Ring of Liberation: Deceptive Discourse in Brazilian Capoeira

J. Lowell Lewis's Ring of Liberation, Deceptive Discourse in Brazilian Capoeira, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1992, is an anthropological study of capoeira built on Lewis's own fieldwork training within the Brazilian martial art and game, examining how its combination of music, dance, ritual and combat produces a deliberately ambiguous, deceptive style of communication between players. Its strength is participant fieldwork of the demanding kind capoeira requires, Lewis trained inside the practice rather than only observing it, giving the analysis of its bodily and performative logic a grounding an outside observer's account would lack. Its limit is that it is one anthropologist's theoretical reading of capoeira through a specific period and set of teachers in the early 1990s, and capoeira's own practice, history and regional schools have continued to develop and be debated since, so a claim about capoeira's present day diversity or its African versus Brazilian origins needs sources engaging that ongoing scholarly discussion directly.