MacLeod 2004; Willis 1977).

MOVEMENT EDUCATION

Capoeira was once practiced primarily by working-classblack and mixed-raced men in Brazil’s northeast as a formof entertainment, challenge dance, and festive activity.Transformed into a martial art and fitness activity, the artspread widely and is now performed by men and women,adults and children, around the world. Although still not as

206 American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 2 • June 2008

well-known as Asian-originated martial arts such as judo,tae kwon do, or aikido, capoeira’s spectacular gymnastictechniques have helped to make the art a media darling: onecan see capoeira in video games, television commercials,music videos, and Hollywood movies (see also Assuncao2005:1–2).

Anthropologists, historians, and scholars of perfor-mance have tended to focus their attention on capoeira’shistorical development, resistance to oppression, status asan African cultural expression in Brazil, and distinctivenessamong performance traditions: combining dance, music,oral history, sparring, acrobatics, and playful theater, someobservers argue it is a genre category to itself (Lewis 1995;see also Browning 1995; Lewis 1992). Capoeira practition-ers are quick to point out that the art survived in spiteof social stigma and periodic repression—in part becauseof its pedagogical flexibility and resourcefulness. The wordcapoeira was long associated with gang activity in Rio deJaneiro. In contrast, in the northeastern city of Salvador,men formed capoeira rodas, or public “rings,” at popularfestivals to entertain and earn money from spectators (seeAssuncao 2005:70–127; Downey 2005; Lewis 1992; Soares1994).

Prior to capoeira’s treatment as physical education,most practitioners learned through one-on-one instruction,observation, and self-guided practice. Mestre Gigante as-serted, “In the old days, there were no academies. Onlyduring the day, on Sunday, did you have the ‘vagrancy’[capoeira] in the street” (Vieira 1990:119). In these settings,imitative learning would have been at least as importantas in contemporary practice. In an open forum, one oldermestre described how as a novice he would observe tech-niques in public rodas among experts and then go to thebeach to try the acrobatic movements in the sand where hewas less likely to injure himself. In addition, novice playerswere, and still are, initiated through what Jean Lave and Eti-enne Wenger labeled “legitimate-peripheral participation”(1991). They take on minor, technically less-demandingtasks during performance. For example, in contemporaryrodas, inexperienced players are entrusted with supportingmusical instruments that play restricted rhythms with min-imal improvisation.

Since the first capoeira “academies” (academias) in the1930s, teaching has, in large part, been definitively sepa-rated from games or free play, and instruction has becomeprofessionalized (although one is hard pressed to make a liv-ing by instruction in Brazil). The Portuguese verb treinar, “totrain,” has entered the capoeira lexicon. One older mestrejoked in an interview that it was ironic practitioners now“trained” at something that was once called vadiacao, “idle-ness” or “vagrancy.” Although novices are encouraged toenter the capoeira ring, they are expected to prepare bytraining outside it. In one academy I visited, students werestrictly forbidden from playing at weekend rodas unlessthey had attended a training session during the previousweek.

For the most part, capoeira schools practice what Clau-dia Strauss (1984) termed “ill-defined” pedagogies: trainingdiffers widely between groups, even between instructorsand their assistants in a single group, and very few havefixed, progressive pedagogies or systematic exercises (thereare exceptions to this statement, as to most assertions aboutthe fractious community of practitioners). Demonstrationsare often devised interactively on the spot, in response toopportunities or errors that an instructor perceives whileobserving students. Most “exercises” are simply movementsisolated and practiced so that they might later be reincor-porated into the game.

Even those instructors who have devised systematizedpedagogical systems often neglect them in class. For exam-ple, teachers of Capoeira Regional, the style of the art createdby the legendary Mestre Bimba, often fail to teach eventhe eight basic sequencias, or interactive combinations, thatwere the mestre’s movement primer. In other academies, Ireceived photocopies of syllabi but found them either verygeneral or impractical for use in instruction. Most fixed,elaborate pedagogies, in my observation, were attempts toenforce uniformity that translated poorly into practice, orefforts to win the art greater legitimacy in the eyes of non-practitioners. That is, systematic pedagogies were more forappearances in the physical education community than ac-tually effective in shaping training. For example, CarlosSenna, an influential advocate of capoeira linked to thepolice and military in the 1970s and 1980s, devised elabo-rate nationalist pedagogies, including descriptions of tech-nically perfect movements and systems to score competi-tions (e.g., Senna 1980). In fact, his rationalizing effortshad little lasting effect on capoeira practice, except for theintroduction of belt schemes and other cosmetic changes(see Downey 2002).

SCAFFOLDING

Imitative learning in capoeira is facilitated by what educa-tional theorist Lev Vygotsky called “more capable peers”(1978:86). The more knowledgeable other serves as bothmodel and instructor, interacting with the novice and re-sponding to his or her distinctive developmental needswhen classes are small. Wood and colleagues (1976:90)point out that what might appear to be simple model-ing and imitation on closer examination is often muchmore complex, with practical as well as verbal interventionsby the tutor. A more knowledgeable other, like a capoeiramestre or other teacher, often assists in practical ways, suchas altering or exaggerating the movement to be emulated,isolating a particularly tricky portion of a sequence, coach-ing through difficult stages, or redirecting the novice’s at-tention.3 Wood and colleagues christened the assistancerendered by the tutor as “scaffolding,” arguing that suchaid allows a learner to perform tasks that are initially be-yond his or her ability alone (see also Bliss et al. 1996).Scaffolding as a pedagogical technique allows the learner


to engage directly in the sorts of tasks performed in nor-mal skilled action, rather than simplified tasks, exercises,or other learning activities (such as listening to lecturesor explanations). As Bruner describes, scaffolding serves as“a vicarious form of consciousness until such time as thelearner is able to master his own action through his ownconsciousness and control” (1986:123). The instructor’s as-sistance helps to control the learner’s body, allowing thestudent to execute actions that will eventually flow withmuch less effort. When the novice becomes more com-petent, scaffolding is incrementally withdrawn or “faded”(see Pea 2004:431). Some educational contexts do include“unscaffolded” imitation: “old guard” capoeia practition-ers, for example, talk about learning by imitating tech-niques alone, without any assistance, prior to the adventof capoeira schools, and some physical disciplines demandunassisted imitation for pedagogical reasons.

In contrast to the neglect of fixed pedagogy, ad hocscaffolding of imitation is widespread in capoeira train-ing and often arises spontaneously, rather than throughpremeditation or deliberate design. Typically, in a peda-gogical interaction involving scaffolding, an instructor firstdemonstrated a target movement or combination—such asan attack, escape, and counterattack—as it would be donein a game. The sequence might be done with or without apartner, and the pace might be slowed down slightly fromthat which is normal during play. The students would thenattempt to imitate. If students did not quickly copy the se-quence, the instructor frequently provided additional scaf-folding assistance—sometimes for the whole group, some-times just for those individuals who needed additional sup-port.

For example, Joao Grande often did intricate “escapes”(saidas) and counterattacks that were too fast and compli-cated to be instantly copied. After the students looked aboutwith obvious consternation, he could usually be induced toprovide extra assistance for imitation: he might repeat themovement more slowly or break a sequence into smaller,easier-to-grasp component steps. Or Joao Grande might haltbriefly at a reference point during the movement’s trajec-tory, highlighting a crucial posture that made subsequentmovement easier, especially if he thought students werelikely to get it wrong. His scaffolding revealed his atten-tion to specific “errors” and his sense of what parts of atechnique were problematic.

Although the term scaffolding is not found in his work,the concept is generally considered part of socioculturallearning theory inspired by Vygotsky (see, e.g., Hobsbaumand Peters 1996; Wood and Wood 1996). Vygotsky’s ped-agogical theories were grounded in his observations ofnormal developmental processes, especially the every-day interactions of children that facilitated their gradualachievement of typical abilities, such as native speech ac-quisition or literacy (see 1962, 1978). Vygotsky’s discus-sion of the social bases of development recognized culturaldifferences in educational trajectories and has been fruit-

fully applied in anthropological approaches to child devel-opment (see, e.g., Holland and Valsiner 1988; Lima andEmihovich 1995; Rogoff 2003).

One reason that scaffolding has been readily adoptedin Vygotsky’s developmental theory is that the conceptcoincides well with his discussion of the “zone of proxi-mal development” (1978:86ff.). For Vygotsky, the “zone ofproximal development” consists of problems, just beyondtheir capacity in isolation, that learners might solve withguidance by a more knowledgeable other. More difficultproblems beyond this “zone” are not really learnable froma too-early stage of development; they cannot be accom-plished even with scaffolding or other assistance. For thisreason, scaffolding, such as in capoeira, tends to take di-verse forms as instruction incrementally pushes studentsto accomplish more challenging tasks based on instructors’understandings of pedagogical progression. In addition, anadept teacher must also be able to diagnose which actionsare in the zone of proximal development and thus suscep-tible to imitation; many times in capoeira classes, virtuosoplayers demonstrated movements that the students consid-ered beyond their own ability and could not imitate.

REDUCING DEGREES OF FREEDOM

One of the most difficult problems faced by a novice in amovement discipline like capoeira is what Nicholai Bern-stein (1996) identified as “degrees of freedom” in bodilymotion. The human body contains so many joints andmuscles, and is capable of so many sorts of movement, thatcontrolling the profusion of possibilities can overwhelm abeginner. As Bernstein writes: “Coordination is overcom-ing excessive degrees of freedom of our movement organs,that is, turning the movement organs into controllable sys-tems” (1996:41). The problem seems to be especially diffi-cult with capoeira movements that are least like everydaymovements, and in others because unnecessary motion up-sets balance. That is, with unfamiliar movements or thoserequiring delicate bodily control, unnecessary bodily “free-dom” needs to be tamped down, but the techniques areso unfamiliar that too many potential motions have to beconsciously suppressed at once.

One way that capoeira instructors scaffold imitation,given the degrees of freedom problem, is by eliminatingextraneous movement possibilities. These scaffolding tac-tics narrow down a student’s potential actions, funnelingtheir motions toward the target. For example, instructorsmay create exercises that artificially place a student’s bodyinto particular starting positions, force them to go onlyone direction, or otherwise eliminate options for motionthat would disrupt the model technique (but that mightnormally be available in a game).

In a simple example briefly discussed elsewhere(Downey n.d.), a student learning the rabo-de-arraia, the“stingray’s tail” kick, might be provided with freedom-reducing scaffolding. In the rabo-de-arraia, a player places


both hands on the ground and pivots around on one legwhile using the other, trailing leg to kick out in a long arc.Bent over quadripedal, the student sweeps the leg that startsfurthest from the target, and must sight the target under hisor her own body, upside down. Because the movement isso alien to everyday movement, so counterintuitive givenprior experience, many novices do not even know where tostart. They may begin committing multiple errors at once,kicking with the wrong leg, turning backwards, holdingthe head incorrectly, failing to balance, forgetting to putthe palms flat on the ground, and a host of other problems.So many novel sensations make up the rabo-de-arraia thatinexperienced players, left to their own devices, may notfix very basic errors no matter how many times an expertmodels correct technique for imitation.

In this case, many instructors scaffold novices’ earlyattempts to imitate by reducing a student’s opportunitiesto commit errors. For example, both Joao Grande and JoaoPequeno almost always taught the rabo-de-arraia combinedwith the negativa, a basic evasive technique. Although thesemestres likely had other reasons as well, putting the nega-tiva and rabo-de-arraia in sequence made it more difficultto commit common errors in foot placement leading tothe “stingray’s tail” kick. Once in the negativa, only onefoot can be easily moved into position as the pivot; theother is effectively pinned by the body’s weight. In addi-tion, once the pivot leg has been placed, turning in the cor-rect direction for the “stingray’s tail” is much easier; afterthe asymmetrical negativa, moving in the opposite direc-tion requires an act of contortionism (which some studentsstill insist on attempting). During improvised play, the twomovements are not married so closely—one could just aseasily do either in combination with other techniques—but their pedagogical pairing helped new students. On thesurface, the sequence of two novel, physically challengingmovements might appear to increase the difficulty of eitheralone. In fact, the first technique funneled students intothe second, decreasing the likelihood that certain basic er-rors would arise. When I tried to teach the rabo-de-arraiawithout the negativa, I found students easily turned in thewrong direction without the freedom-reducing scaffolding.

Other forms of imitative scaffolding also reduce stu-dents’ freedom to make movement errors. For example, myinstructors always pushed new students to practice tech-niques slowly. Several teachers explained that this was notonly because novices had more time to correct errors (andwere less likely to injure themselves or others). The de-creased pace also exacerbated fundamental flaws, especiallyproblems with equilibrium, making them impossible to ig-nore. When faced with one physically fit, impatient novice,an instructor demanded that the whole class slow down toan excruciating pace. When we looked to him to explain theexaggeratedly leaden tempo, he pointed out that the newstudent’s muscular arms were trembling from the strain.The novice tried to compensate with raw strength for thefact that he was poorly balanced; the instructor slowed us

down to expose this flaw and wear the student out so thathe would have to improve his posture and equilibrium.

REORIENTING THE MODEL

Another way instructors scaffolded novices’ imitative learn-ing was by reorienting their model. In a game, players faceeach other, largely disregarding spectators’ positions, in-cluding that of novices seeking to learn. When instructorsuse imitation to teach, three different orientations are pos-sible: random, facing-toward or reflecting, and facing-awayor leading. The random orientation is common when stu-dents circle around an instructor to see a technique, andthey are expected to grasp the movement no matter wherethey are positioned. This perceptual arrangement was mostcommon with more advanced students; it was often usedto study the more subtle points of capoeira tactics and in-teraction rather than when learning basic techniques. Withless experienced students or more difficult movements, in-structors may switch to the reflecting or leading positions.

Reflecting instruction, in which students face themodel and do movements in the same direction, is the leastremedial type of scaffolding. Only if a group really strug-gles will an instructor turn his or her back on the studentsand perform the movement facing in the same direction,leading, at least in the traditionalist capoeira groups thatwere my primary object of study.4 Some students strug-gled with the reflecting orientation, possibly because it de-manded that they reverse sides of the body, doing withthe left limbs what the model did with the right and viceversa. Especially on some of the more complex, unfamiliartechniques, students could be confused by the perceptualand deictic transformations that the reflecting perspectiverequired.

This ascending hierarchy of orientation-based scaffold-ing, from leading to reflecting to modeling in random direc-tions, might have escaped my notice except for the findingsof neuropsychologists studying how movement perceptionis accomplished in the brain. Neuroscientists studying mo-tor perception have, over the past decade, described the“mirror system” in the brain, a neural system that graspsthe nature and objective of another person’s movement,maps it onto an internal simulation of the same move-ment, and thus facilitates action understanding and im-itation (see Downey n.d.).5 Phillip Jackson and colleagues(2006) have demonstrated that the mirror system functionsmore vigorously when the model is oriented in the samedirection—that is, the leading direction (see also Maedaet al. 2002:1333). Jackson and colleagues (2006) studiedwhether the visual perspective of the person attempting toimitate affected either the imitator’s success or the intensityof stimulation in the brain’s mirror system; both hypothe-ses were supported. Their findings suggest that copyingmovement is facilitated by joint first-person perspective—that is, the leading orientation. In contrast, looking towardeach other—the reflecting position—might lead to a more


robust and broadly applicable understanding of how theactions are configured in space (Jackson et al. 2006). Simi-larly, in capoeira instruction, once the basic techniques aregrasped in leading position, with a reflecting orientationthe instructor can observe to fine-tune imitated movementsand alert students to key issues, such as tactical considera-tions or movement variations.

PARSING OF COMPLEX TASKS

Capoeira instruction through imitation also includes aform of scaffolding found in a range of ethnographic set-tings: when modeling action, instructors often break downcomplex tasks into simpler stages, parsing complicated se-quences into component gestures. In books that aim toteach capoeira techniques, for example, numbered draw-ings or photos often represent complex kicks, escapes, orcombinations as an unfolding sequence of component ges-tures (e.g., Capoeira 2003). In the case of capoeira, the dis-solution of complex flows of movement into componentsis commonplace in instruction, especially for novices.

This sort of movement parsing into stages is sowidespread that it may appear trivial to highlight it as aform of imitative scaffolding. On closer examination, how-ever, the division of a smooth movement into myriad stepscan actually make the technique more kinetically difficult.To stop in the middle of the “stingray’s tail” kick, for ex-ample, demands greater balance and body control and re-quires that a student maintain an awkward bent-over pos-ture. More acrobatic techniques done in stages can be evenmore challenging, if not impossible. In one particularly dif-ficult exercise, an instructor asked us to delay in the mid-dle position in an au fechado, a “closed cartwheel”; doingso meant balancing on one’s hands while bent in half atthe waist so that the feet nearly touched the ground. An-other instructor asked students to stop halfway through acartwheel and balance before descending into a headstand.Both exercises met with groans from the students, and evenfairly competent performers often could not meet the re-quirement to parse the movements that they could do atfull speed. Capoeira instructors frequently tell students thata technique will be easier once it is reintegrated.

Recent research on the perception of motion in thepremotor areas of the brain, however, may help shed lighton why movement parsing serves as an essential form ofimitative scaffolding even though it may make executingmovements more difficult. Specifically, studies of imita-tion in anthropology, ethology, and psychology have beenenriched by the discovery of “mirror neurons,” parts ofthe brain that are stimulated equally when observing themovements of others and when an actor him- or herselfperforms the same activity. Although mirror properties inmotor neurons support imitation, Giovanni Buccino andcolleagues argue that the “elementary motor representa-tions in the mirror system” are not by themselves “sufficientfor learning by imitation” (2004:331). Because the mirror

system only picks out individual gestures and can onlymatch motions already in the observer’s repertoire, otherneural structures must orchestrate the sequencing of “mir-rored” gestures into more complicated or novel actions:“A selection and recombination of these motor elementsis necessary to obtain an action congruent to the model”(Buccino 2004:331; see also Byrne and Russon 1998). Thatis, new complex movements, like dance steps or capoeiratechniques, are built up as chains of actions, some of whichare likely to be familiar and thus detected by the neural“mirror system” (see also Byrne 2002; Rizzolatti 2003). Acomplex movement must thus be parsed into simple ges-tures that are already known, Richard Byrne (2003) suggests,before a novel skill can be constructed. In other words, pars-ing by a model can aid perception of motor sequences eventhough it makes execution substantially more difficult.

I want to hasten to add that the discovery of mirrorneurons does not necessarily suggest that the ability to imi-tate is “hardwired” into the brain. As the novice gains kines-thetic expertise, neuroimaging shows that the mirror sys-tem resonates with increasingly complex movements andwith new gestures, simulating techniques as they enter anovice’s expanding repertoires. The brain can be trainedto perceive movement more quickly and through morecomplex elementary gestures; embodied culture affects theneurology of perception in ways that confound any sim-ple Cartesian dualism or “nature–nurture” divide. BeatrizCalvo-Merino and colleagues studied expert capoeira prac-titioners and ballet dancers and found that “the mirrorareas of their brains responded to the stimuli in a waythat depended on the observer’s specific motor expertise”(2004:1246). Even though movements were often kinemat-ically very similar—spins with back kicks, for example—the expert performers’ mirror systems would resonate moststrongly with movements they observed from their owngenres.

The advanced practitioners also demonstrated signifi-cant expertise effects on the complexity of gestures encodedby the mirror system; expert systems seemed to code “com-plete action patterns, not just individual component move-ments” (Calvo-Merino et al. 2004:1246). That is, the brainsof expert practitioners seemed to perceive and simulatebigger “chunks” of movement sequences. In contrast, thebrains of inexpert control subjects did not demonstrate mir-ror activation when witnessing complex, expert movementtechniques; the brain had to be trained up to even perceivemovements for imitation. Similarly, in capoeira instruction,as novices become more experienced, they are expected tograsp the movements with less minute dissection—that is,when presented as larger “chunks” of information.6 Theethnographic evidence shows that capoeira instructors can“fade” minute parsing, eventually providing longer, aggre-gated movement stages. Mestre Joao Grande’s expert dis-ciples could more quickly perceive and imitate sequencesthan his inexperienced students because their perceptual


systems were tuned to perceive his movements as sequencesof complicated but instantly graspable techniques.

Capoeira training, like other physical education, tendsto scaffold imitation by facilitating transposition of kines-thetic knowledge between techniques. That is, instructorsoften concentrate on clusters of techniques that make use ofsimilar motions, postures, or dynamics because students arebetter able to grasp these motions once they have learneda single gateway technique. For example, when teachingthe stingray’s tail kick and the armada, a spinning kick, aninstructor pointed out to a class I watched that the prelim-inary step, the one used to wind up the body and generatestored momentum, was similar, although not identical, inboth: an odd, heel-first step toward the target. Once theyhad grasped kinesthetically the initial technique, studentswere able to quickly imitate a very similar motion, espe-cially if the parallel dynamics were pointed out to them.

When Joao Grande taught a class, he frequentlyshowed several variants of short sequences that started withthe same defensive escape. These sequences demonstrateda series of options to counterattack a single attack. The clus-tering of techniques that shared elements, a sort of kines-thetic clumping, made use of students’ expanding ability toperceive motor techniques distinct to capoeira; once theyhad grasped the corpeal jeito, or “way,” of an escape, JoaoGrande could build variants on it, substituting a cabecada,or head butt, where he had first showed several types ofkicks. The ability to recognize longer, more complex se-quences, to read them as larger chunks rather than com-ponent gestures, to replace portions with other techniques,and to thus quickly construct and retain more complicatedcombinations is consistent with the expertise-specific neu-ral development described by Calvo-Merino’s team. Theclustering is ironic, however, because Mestre Joao Grande,when explicitly asked, expressly denied that he used anystructured pedagogy at all (Barbieri 1993:88–91). In fact,on closer examination, his teaching techniques demon-strated a consistency and astute scaffolding of studentimitation.

CONCLUSION

In capoeira education, imitation can be scaffolded in nu-merous ways. In this article, I discuss techniques like reduc-ing a novice’s degrees of freedom, reorienting the modelin space, and parsing a movement sequence into com-ponent gestures; however, scaffolding can involve othertechniques, such as moving simultaneously with students,marking critical features on a student’s own movement (toheighten self awareness), directing a novice’s attention dur-ing techniques (to key inputs from the environment), fit-ting complimentary attacks and defenses to a technique (totrain a student when that movement is appropriate), and al-leviating frustration or otherwise helping a student to man-age his or her own emotions.7 In this sense, scaffolding canbe practical or discursive, or some combination of the two;

it can be more or less formal or formulaic; and it can ap-ply to perceptual, practical, or even emotional dimensionsof a skill. Although the specific forms of scaffolding are di-verse (and imitation may also be unscaffolded), taken as awhole these pedagogical techniques draw attention to keycharacteristics of skill acquisition as enculturation.

Close study of the microsocial processes of culturallearning can lead us to better understand not only encul-turation but also what culture itself might be, includingvariations in human development that are behavioral, neu-rological, and even physiological but no less “cultural”—that is, induced through patterns of training.8 Tim Ingold(2000:416–417) argues that enculturation might be betterunderstood as “enskillment,” the development of learnedcapacities, rather than as the “internalization of collectiverepresentations”; in my opinion, both likely occur in anyenculturative setting. Recognizing that imitative learningis often not simply a matter of modeling and copying sug-gests that teaching and what is learned may not identical;enculturation often demands more of the model than sim-ply performing everyday behaviors. One might argue thatin some contexts, competence in guiding enskillment is it-self a distinct skill, over and above cultural competence.This helps explain why, in capoeira as in other fields likeathletic coaching, the best practitioners are not always thebest teachers—or even the best models to imitate.

Highlighting how instructors facilitate imitation un-derlines the distinctive cooperative, perceptual, and inter-actional mechanisms that assist individuals as they learncultural practices like capoeira or any other skill. Other the-orists have examined the distinctive neurological, psycho-logical, and perceptual traits that make humans so adeptat imitation (Iacoboni 2005; Iacoboni et al. 1999). Closelyexamining the social ontogeny of imitative ability, theactual settings in which imitation occurs (like a capoeiraacademy), demonstrates the inherently social nature of thecapacity: humans imitate well, in part, because we provideeach other good models.

Scaffolding imitation requires diagnostic skills of theinstructor, not only to ascertain what is developmentally“proximal” (in Vygotsky’s sense) but also to intervene ap-propriately and support the actions of the novice who islearning. As Bliss and colleagues describe: “This diagnosismust be coupled with the suggested differential analysis ofdomain knowledge, allowing its matching to pupils’ intu-itive understandings” (1996:60). This analysis, with the bestof capoeira instructors, leads them to construct a scaffold-ing that can leverage a novice’s competency to new levels,reveal counterintuitive new perceptual or practical strate-gies to the learner, or inculcate tendencies that will serve asa platform for later achievement. To scaffold another’s ac-tions, personal competency is not sufficient: an instructorwho scaffolds imitation must have a more subtle ability toperceive the points at which a novice’s skills are inadequateand a flexible grasp of his or her own competency to insertonly a portion of that ability in support of the learner.


Typical scaffolding techniques, however, also shedlight on what is actually learned in imitation; that is, thetactics of scaffolding help us to better see what transpiresin enculturation. In his study of practical skills in theAmazon, Mark Harris argues that many models of practi-cal knowledge—including Mauss’s influential discussion ofbodily techniques—assume “that knowledge is a thing thatcan be inherited and isolated from practice and context”(2005:199). Instead, borrowing from Tim Ingold (2000),Harris argues that skills are a form of coordination be-tween a person’s body, perception, resources, tools, andenvironment. In other words, learning a skill is the devel-opment within the novice of an ability to coordinate thebody with the environment. The example of capoeira ap-prenticeship supports the argument that skills are built upthrough “guided discovery,” as suggested by Roy D’Andrade(1981:186), rather than passed on or transmitted (see alsoIngold 2000:349–361). The metaphor of enculturation astransmission can thus mislead on several levels: Mauss(1973:73), for example, writes of a novice borrowing a se-ries of movements from another person. Rather, instruc-tors assist novices to perform tasks in their own ways and,thus, discover their own, potentially novel, forms of skill.As Sperber and Hirschfeld (2007) point out, variation in en-culturation is the rule rather than the exception, althoughthe interactive nature of imitation makes it clear that thisvariation is not random or purely idiosyncratic.

The metaphor of cultural transmission may also ob-scure the complexity of teaching. Imitative learning is onlyrarely a channel through which a novice acquires exper-tise by simply watching it demonstrated; teaching capoeirathrough imitation typically requires more than simply per-forming expert versions of techniques. Designating this in-tervention “scaffolding” makes it clear that the ability toteach is not coterminous with the content of expertise,even in imitation, but includes such interventions as lim-iting freedom, reorienting models, and helping a noviceto perceive through disaggregation. Seen through this lens,enskillment is shown to be the facilitated discovery of myr-iad ways to be skilled, often demanding as much (or more)observation, analysis, and reflection of the expert instructoras of the novice learner.

GREG DOWNEY Department of Anthropology, Mac-quarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109 Australia

NOTES

Acknowledgments. The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropolog-ical Research generously provided support for this article throughthe Richard Carley Hunt Fellowship (GR 7414). The author wouldlike to thank especially Tom Boellstorff, Alex Dent, Daniel Lende,Trevor Marchand, John Sutton, Paul Mason, Laurie Meer, Paul Bow-man, and three anonymous AA reviewers for their constructivefeedback and suggestions on various earlier drafts of this article.1 For a more complete discussion of capoeira, see Assuncao (2005),Downey (2002, 2005), or Lewis (1992). Brazilian practitioners typi-

cally refer to capoeira as a “game” (jogo), which they “play” (jogar),although they also sometimes say that one “fights” capoeira (lu-tar, also used for boxing and combat sports), “dances” (dancar), oreven, ironically, “loafs” or “idles” (vadiar) in capoeira. Because ofcapoeira’s indeterminate genre status (see Lewis 1992:1–9; Lewis1995), I refer to capoeira as both an “art” and “game.”2 Certainly, there are pedagogical extremes where a model refusesto, or is incapable of, anything other than saying, as Bourdieuputs it, “Look, do what I’m doing” (1990:166). Elsewhere, I exploreone-way imitative learning from television broadcasts of martialarts (Downey 2006).3 Who should be recognized as an authority is subject to con-stant renegotiation and dispute, especially for those on thecusp of the transition from student to teacher. Groups dis-agree even about the titles appropriate for advanced practition-ers, and only the most senior mestres are universally accepted assuch by the community. Typically, a student is first recognizedas an instructor or contra-mestre (“foreman,” or drill leader) byhis or her own teacher; other authorities or community mem-bers may not recognize this status. In one public event I at-tended, a Capoeira Angola mestre, renowned for his acerbic criti-cism of other styles, pointedly ignored a young practitioner whosought recognition as an instructor when the mestre called forall “mestres and teachers” to step forward from the audience. Insome mestre–disciple relationships, a student’s independence—and eventual recognition as an authority—invariably involves aseizure of status and ugly falling out with the student’s mestre,even a switch to a new group or mestre who is more welcoming.

One reviewer pointed out that this constituted a form of powerand discipline, a more knowledgeable other being an authority. Butit is equally true that the community of practice is the final arbiterof who merits recognition as an expert: experts are recognized be-cause they attract dedicated disciples. One renowned mestre withwhom I worked closely, for example, lost a great deal of influencewhen his most proficient students abandoned him because of hisaggression and public criticism of them.4 In contrast, where university-based physical education programsinfluenced pedagogy, leading was often the first stage of instruc-tion, followed by reflecting when students gained basic familiarity.This order also suggests that leading is more intensive and reme-dial, and reflecting is part of the fading trajectory of assistance.In physical education–influenced settings, capoeira instructors of-ten began with the most basic instruction, whereas senior or moretraditional teachers only grudgingly offered remedial modeling,preferring to assume student competency. In mass classes, veteranstudents often stood in the front ranks, nearest the instructor; thatway, less experienced students had both the reflecting model of theinstructor and leading models provided by veterans to the front ofthe room.5 Mirror neurons, first discovered in macaques, create an overlapbetween perception of motion and execution of action, directlymatching observed action to inchoate sensations of acting (seeGallese 2003; Jeannerod 1994). Gallese and colleagues, in a re-view of research on neural mirror properties, conclude that “inour brain, there are neural mechanisms (mirror mechanisms) thatallow us to directly understand the meaning of the actions andemotions of others by internally replicating (‘simulating’) themwithout any explicit reflective mediation. Conceptual reasoningis not necessary for this understanding” (2004:396). The litera-ture on mirror neurons is vast; for overviews, see especially Gallese(2005), Iacoboni (2005), Iacoboni et al. (1999), and Rizzolatti andCraighero (2004). The discovery of mirror neurons lends support toolder theories of “ideomotor,” or sympathetic motion perception,in psychology (James 1890; see also Jeannerod 1994; Prinz 1997)and phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty 1962).6 See Miller (1956) on the concept of information “chunking.” Theterm is applied here to increments of motor activity.7 Capoeira pedagogy also includes forms of instruction other thanscaffolded imitation; for example, to use Claudia Strauss’s (1984)classification, contemporary capoeira instruction makes extensiveuse of “attention-directing” and “rehearsal” strategies. See Bliss andcolleagues (1996:42) on variation in forms of scaffolding.8 This attempt to better understand enculturation is, in part, a re-sponse to Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn’s (1997:246) argument


that enculturation processes should be more carefully studied byanthropologists (see also LeVine 1999).

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