The Brazilian martial-art dance capoeira. Using qualitative techniques in the qualitative research of the capoeristas group.

Abstract

Capoeira is a Brazilian martial-art dance. Capoeira combines elements of dance, folklore, martial arts, sport, ritual and training for unarmed combat. Many Brazilians regard it as a vital Afro-Brazilian contribution to their native culture. The genesis of this martial dance was said to have been a style that sprang up in the huts of Brazilian slaves. According to legend, capoeira back then was a series of blows requiring great physical strength. It constituted a rural style that enabled one to avoid the aggression of slave masters and slave hunters. From the outset, my research conception was based on the assumption that the study I was launching was of a pioneering nature. The objective of this study was to create a full picture of capoeira in Poland . My choice of a research method was influenced by the awareness that I was dealing with a ‘niche’ community, a totally new phenomenon that has yet to entrench itself in Polands’ popculture landscape. Anna Wyka believes that: When planning to study communities that are little known in a given society and radically depart from the ordinary, the researcher should predispose himself to a largely exploitative type of study and map out the research process accordingly. Such had to be the nature of qualitative research on alternative, pattern-setting communities, a socio-cultural phenomenon that emerged in the latter half of the 1970s as a total novelty. (…) Research into communities of that type appears necessary and cognitively attractive. The interpretive (qualitative, humanistic) paradigm, which runs counter to the normative (quantitative, positivistic) type, takes the humanistic coefficient into account. Introduced by Florian Znaniecki, that term refers to the significance of ascribing to people the phenomena they have personally experienced. The researcher therefore strives to adopt their point of view.