FROM NEAR AND WITHIN THE RING - BOXING, MOBILITY AND THE CHALLENGES OF AN ETHNOGRAPHY WHERE "IT IS THE MOVEMENT THAT COUNTS"

Abstract

This article is based on an ethnography at two boxing academies in the city of São Paulo, located in different territories - Baixada do Glicério and Tatuapé. To do this, I put my own body on the field as a research tool through the learning of pugilism. I follow and am interested in the trajectories and life histories of my interlocutors, mostly black men in different mobility, citizenship and vulnerability conditions, among them Angolans Leon and Jonas. I want to demonstrate how, between the "dangerous" and "endangered" categories, between victimization and meritocratic morality, they present multiple ways of city-making (Agier, 2015) through their territory bodies. In addition, it is through boxing classes that a series of autobiographical memoirs and stories are exposed by my training buddies, as well as reflections on race, violence, and inequality. In this way, I try to present my own research trajectory, highlighting some procedures for the study of international migrations anchored in the south-south axis, more specifically the mobility relations between Brazil and Angola. The boxing world involves a tangled and complex political-social fabric, juxtaposing conflicting and contradictory masculinities, meanings about racism and violence, discipline and sacrifice, urban spaces and symbolic frontiers, resulting in singular and meaningful historical dynamics