Knowledge and Organizational Practices of Popular Cultures in the Municipality of Caruaru, Pernambuco, Brazil

Abstract

This paper examines the embodied practical knowledge (know-how) that make up the organizational practices of popular cultures in the northeast Brazilian municipality of Caruaru, located in the microzone of Agreste in the state of Pernambuco. We held informal and semi-structured interviews with fifteen masters and artists from Caruaru, linked to eleven different popular culture segments, and performed non-participant observation in workshops, meetings, and forums. Our discussion reflects on the ancestries, affections between family members, masters and apprentices, explicit rules, conflicts, and distinctions constituting the popular know-how that underlies organizational practices. We highlight as the main contributions of this study to Organizational Studies: the production of authentic knowledge about organizing practiced in peripheral contexts; and the questioning of the distinction between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ and instrumental rationality as the basis for organizational practices. Finally, we point out how practice theory initiates a wider discussion about popular cultures in a peripheral context like the Agreste of Pernambuco, which includes the contribution of other perspectives and leads to concrete actions in practice.

practice-based studies (PBS; popular cultures; organizational practices; Agreste of Pernambuco

Resumo

Este artigo investiga os saberes práticos incorporados (saberes-fazeres) que compõem as práticas organizativas das culturas populares na cidade de Caruaru, localizada na região Agreste do estado de Pernambuco, no Nordeste brasileiro. Realizamos entrevistas informais e semiestruturadas com 15 mestres, mestras e artistas de Caruaru, ligados(as) a onze diferentes segmentos das culturas populares, e realizamos observações não participantes em oficinas, reuniões e fóruns. Nossa discussão reflete sobre ancestralidades, afetos entre familiares, mestres, mestras e aprendizes, regras explícitas, conflitos e distinções que constituem os saberes-fazeres populares subjacentes às práticas organizativas. Destacamos como principais contribuições do artigo aos Estudos Organizacionais: a produção de conhecimento autêntico sobre organizações localizadas em contextos periféricos; e o questionamento da distinção entre ‘saber’ e ‘fazer’ e da racionalidade instrumental como a base das práticas organizativas. Finalmente, apontamos como a teoria da prática inicia uma discussão ampla sobre as culturas populares num contexto periférico como o Agreste de Pernambuco, que inclui a contribuição de outras perspectivas e conduz a ações concretas na prática.

estudos baseados na prática (EBP; culturas populares; práticas organizativas; Agreste de Pernambuco

Introduction

Culture is a complex phenomenon, whose definition depends on the theoretical perspective chosen and the type of analysis intended. One possible understanding divides culture into three categories: erudite culture, mass culture, and popular culture. Such is a didactic categorization for the purposes of analysis; in social reality, these categories overlap and constantly appropriate each other, allowing the viability of diverse projects and interests ( Canclini, 2013 ). From a local development perspective, culture is usually seen as comprising three spheres: the citizen, the symbolic, and the economic – all important for developing cultural policies ( Botelho, 2001 ; Rosário, 2014 ).

This paper adopts the practice theory approach (Schatzki, 2001a; 2001b; 2003; 2006; 2011; 2016), focusing on the social agents’ embodied practical knowledge, the ‘know-how’ of popular cultures. As will be discussed later in the theoretical background section, practices are understood as sets of actions with common rules, purposes and projects, and intelligibility, the latter important for understanding embodied practical knowledge. Practices are therefore emerging and collective processes and their understanding is never static, but precarious and limited.

Such perspective is in direct dialogue with the notion of day-to-day management, or ordinary management (Carrieri, Perdigão, & Aguiar, 2014), focused on understanding different organizational practices (organizing modes), which it distinguishes from those based on instrumental rationality, produced and reproduced by collectives inserted in specific historical, social, economic and political contexts as discussed by different authors, including in cultural field (e. g. Figueiredo, 2013 ; Holanda, 2011 ; Lira, 2011 ; Rezende, Oliveira, & Adorno, 2018; Santos, 2016 ; Santos & Helal, 2017 ; Tureta, 2011) .

Given this context, this study examines the embodied practical knowledge that make up the organizational practices of popular cultures in Caruaru (PE). Our initial concern was to discover what popular culture know-how, often apart from managerial practices reinforced by mainstream management, supports organizational practices or organizing modes that have ensured the survival of popular cultures collectives for decades. In other words: How do embedded practical knowledge upholds the organizational practices of popular cultures in Caruaru?

Caruaru, located in the Agreste of Pernambuco, was chosen for presenting several contrasts found and discussed in the literature, especially related to tradition and modernity (e. g. Santos, 2016 ; Santos, Almeida, & Helal, 2016; Santos & Helal, 2017, 20 , 2018 ; Sá, Souza, Sousa, Leal, Silva, & Silva, 2018), common to peripheral contexts long considered ‘backward’ and ‘underdeveloped’ ( Ibarra-Colado, 2006) . Such contexts are rich for research on organizational realities, pointing to different ways of existence that lie on the margins of large centers (e. g. Alcadipani, Khan, Gantman & Nkomo, 2012), as the Agreste.

We believe that by understanding local ways of existence and organization, one can build authentic knowledge ( Ibarra-Colado, 2006 ). Practice-Based Studies benefit this perspective, since they

offer a theoretical and methodological path for stabilizing the facts that build, or in other words, perform the organization. Capturing the dynamism, the change and the web of relationships that are built during the organizational process lead us to the possibility of not only deconstructing, but regrouping organizations and ontologically including other organizational modes of existence in the record and history of this science. (Couto, Honorato & Silva, 2019, p. 263)

We highlight as the main contributions of this paper to Organizational Studies: questioning the distinction between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’, basis of management as a field of knowledge, but which are, in practice, linked (see Figueiredo, 2013 ); recovering the narrative of agents historically erased by management literature and their modes of existence (see Gouvêa, Cabana, & Ishikawa, 2018); abandoning “the economic-rational assumptions that dictate the proxemic relations to think about the formation of human ties that go back to other dimensions, such as trust, affection, friendship, complicity, alterity, care, etc” (Couto, Honorato, & Silva, 2019, p. 260).

Another contribution is the analytical categories used to understand the know-how inherent in organizational practices in the context of the popular cultures studied here, such as the notion of knowledge built from everyday life; ancestry; relations of affection and power; hierarchies and distinctions acquired through embodied know-how; oral and generational transmission; and mystical and transcendental knowledge. We believe that such categories of analysis can contribute both to understand other rationalities present in organizing, not only the instrumental ones, and to discuss other contexts beyond organizing in the field of culture.

Theoretical background

Our study starts from the ontological assumption that social life (or human coexistence) takes place in a specific context (site), formed by a mesh of practices and material arrangements. “The site of social life is not a reification. It is composed of organized manifolds of concrete human activity meshed with arrangements of human beings, artifacts, organisms, and things” ( Schatzki, 2003 , p. 196).

By choosing this approach, we seek an understanding that unveils the different organizing modes created by social agents, which allow them to resist structural impositions and exist in various forms, especially in a periphery context. Despite being a broad approach, with several theorists and perspectives, it has an epistemological consensus that practices are “embodied and materially mediated arrays of human activities organized around shared understandings” (Schatzki, 2001a, p. 13).

More precisely, we understand practice as an open set of actions (physically performed doings and sayings , such as running, watching, writing; or actions descending from these doings and sayings, such as building a house, paying suppliers, etc.) linked by intelligibility, a set of rules (explicit formulations), and a teleoaffective structure (a range of accepted purposes, projects, and tasks, hierarchically ordered to varying degrees, coupled with accepted emotions) (Schatzki, 2001b; 2003, 2011). Physical connections, or material arrangements, are also fundamental for the production and reproduction of practices.

Intelligibility, in turn, refers to understandings that “established, acquired, sustained, and transformed through the actions that compose practices” ( Schatzki, 2003 , p. 183), organize these same practices. It is the state of affairs in which action makes sense to someone (Schatzki, 2001b), and should not be confused with purely instrumental rationality. It is the meaning given to practice ( Pimentel & Nogueira, 2018 ). It is an ongoing and emerging process, promoted by the entanglement between those involved in a practice (which can be linked to Heidegger’s understanding of being-in-the-world), and which gives meaning to “who we are, what we do, and the things we use in our activities and projects” ( Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2014, p , p. 287). In other words, intelligibility is the

‘know-how,’ that is, the skill, the competence to ‘know how’ one can (or should) do (or say) things, but also to ‘know how’ to identify/understand the actions of others, ‘know how’ to instigate such actions in others and/or ‘know how’ to respond to them in certain contexts/space-time situations characteristic of the practice in question. ( Santos & Silveira, 2015 , p. 84)

In a study on the know-how of clay artisans located in the Alto do Moura district in Caruaru, Silva (2011) characterizes them as

articulations between realities and the subjects’ understanding and explanatory capacities . . . it is a continuous reflexive, sensitive and experiential movement of the subjects in dialogue to produce their socio-cultural meanings . . . are produced by the curiosity that emerges from the daily conflicts between the contexts experienced and the corresponding levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This happens in a personal and intersubjective way, but full of socio-cultural issues . . . the nature of knowledge is to add critical readings of the world and to produce socio-transformative engagement. ( Silva, 2011 , p. 116 and 120)

This definition of popular know-how helps us understand the embodied practical knowledge, qualifying it as the result of aesthetic and reflexive movements experienced by subjects in their daily lives, producing engagements. In sum, popular know-how is embodied knowledge that produces and reproduces the practices.

Since practices are also informed by power relations, the versions of the understandings that constitute intelligibility and practices may differ ( Schatzki, 2003 ). Knowledge is a power resource, and its distribution in the dynamics of practice may indicate inequalities between agents in practice ( Figueiredo, 2015 ; Rezende et al., 2018 ). The transmission of knowledge must be understood through the notion of ‘understanding in practice,’ a process in which knowledge is inseparable from doing, the continuity between two actions is a process of engagement with the world ( Figueiredo, 2013 , p. 44), and learning is understood as a social construction ( Brown & Duguid, 1991 ).

Based on the concept of practice, we sought to understand the embedded practical knowledge of organizations whose organizational practices, the “ways of doing things together,” as Gherardi puts it (2015, p. 177), are outside mainstream management, that is, those of popular culture in a periphery context.

Previous studies on such peripheral organizations and their agents, throughout Brazil, give us clues about organizational practices of cultural collectives, stating, for example, that sometimes they can: try to cheat systems imposed by large institutions, resisting the order of things (see Gouvêa & Ichikawa, 2015 ; Martins, 2010 ; Rodrigues & Ichikawa, 2015) ; be based on appropriation and resistance to mainstream management (see Holanda, 2011) ; gain strength or not via public programs, such as “Cultura Viva,” which presuppose different practices (see Lira, 2011) ; disorganize to organize (see Tureta, 2011) ; be defined by relations of affection and power, the latter strongly laden with class, gender, and ethnicity principles (see Figueiredo, 2013, 2015 , 2015 ; Figueiredo & Cavedon, 2015) ; be reproduced in other physical spaces, “dialoguing” with other practices (see Flores-Pereira, Davel, & Cavedon, 2008).

Organizational practices can be hybrid, involving modern and traditional elements at once, and also reproduce the historical social structures of a place (see Santos, 2016 ; Santos & Helal, 2017 ); be represented in different ways (as in different musical styles), maintaining the social structure/order of a city seen as an organization (see Santos et al., 2016) ; constitute the city’s spaces and places of formation, such as ‘forró’ workers and entrepreneurs in Brasília (see Franco, 2017) ; or be the body itself, moving in a particular social space, as in a kitchen where a pie is produced (see Rezende et al., 2018) . Thus, we present below the methodological procedures that underlie our discussion.

Methodological procedures

This is a qualitative and exploratory research ( Merriam, 2009 ; Vieira & Zouain, 2006 ) based on data collected by semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations (Godoi, Bandeira De Melo, & Silva, 2010), and informal interviews with cultural agents, as detailed below.

Between March and April 2017, project members conducted three informal, unrecorded exploratory interviews with cultural agents involved in popular cultures in the city of Caruaru. Our main goal was to identify the key segments of popular cultures in Caruaru and their main masters . From these data, we built an exploratory framework that allowed us to access the masters of popular cultures for conducting semi-structured interviews. Due to its extensive nature, comprising more than 40 cultural agents and their contacts, we did not include the exploratory framework in the present text.

The semi-structured interviews with twelve masters and artists from eleven different segments of popular cultures from Caruaru took place between May and October 2017, being recorded and later transcribed. Table 1 summarizes the interviews conducted, the cultural segment of the agent interviewed, the type of interview (exploratory or semi-structured), and the date of the interview.

Table 1
: Interviews conducted

Interviewee	Cultural segment	Type of interview	Date of the interview
Interviewee 1	Boi Bumbá 1	Exploratory	03/21/2017
Interviewee 2	Cordel literature	Exploratory	03/24/2017
Interviewee 3	Capoeira 1	Exploratory	04/08/2017
Interviewee 4	Afoxé	Semi-structured	05/05/2017
Interviewee 5	Capoeira 2	Semi-structured	07/10/2017
Interviewee 6	Popular Dance	Semi-structured	07/14/2017
Interviewee 7	Pífano (Fife Music)	Semi-structured	08/19/2017
Interviewee 8	Boi Bumbá 2	Semi-structured	08/26/2017
Interviewee 9	Circus	Semi-structured	09/03/2017
Interviewee 10	Cordel literature	Semi-structured	09/03/2017
Interviewee 11	Bacamarte	Semi-structured	09/16/2017
Interviewee 12	Handicraft	Semi-structured	10/21/2017
Interviewee 13	Mazurca	Semi-structured	10/21/2017
Interviewee 14	Cordel literature	Semi-structured	10/28/2017
Interviewee 15	Mamulengo (puppets)	Semi-structured	10/28/2017

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

We interviewed a master or artist for each segment of popular cultures identified in the exploratory framework. After a first contact by telephone or in-person, the interview took place at the interviewee’s residence, workplace, or in the space where the cultural activities are developed. Although each cultural agent gave information on a particular segment of popular cultures, they sometimes act in more than one segment.

Between April and July 2017, we conducted non-participant observations at three meetings of the municipal council of culture and one cultural policy forum for popular cultures. In July 2017, we conducted non-participant observations at two project workshops of one of the investigated Boi Bumbá groups (Boi Bumbá 1), held with financial resources from Funcultura (Pernambuco State Culture Fund). The observations were systematized and generated written reports with the main contents discussed.

Using interpretative analysis, we sought to highlight, in the interviewees’ speeches, elements to help us understand the dynamics of organizational practices and knowledge and their inherent logic. We therefore prioritized the notions intrinsic to every practice – actions, intelligibility, explicit rules, affections, and conflicts – to interpret what the subjects told us and what we observed in the field.

Results and discussion

Through our contacts in the field, we accessed different popular cultures segments in Caruaru to conduct interviews and observations. From the experiences lived in these field, we had contact with some actions constituted by different doings and sayings (Schatzki, 2001b) developed by cultural agents, allowing us to perceive (although in a limited way) some of the practical dynamics that organizes popular cultures in Caruaru in different segments. Table 2 below summarizes these perceived actions.

Table 2
: Popular cultures actions accessed in the research

Segment of the organizing	Accessed actions
Organizing of Clay Handicrafts	Buy raw materials such as clay and firewood; for utilitarian pieces, the lathe is used to mold the clay; for figurative pieces, clay is molded by hand and with the use of sharp objects (to make the doll’s expressions); drying of pieces; burning the pieces in the kiln (time varies according to the size of the pieces); preparing pieces; selling the produced pieces.
Organizing of Bacamarte	Bureaucratic activities, such as keeping the group’s license up to date, securing the license for each performance (which involves traveling to other cities), etc.; manifacturing clothes for performances; preparing the gun (a process that involves loading the gun, place the fuze, etc.); teaching how to use the gun for shooting (takes place in a remote location).
Organizing of Boi Bumbá’s organizing	Creating loas (songs present in expressions of African matrix, such as maracatu (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, n. d.)). manufacturing the characters’ costumes (which involves cutting, sewing, painting, gluing, etc.); manufacturing and maintaining the structures for the characters (which involves painting, gluing, etc.); playing the characters; testing instrument; holding workshops about the “Boi Bumbá” with children and adults; participating in cultural meetings; holding cultural showcases.
Organizing of Capoeira	Manufacturing instruments (Berra boi, Gunga, viola, reco-reco or macumba, tambourine, agogô, caxixi or rattle, etc.); selling instruments; organizing the space for classes (put the photos of the masters on the walls, leave the instruments on display, etc.); preparing classes (classes are divided in two parts: one focused on the songs and the other on the body movements); teaching the class, teaching the litanies, the “chulas”, the “corridos”, and the corporal expressions (like the rabo de arraia, estrela, ataque, esquiva, etc.); participating in Capoeira circles that happen in the city, with other groups of capoeira; participating in lectures and occasional meetings.
Organizing of Cordel literature	Writing rhymes (in the case of poets, for Repentistas improvise their verses); managing the academy’s financial resources, paid by members; organizing the stock of cordel booklets (in the Cordel house and the Cordel museum, which are different organizational spaces); selling cordel booklets; performing in events; holding workshops and courses on cordel literature for different audiences.
Organizing of Popular Dance	Researching and studying popular dance; creating choreography; rehearsing choreography; holding dance shows; teaching popular dance; recording and filing the shows and other group actions.
Organizing of Mazurca	Rehearsing; manufacturing clothes; creating songs; holding cultural showcases.
Organizing of Mamulengo’s	Manufacturing the doll’s hand from shoe soles; manufacturing the doll’s clothing; creating the show’s script; rehearsing the script; decorating the organizational space (painting, fixing tissues on the ceiling, etc.); cleaning the organizational space; maintaining the dolls; holding the show; holding workshops.
Pífano (Fife music organizing)	Building the pífano (fife) (a process that involves purchasing a wood called taboca, sawing the taboca, drilling the holes with a hot iron, sanding it, tuning it, and recording the name of the master in the fife. The process takes about 1 hour for each fife); manufacturing the drums (the process lasts around 1 week); holding band rehearsals; playing in events; teaching (how to build the instruments and play the songs) children and older adults.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

From the table above, we see that the organizing modes in each segment involves many actions. But as Schatzki (2001b; 2003, 2011) states, such actions only constitute practices when associated with other actions and linked by intelligibility, rules, and common teleoaffective structures.

In the organizing of Mamulengo, for example, the actions of making and maintaining each part of the doll can, together, be a practice in itself, since they are crossed by common affectivities, purposes, rules, and logic that the master and the apprentices have, embodied. This practice can be related to others in the same organizing, which are also a set of actions; from this relationship arises practice arrays where actions from different practices intersect ( Schatzki, 2003 ).

In this dynamic, networks can be formed by interconnecting different arrays ( Schatzki, 2003 ). Still using the organizing of Mamulengo as an example, the interconnection between the arrays existing in the different organizing modes of this segment can form a network of Mamulengo practices. These practices, arrays, and networks are what give order to the social dynamics of the specific context (site) discussed in the theoretical background section.

These practices allow each group to organize themselves, thus constituting ‘organizational practices’ or ‘organizing modes’, such as: writing music (like the creation of ‘loas’ in Boi Bumbá; litanies, chulas, and corridos in Capoeira), making instruments (present in the organizing of Boi Bumbá, Capoeira, Fife), rehearsal (as in Popular Dance, Mamulengo, Fife), trade (present in the Cordel literature and Clay handicrafts), cultural showcases (developed by all the segments). Besides these, other practices are also common among segments and essential to maintain the popular cultures throughout the years, frequently appropriating and resisting other practices, such as management, as Holanda (2011) remarks.

Responsible for giving meaning and logic to organizational practices, intelligibility can be expressed in the understandings shared within these groups about who they are and what their practice is, allowing their existence, constituting know-how ( Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2014 ; Pimentel & Nogueira, 2018 ; Santos & Silveira, 2015 ; Schatzki, 2001b; 2003). Our focus will therefore be to reflect on some elements of the popular cultures know-how accessed in the research, and how they relate to some practices observed in the organizing of popular cultures in Caruaru.

Popular cultures allow for the understanding, reproduction, and transformation of reality ( Canclini, 2013 ). In this sense, the popular cultures know-how of the segments under discussion shows a strong relationship with their everyday life, their realities, which may be the work, the history of Caruaru (told in the ‘loas,’ plays, and songs used by cultural organizing), or the dynamics of life. Such know-how is knowledge of practice, and cannot be separated from it ( Brown & Duguid, 1991 ; Figueiredo, 2013) . This connection becomes evident when Interviewee 15 explains that the life wisdom is in everyday life, or when Interviewee 5 remarks that:

[…] capoeira is everything the mouth eats. Then, I complete saying ‘it is all that the hand takes, everything the hand sees, that the hand sees not that the eye sees, everything the ear listens to, capoeira is all that’ […] .Wwe say that Capoeira Angola is your every day, the way, that step that we think is difficult is nothing more than you’re walking, you walk the other way instead you’re walking forward, you’re walking to the side, you go on a swing like that, it’s, you are playing a ball, the ball falls under a car and you are going to bend down to catch, this is a movement of Angolan capoeira . (Interviewee 5, 2017)

In other words, the know-how of capoeira, as with other popular cultures segments, comes in part from the everyday life know-how of its social agents, who participate in different practices and manage to connect these in their daily actions (such as the practice of playing ball and dancing capoeira, mentioned above). It is not by chance, therefore, that masters and artists borrow elements from everyday life in their creations, such as the sound of animals (fife) and the life dynamics of residents from the Alto do Moura neighborhood (clay handcrafts).

This perception highlights that popular cultures know-how is not restricted to a practice; rather, it informs a field, an array, a network of practices. A fife master, for example, has a popular know-how, a practical knowledge, that allows him to be a Boi Bumbá master as well. In fact, popular culture know-how related to the musical segment often serves as a basis for practices that take place in other segments, such as Capoeira, Boi Bumbá, Popular Dance. We believe, therefore, that many of the understandings shared by the different segments support practices common to this ‘field’ of popular cultures in Caruaru, perhaps even in the Agreste of Pernambuco.

During the field research, we observed that popular cultures practices in Caruaru are strongly marked by ancestry, which justifies the actions of social agents and gives meaning to these practices. In capoeira, this ancestry is strongly linked to religions of African matrix, guiding how capoeira is danced, defining who plays the instruments and in what order, as observed by Interviewee 5:

[…] in Capoeira Angola there are eight instruments, we play eight instruments . . . each instrument is a nation. When you play each of them sitting down, then the bank, the drums of Capoeira Angola are the eight kings and queens, of the eight nations, who sit there telling the stories, the same berimbaus […]. They are there in three types [berra boi, Gunga, viola] because, in the candomblé and in umbanda, three drums are played, one bass, one middle and one acute, the agogô is here representing an orixá, a tambourine, I do not know what. Every stuff [instrument] has its African representativeness, but each person embraces the idea they want. (Interviewee 5, 2017)

These ancestral elements are understandings embodied by the social agent when practicing capoeira; they constitute the intelligibility and practice of capoeira, but do not exhaust it. Interestingly, Interviewee 5 points out that those who practice capoeira “embrace the idea they want,” revealing different versions of shared understandings ( Schatzki, 2003 ). Ancestry thus is certainly an important element for constituting intelligibility in the practice of playing instruments in capoeira Angola, but there may be different versions of this ancestry, for example, on which instrument represents which Orixá.

In the Mazurca segment, the ancestral identity concerns an indigenous tradition that, according to Interviewee 13, birthed the cultural manifestation: “The old tradition says that the Mazurca was invented by South American natives to make it rain. . . it must have been that they were raised here too because, in some point in the past, the rain disappeared for a long time. So, the people started with the Mazurca, now it rains every day.” Dancing the mazurka, which involves dancers tapping their feet hard on the ground in a synchronized fashion, is thus explained by references to indigenous peoples and their understandings of the relationship between human beings and the environment.

Sometimes this ancestry can refer to close generations within the same family. This is partly because many of the organizations studied consists of several members of the same family, and because the transmission of popular know-how is essentially generational – from parents and grandparents to children and grandchildren. This ancestral and familiar logic is directly tied to the existence of teleoaffective structures that make up popular cultures practices, and that establishes affectively delimited hierarchies of purposes and projects.

Regarding the transmission of this popular cultures know-how, the generational element goes hand in hand with observation and practice, as Interviewee 5 points out:

[…] every day you learn something new even if it is not the master that is telling you, but you are observing. It is the best way for you to learn Capoeira Angola is to observe. Observe and absorb. Sometimes we’re here doing a class there and I do ‘make such a move!’. Then, I end up doing another, then the guys said, ‘but . . . you said that’, not, notice why sometimes here I speak one thing wanting to speak another, but the movement is what counts, make the movement. At the end of it all, and we are correcting, correcting, correcting, and reaching the final point. (Interviewee 5, 2017)

As the capoeira masters – once apprentices – learned through their own ‘practice,’ by try and error, so too they teach: by making their students practice. In the organizing of Bacamarte this process involves great care and preparation so apprentices can learn how to handle the gun properly, such as taking students to a place away from the city for shooting practices.

Still on this topic, Interviewee 5 notes that he only prepares his class once all students are gathered for the start of the lesson:

In Capoeira Angola […] I already gave up preparing class. Guys come in there, I start looking at the faces of the people and I say, ‘let’s do it’ […] . we arrive, it is expressing itself there, each one stretching in their way, and they without understanding anything, I’m arranging the instruments, organizing the space and I’m observing, arranging things there in the first five minutes that the guys arrive, setting the class. I think popular culture, in general, is this, this freedom of expression, it cannot be a methodological thing […] because I can prepare a lesson, an example, we will work the knee, but my brother arrives here and has a chipped knee, I have to wait to arrive, let’s build together class, I think the collective in capoeira and popular culture is important because of this because I learn every day. (Interviewee 5, 2017)

These observations on the transmission of popular cultures know-how underline the impossibility of separating, in the process of transmission, embodied practical knowledge from practice itself ( Brown & Duguid, 1991 ; Gherardi, 2015 ; Figueiredo, 2013 ; Figueiredo & Cavedon, 2015) . What guides the practices, therefore, is not instrumental rationality (Schatzki, 2001b). In the teaching-learning practice described by Interviewee 5 above, a rational-instrumental perspective would prescribe an ideal method of lesson preparation method that would possibly distance knowledge from practice. To what extent are methods considered ‘technical-rational’ effective in teaching-learning practices, considering that the practical space where knowledge takes place is sometimes not instrumental-rational? Answering this question is outside the scope of this study, but it is worth pointing it out. Let us thus continue with the discussion.

For Schatzki (2001b), the shared understandings that constitute intelligibility can comprise explicit rules and teleoaffective structures. Once we have examined the relation between understandings and affections above, we discuss here the relation between popular cultures know-how and rules in Capoeira and in Cordel literature. In Capoeira Angola, as Interviewee 5 explains, the ladainha (litany) and the chula are the songs that prepare the game: those who participate in the practice of Capoeira must remain standing while the story is told through the ladainha, answering it by singing the chulas. Only when the corrido begins can the game begin. This is an explicit rule that makes up the know-how of the game.

Cordel literature, in turn, has a ‘formula’ – the rhyme, the metric, and the theme – that are basic conditions for those who participate in the practice of cordel, as Interviewee 14 notes:

[…] it has a formula like math, if you study and learn, you might become a poet, that is it, to have the gift of putting words, to play with words is another story, it is something that or training, or something that brings inspiration or gift, but to people create poetry, they must be aware it has rules, has rhyme, so it is the thing so very primary. (Interviewee 14, 2017)

The issue of ‘gift’ brings up the fact that sometimes masters refer to transcendental elements to explain why they create. In Capoeira Angola, this transcendental element is the trance:

[…] the people who do Capoeira Angola have something called capoeirando trance, which is when you go into trance through Capoeira Angola, through the radiation, the gameplay, you go into trance […] . I believe in the incarnation, you are there and something incarnates in you, incarnates master Pastinha, to embody other masters guiding you […] capoeirando trance is a wave that you do things without thinking, you make a move you never learned, you never had that lesson, but you did, you got along without even knowing how. (Interviewee 5, 2017 )

In the Boi Bumbá, the transcendental element is in the creation of ‘loas,’ considered as something that happens through dreams. For Cordel literature, this element appears in the ‘feeling’ that is put into the poetry, in the poet’s ‘gift’: “I think the poetry, the essence of poetry is in the feeling you take from the tip of a pencil and puts it here, it’s the feeling. . .” (Interviewee 14, 2017). In the fife, the transcendental element is in the gift of creating and playing such instruments, as Interviewee 7 puts it: “When I created it, it was a gift from God, I didn’t believe in any other job, only that making the fife would work.”

These excerpts point to something that these masters cannot explain rationally, but still do with their bodies (in the case of the ‘capoeirando trance’, the ‘gift’ and the ‘feeling’ that leads to making the instrument). Based on the practice approach, these transcendental elements refer precisely to the embodied practical knowledge that has been passed on to these masters, even if unconsciously, throughout their experiences. It is a knowledge that only exists in bodies, that manifests as a set of coordinates that allow them to act – a version of sedimentary intelligibility in the body.

Another reflection unveiled by the field research concerns the hierarchies and distinctions instituted in the organizing of popular cultures observed. According to Interviewee 5, Capoeira has a clear hierarchy in the organizing of the collective: the new student is called a beginner, becoming, after the appropriate years of training, a ‘trainel’, a teacher, a contra-mestre, and finally a master (who presides over the group). Above the master is the creator of Capoeira Angola, master Pastinha (deceased).

To some extent, Cordel literature also has a hierarchy since, according to Interviewee 14, at the “top” of Cordel literature is the Repentista (improviser), who develops improvised verses according to a proposed theme. Poetry readers, who memorize the verses, and Cordelistas (those who write verses) recognize the superiority of the Repentista. We believe that these hierarchies are established, in part, by the unequal distribution of practical knowledge among those involved in the cultural practice ( Figueiredo, 2015 ; Rezende et al., 2018 ). They are different versions of a practice ( Schatzki, 2003 ), competing with each other while constituting it.

Such aspect becomes clear in the distinction between the types of Capoeira (Angola, Regional, and Contemporary). In each one, the bodies perform in different ways during the game (including clothing, props, and surroundings), while the game itself constitutes the bodies ( Souza et al., 2013 ), mobilizing specific teleoaffective structures, rules, and understandings. Popular and contemporary dance also present clear differences: in the former, the dancers dance for their peers; in the latter, for the audience watching (Interviewee 6). These inequalities generate conflicts in the network of practices, highlighting its heterogeneity.

We also observed moments of reinvention of traditional know-how, especially in contemporary popular dance, which uses traditional popular dance steps for its elaboration, reworking the body’s performances. As some groups operate these reworkings and others do not, other conflicts may arise.

An immediate conflict that popular cultures experience results from their relationship with erudite and mass cultures. They are distinct cultural practices whose understandings may or may not dialogue with understandings of market practices, for example, determining who receives greater visibility, as Interviewee 6 points out: “There is much more space, more visibility [for classical dance] than for popular dance, and when there is popular dance, it is just popular dance, you know?”

Interestingly, certain more traditional practices are “opening up” (or “being pushed to open up”) to actions that end up constituting other practices, for example the organizing of Mazurca, whose participation in a federal program meant standardizing clothes and buying equipment for performances. This type of action requires new understandings to be elaborated, for they are understandings derived from other practices (in this case, more technical ones). As Interviewee 13 notes, Mazurca masters:

already had [other groups of Mazurca], but not as much organized as this. It was like this, the São João festival took place in June and I invited people such as my father used to do like that, ‘hey! Tonight! There will have Mazurca in the house of a mate’. So, it used to be made a rustic hut of coconut straw, the one that is classically made in the São João festival, there everyone would come in and stay dancing and playing the night all, and this was the way we did. Now, we are going to do a well-organized and standardized business, we intend to buy clothes and fabrics, the seamstress is going to make the clothes for everyone. So, all women a pattern of the dress, and men’s shirts are going to be the same fabric that made the women’s clothing, you know! It is a very well-organized business. So now, I think that’s how the organization is because we’re going to introduce ourselves, as we were invited to the winter festival [an important annual festival in Garanhus, another city in Agreste of Pernambuco [...] (Interviewee 13, 2017)

Another example is the Bacamarte segment. Interviewee 11 reported the current need to implement bureaucratic processes in the organizing, such as the license to perform with the gun and to function as a battalion (name given to all Bacamarte groups, followed by a unique number), which requires several actions he is unfamiliar with: generate the payment form (GRU) and pay it, report to the headquarters, fill out forms with data about the group and the firearm (even though many masters are illiterate), issue a portfolio, among others.

The inclusion of new understandings or logics into a practice generates frustrations among these cultural agents, since these have not been elaborated by the agents throughout their lives, and are not something that is quickly learned. Practical knowledge is embodied and passed on over a long period of its insertion into practice. Similarly, pricing, preparing projects, and even organizing cultural agents as legal entities can frustrate the practice agendas of some segments, since they have not been taught how to perform such actions. They have not developed this know-how or practical meaning.

In other cases, however, some “non-genuine” understandings were better absorbed in the organizing of popular cultures , such as the mercantile logic. One of the members of Boi Bumbá 1 drew attention to this aspect:

During this quick conversation with the costume customization facilitator, one thing struck me: at some point, we started talking about blouses of Boi Bumbá 1, and they could be customized. The facilitator told the girls that when there was movement at the Railway Station [local where they usually perform their shows], or when there were tourists, the girls could either customize the blouses or call the visitors to customize their blouses with them. One of the younger girls that were embroidering said she could do this if the visitor paid 50 reais (Field note, 07/14/2017).

Note that this Boi Bumbá agent is younger and may have incorporated shared understandings that were reworked over time, being distinct from those that his grandfather and grandmother (Masters of the Boi Bumbá, already deceased) held. Perhaps these new understandings, incorporated by the younger generation are creating new intelligibility and new practices of popular cultures in the Agreste of Pernambuco, considering that practices and intelligibility are not static and are constantly reinventing themselves.

Considerations

The reflections presented here reveal: the strong presence of everyday elements in the creation of the interviewed masters and artists, showing that popular cultures know-how is constituted, in part, by everyday knowledge; that the understandings shared by the different segments support common practices to the ‘field’ of popular cultures in Caruaru, perhaps even in Agreste of Pernambuco; that ancestry is an intelligible element for many practices, such as the organizing of the capoeira performance, for example; the existence of divergent versions of a same practical knowledge; the strong presence of affections in the composition and reproduction of intelligibility and, consequently, of organizational practices.

It also highlighted: that the know-how of popular cultures is composed by the oral, generational transmission of understandings, anchored in practice and not primarily supported by instrumental rationality; the relationship between shared understandings and explicit rules, as in the “formula” of Cordel Literature; the understanding of embodied knowledge as something transcendental by the participants; the existence of hierarchies and conflicts instituted in the practices due to the different versions of the same practice and the unequal distribution of practical knowledge; and the reworking of this knowledge over time, marking bodies and their performances.

The analytical categories used to interpret the know-how inherent in organizational practices contribute to a notion of “organizing” through knowledge based on the everyday of ordinary people. It allows us a perspective that focuses on what people do on their everyday lives, on the practical organization, non-distant and exempt from political, hierarchical, and power distinctions. Such categories of analysis may contribute to research in contexts other than organizations within culture, which seek to be understood from the perspectives of practice.

Our study thus contributes to the field of organizational studies by questioning the distinction between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing,’ as well as the understanding that purely instrumental and utilitarian rationality guides the actions of social agents. Such perspective, although widely disseminated in management studies, help us little to explain how things happen in ‘practice.’ This raises some important questions to conduct future research that seeks to go beyond simply identifying practices in the organizing, namely: what are the inherent know-how of practices in management organizing in a given context? How does this know-how correlate with others? Can they create conflict between practices and, consequently, among its agents? How can we, as organizational researchers, learn from the traditional know-how present in traditional organizing, moving away from the classical rational-instrumental pattern of management studies?

This article is part of a larger work conducted by a team of researchers between the years 2016, 2017 and 2018. In the text, we sought to gather some reflections that led us to concrete actions in practices different from popular cultures, discussed in another text. We raised reflections, assumptions, and questions without the intention to conclude the discussion, but rather to peruse the studied phenomenon – an investigation that can and should dialogue with others. For this reason, we chose to remove the “final” from the title of this section. The discussion, we understand, has just begun.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the comments made by the anonymous reviewers of ENEO 2019 and O&S Magazine who contributed to the improvement of the initial draft of this paper. They also thank the institutional support of the Centro Acadêmico do Agreste by Universidade Federal de Pernambuco and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.

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Edited by

Associate Editor: Claudia Antonello

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  25 Oct 2021
• Date of issue
  Jul-Sep 2021

History

• Received
  09 July 2019
• Accepted
  02 July 2020