Where the Boys are? Familiarity, Reflexivity and Fieldwork Among Discipulos

Abstract

Ethnographic fieldwork on capoeira teaching is used to throw light on the author's biography, the moral panic about 'failing boys' and the nature of ethnography itself. The author's reflections on selected episodes from her childhood, adolescence and early career, when her passions were engaged with groups of young males, are juxtaposed with episodes from her fieldwork, to expose her own limitations as a researcher.  Then the active engagement of males in capoeira is explored, and offered as an alternative site in which solutions to the problems of male underachievement can be investigated.