Intimate Multiculturalism: Transnationalism and Belonging amongst Capoeiristas in Australia

Abstract

Capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian dance-cum-martial art, has acquired a worldwide popularity. In this paper, we explore the relationships established by Australian students and Brazilian masters of Capoeira. We draw on and extend Wise and Velayutham's notion of everyday multiculturalism. This concept points to the need to research informal vernacular intercultural negotiations that happen at an everyday level. However, we wish to drill down beneath the surface of everyday public cultural negotiations to recognise the transactions that take place in relatively intimate settings. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from 2006 to 2010 in Australia, we coin the concept of intimate multiculturalism to argue that it is in very close intercultural encounters that people reinvent themselves, question their belonging to one national imagined community and embody other forms of being. We also show that practices brought by migrants are not only intercultural (such as people from different cultural backgrounds practicing Capoeira) but also transnational. In this sense, this responds to the recent call for scholars to switch the focus from diaspora studies to everyday practices of intercultural encounters and to how we live with difference in intimate ordinary situations.