In Search of Legitimacy

Lauren Miller Griffith, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Texas Tech University. She studies performance and tourism in Latin America and the U.S. Specifically, she focuses on the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira and how non-Brazilian practitioners use travel to Brazil to increase their legitimacy within this genre. Her work on capoeira has been published in Annals of Tourism Research, the Journal of Sport and Tourism, and Theatre Annual and she is the author of Apprenticeship Pilgrimage (with Jonathan S. Marion), was published in January of 2018 (Lexington Books). Dr. Griffith’s newest work is on the relationship between globalized art forms and locally focused civic engagement.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1. A Brief History of CapoeiraChapter 2. The Challenges of Teaching and Learning Capoeira AbroadChapter 3.  Travel as a Way to Overcome DoubtsChapter 4.  Preparing for the PilgrimageChapter 5.  A World in which the Black Brazilian Man Is KingChapter 6.  How the Rest of Us Get Our Foot in the DoorChapter 7. Does Form Really Matter?Chapter 8.  Will I Ever Be Good Enough?Chapter 9. Conclusion and Future DirectionsGlossaryBibliographyIndex

“…an important study of the confluence of travel and pilgrimage, race/class/gender issues, embodiment and physical (and emotional) expertise, and the defense of tradition and of ‘lineage’-specific knowledge and identity in the context of globalization and an openness to (tradition-defined) innovation.” · Anthropology Review Database“Lauren Miller Griffith became a cultural pilgrim and put her own body on the line to produce this distinctive, valuable, and very readable contribution to the anthropological research on capoeira. She provides important insights into broad phenomena like cultural pilgrimage, culture tourism, and globalization.” · Greg Downey, Macquarie University