Apprenticeship pilgrims and the acquisition of legitimacy

This research explores strategies used by non-Brazilian capoeiristas (practitioners of an Afro-Brazilian martial art) to claim legitimacy on the home turf of Brazilian capoeiristas. These individuals travel to Brazil because of their extreme commitment to the art and because travel is one way they can combat charges of illegitimacy stemming from their foreign status. Apprenticeship pilgrimage is the practice of traveling to the source to become an apprentice to a local master. Apprenticeship pilgrimage is seen in a variety of arts and sports that are now consumable on the global market. In the case of non-Brazilian capoeiristas who rely upon local practitioners to validate their legitimacy, apprenticeship pilgrimage often involves the translation of cultural capital into opportunities for apprenticeship.


Introduction
Sitting in the back of the classroom, the young anthropologist anxiously listens to a smattering of conversations in Portuguese. She stretches to warm her muscles while waiting for the capoeira class to begin; she has been training in this martial art for more than three years but still feels like a novice. The Brazilian students and teachers at this academy have been very nice, but she continues to feel like an outsider. Then, a vivacious woman, not much older than herself, bursts into the room. She's speaking fluent Portuguese but with a pronounced American sotaque (accent). The local students all know her and welcome her back, hugging her and making conversation as she confidently takes her place at the front of the class. Many tourists come to take classes at this academy, but she is different somehow. She has claimed a place of legitimacy where so many foreign capoeiristas are denigrated as "tourists". Her dedication is quasi-religious. She is a pilgrim; she is whom the anthropologist had come to study.
Across the USA, Europe, and beyond, young adults are flocking to this Afro-Brazilian martial art, becoming dedicated practitioners to an art outside of their own cultural history. One of the distinctive features of this community is the participants' strong desire to visit Brazil and practice the art in its place of origin. The individuals who complete such journeys are sports tourists insofar as they travel to another place for the purpose of engaging in sport. This general definition, however, fails to do justice to the quasi-religious fervor they bring to their travels. This research responds to Weed's (2005, p. 233) assertion that "sports tourism is a synergistic phenomenon that is more than the simple combination of sport and tourism". The theoretical lens used here shows that, at least for this subset of sports tourists, such a journey must have a transformative effect beyond just participating in sport or seeing sights.
The "dance, fight, game" known as capoeira has been a global phenomenon since its genesis when diverse groups of African slaves who labored, fought, and celebrated side-by-side on the Brazilian shores combined their ancestral traditions into a new martial form. Driven underground during the early to mid-1900s by government persecution, capoeira nonetheless became an icon of Brazilian national identity. Capoeira combines improvisational sparring with dancelike movements in the center of a circle comprising other participants who wait for their turn in the center of the roda (performance circle). An orchestra comprising percussive instruments controls the pace of the game. Before entering the circle, the two opponents kneel in front of the orchestra, often make magical or religious gestures, and then cartwheel into the center to begin playing. The musicians and other players sing songs related to the history of slavery, the great players of capoeira, and the city of Salvador, which is considered the cradle of capoeira.
Beginning in the 1970s, entrepreneurial Brazilians began traveling abroad to perform and teach capoeira. It struck a chord with thousands of non-Brazilians who now call themselves capoeiristas. Capoeira schools can be found throughout North America, Europe, parts of Asia, and even Africa, where the art is experiencing a reverse migration. In addition to these face-toface communities, the Internet has also facilitated the rise of a virtual community. Multilingual websites, chat rooms, Listservs, books, and magazines, in addition to mobile networks of teachers and students, create an imagined community of a scale far beyond Benedict Anderson's (1983) original conception. Yet, even with this high degree of interconnection, some non-Brazilian practitioners search for more.
With so much of the development of capoeira now taking place outside of Brazil, and many instructors declaring themselves mestres (masters) without official recognition from their own teachers, many Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike question the "authenticity" of capoeira abroad. Whether accurate or not, there is a pervasive belief that the capoeira practiced abroad is an attenuated version of its Brazilian form. When training capoeira in the USA, students are often told that foreigners must train hard in preparation of their visit to Bahia because Brazilian players will test them and try to humiliate them, possibly even injuring them. Janelle Joseph stresses the latent violence in Brazilian capoeira and compares this to the ludic form of capoeira practiced among her research population in Canada. The capoeiristas in Joseph's study trained vigilantly to prepare for potential encounters with Brazilians. She says, "Canadian players are reminded that when they encounter 'real' Brazilian capoeira, they must be prepared for a fight" (Joseph, 2006, p. 62). This is a vivid contrast to the warm welcome received by the American in the opening vignette.
Like her, many non-Brazilian capoeiristas travel to Salvador to augment their legitimacy within the social field. Weed and Bull note that for some sports tourists, especially those involved in outdoor, adventure, and alternative sports, some places carry such prestige within a subculture that engaging in one's chosen activity at that location becomes a "defining moment" in the individual's career (2004, p. 59). Salvador da Bahia, Brazil is certainly one of those locations for capoeiristas. Indeed, for some members of this community, visiting Salvador (also referred to as Bahia) is the central preoccupation of their identity-building project (Hetherington, 1996, p. 33). One American pilgrim who had made three trips to Brazil before deciding to permanently relocate and marry a local woman said that it was necessary for him to have a holistic view of the local culture. He said visiting Bahia is valuable for moving to the next level within capoeira because "it is such an odd blend of things, and you have to see the place that would create this". He also felt it was important to visit the places mentioned in some of the capoeira songs; it is hard to appreciate these songs without having visited those places. Such individuals exhibit a zeal for visiting Salvador akin to that of religious pilgrims, though their objective is apprenticeship rather than worship.

Apprenticeship pilgrimage
Victor Turner describes pilgrimages as journeys undertaken with a sense of obligation and for the purpose of receiving blessings (Turner, 1973). They are similar to other rites of passage in that they involve separation from one's regular social environment, a period of liminality in which one is betwixt and between two statuses, and finally a period of reincorporation (Turner, 1973). It is during this state of liminality that pilgrims are most likely to experience the inward and outward transformations associated with pilgrimage. Although Turner was writing about traditional, religious pilgrimages, these principles apply to apprenticeship pilgrimages as well.
Apprenticeship pilgrimage is defined here as the practice of traveling to the source of an art or sport to become an apprentice to a local master. The primary goal of this pilgrimage is to become more adept at one's chosen activity. Like their religious counterparts, apprenticeship pilgrims too feel obligated to visit the central sites of production for their sport or art and are motivated by obtaining blessings, albeit of a different sort from what Turner envisioned. The desire of the apprenticeship pilgrim is to have his or her practice legitimized by a noted authority within the field.
Over time, the term pilgrimage has assumed a more encompassing meaning that makes room for secular as well as sacred motivations (Gammon, 2004) and some tourist sites are visited with the same compulsion as traditional religious pilgrimage sites (Raj & Morpeth, 2007, p. 7). Though apprenticeship pilgrimage can be seen in a number of genres, the present study uses it to build a conceptual bridge between secular pilgrimage and sports tourism, which Weed and Bull (2004, p. 37) define as "a social, economic, and cultural phenomenon arising from the unique interaction of activity, people, and place". Prior work linking sport tourism and secular tourism has typically been restricted to the study of tourists visiting special sport-oriented sites (Gammon, 2004, p. 30). This paper introduces a new avenue of study to the field by considering how pilgrimages provide opportunities to augment one's legitimacy in an art or sport through apprenticeship. While the argument here is focused specifically on sports tourism, this theoretical framework could also be used to help us develop a more critical understanding of other forms of special interest tourism.
In developing his notion of sport tourism as secular pilgrimage, Gammon writes that "for those that have a deep interest in a particular sport, there are a number of sights and sites which are considered as important to visit as the most holy of shrines" (2004, p. 34). Apprenticeship pilgrims may want to visit these as part of their journeys. For example, the capoeira fort that is home to several well-known mestre's academies, the large tourist market in the lower city, one particular music instrument shop, and what is popularly known as the 'slave church' are not to be missed during a pilgrim's trip to Bahia. However, apprenticeship pilgrims are also looking for something more than basking in the glory of quasi-sacred sites. The individuals in this study sought the physical, social, and spiritual transformation that comes from training under the tutelage of a Brazilian mestre.
Stebbins defines serious leisure "as the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity that is sufficiently substantial and interesting for the participant to find a career there in the acquisition and expression of its special skills and knowledge" (1992, p. 3). While both Gammon's (2004) and my own notions of sport-related secular pilgrimage might be subsumed under Stebbins's notion of serious leisure, what I term apprenticeship pilgrimage is fundamentally different from both of these because it focuses on the changes that happen to the individual and his or her social standing within a specific field because of what he or she has learned and the relationships he or she has built at the pilgrimage site rather than the inherent satisfaction one feels at simply reaching a quasi-sacred sports site.
Apprenticeship pilgrimage combines secular pilgrimage to an important sport-related site (Gammon, 2004) with the opportunity to train with recognized legends such as is seen in sports fantasy camps (Gammon, 2002;Standeven & DeKnop, 1999). The difference is that apprenticeship pilgrims' success depends upon more than the financial ability to travel to a site and pay a high enrollment fee. Though there are certainly costs associated with traveling to the origin of one's genre and taking classes, other factors determine how the local population will receive the pilgrim. By presenting a model for how apprenticeship pilgrimage functions, this article thus heeds various scholars' calls for more theoretical explorations of sports tourism (Gibson, 2002;Hinch & Higham, 2005, p. 254;Stebbins, 1992, p. 135;Weed & Bull, 2004). Furthermore, Weed (2005) argues that approaching subjects from a theoretical position grounded in the researcher's discipline, as is done here, can help address the "why" of sports tourism in addition to descriptive accounts of the unique phenomena.
The remainder of this paper examines the strategies used by apprenticeship pilgrims to establish legitimacy and authority within a social field outside of their own cultural milieu and offers a theoretical model to explain how individuals achieve legitimacy within a social field, using American capoeiristas in Brazil as an illustrative case study. This case provides the foundation of a model showing how individuals involved in a globalized artistic genre may try to claim legitimacy on the host's turf while traveling. The model has a great deal of flexibility in how it is realized in practice. For example, while at least one organization requires that non-Brazilians seeking authorization as a teacher receive their certificate in Bahia, thus guaranteeing that all teachers have some connection with Brazil, other pilgrims will not have such a tidy end to their quest. For some, such as the student being described in the opening vignette, their quest reaches fulfillment when they achieve a personal goal such as being entrusted with teaching duties for a single training session. Others' goals are more nebulous, which is why rather than focusing on the final outcome of one's training, I argue that apprenticeship pilgrims' quest for legitimacy can best be understood by looking at strategic moves within an "economy of authenticity" based on the conception of Weber and Heydebrand (1994) authoritative leadership (tradition, charisma, and formal-legal rationality) with the addition of a category labeled existential authenticity.
The term pilgrim is used throughout the paper because of the connotations carried by the word "tourist". The term "tourist" has been largely devalued and is now considered by many to be something vulgar (Singh, 2004, p. 3;Standeven & DeKnop, 1999, p. 55). This is true within the population described here. An American pilgrim in this study went so far as to call tourism a form of prostitution because tourists were able to "get the goods", as she phrased it, without putting in the hard work necessary to become part of the community. Time and again, the individuals within this study associated tourists and tourism with crass consumerism. Mestre Cobra Mansa, a well-respected leader in the capoeira community said: I tell everybody if you come here and act as a tourist, people are going to treat you as a tourist. If you come here and act as people from here, people are going to treat you as people from here … When you come to [the academy], for example, people who are local probably come and clean up the space, but you think that's not good for you to do and you don't do it. You sit down there like, you know, "I paid, why am I going to clean up the space?" Well people are going to notice, people are going to think you're somebody who's not from there. This stood in contrast as to how they viewed themselves, as individuals who had worked hard to be accepted by the local capoeira community by being friendly, open, and willing to help with even the most unpleasant chores needed to keep an academy running.
The term tourist was also used to indicate that someone had dabbled in capoeira, but was not serious enough to have really learned how to play. A pilgrim from England said that local capoeiristas know from her way of moving and her dedication that she is "not just a tourist". Pilgrims also believed that tourists were easily duped. An Australian pilgrim denied the authenticity of the capoeira "shows" that are highly visible in the famous plaza known as the Terriero de Jesus or at the Mercado Modelo where tourists go to buy souvenirs. Another pilgrim, from France, said inauthentic capoeira is that which leaves tourists boca aberta (open mouthed). He further explained that tourists fall for "sensationalized capoeira" that is designed "for exportation".

Methods
Field research for this paper was conducted in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil between July and December of 2008. Data collection consisted of participant observation, structured interviews, and document analysis. The participant observation took place at a local capoeira academy in Salvador, which is the flagship academy within a global network of satellite groups. Though a formal announcement regarding this study was never made to the students at the academy, the researcher was open about her study and was frequently asked about the progress of her research. The academy was founded by three Brazilian mestres, though one in particular is the symbolic figurehead of the entire organization. This individual splits his time between Brazil and the USA, but also spends a good portion of the year traveling internationally to offer workshops. As a scholar himself, he was sympathetic to this research. One of the other mestres retains primary control for the Brazilian academy where the researcher trained, and the other runs a group in a medium-sized city in the American northwest. The primary teacher in Salvador also encouraged this research because he thought a practitioner's perspective would counteract some of the negative connotations capoeira had acquired over time. Because there are so many international satellite groups associated with this organization, the flagship academy in Salvador is a popular destination for apprenticeship pilgrims. During the participant observation phase of this research, individuals from at least 25 different countries participated in classes and rodas at this academy.
Participant observation consisted of full participation in at least six hours' worth of capoeira classes per week as well as participation in a weekly roda (game) at the Brazilian academy. As a 26 year-old white woman from the USA, the researcher was similar in many ways to the pilgrims she was studying. Having studied capoeira herself for approximately four years prior to this fieldwork, the researcher was at least moderately prepared to engage in the physical aspects of the study; however, her skill level was lower than the average level of most pilgrims. The researcher also interacted with pilgrims and local capoeiristas in more informal, social outings. These outings often consisted of attending rodas at other academies within the city. More than three years of training in the US prepared the researcher to undertake this degree of physical engagement with the martial art.
Interviews were conducted with 10 local capoeiristas and 14 apprenticeship pilgrims. Of these 24 subjects, their experience in capoeira ranged from 9 months to almost 34 years. Seven individuals selfidentified as black, seven self-identified as white, four indicated that their heritage was either pardo or mestizo (both terms suggest mixed ethnicity), and the remaining six participants cited other ethnicities or gave no answer. Of these, only one of the local capoeiristas was female, though seven of the pilgrims were female. While not being the central focus of this study, gender does appear to play an important role in claiming legitimacy. For example, one skilled American capoeirista said that locals respect her abilities once they have seen her play, but up until that point she feels that people discount her as a serious capoeirista because she is a woman. The role of gender in claiming legitimacy should feature prominently in future studies of apprenticeship pilgrimage as it should in more general studies of tourism (Uriely, 2005, p. 211). According to Gibson (1998), active sports tourists who engage in their activity while traveling tend to be affluent, college-educated individuals (see also Standeven & DeKnop, 1999, pp. 73-74). Gibson (1998) also found that men are more likely to be active sports tourists than are women and that many sports, such as golf, continue to be characterized by sharp racial divisions). The pilgrims in this study are similar to other sports tourists in that they are relatively young, financially secure, and well educated. They differ from these norms, however, by being characterized by more racial diversity and more gender equality despite the fact that capoeira is traditionally associated with poor black males.
Each interview lasted, on average, one hour and followed a structured format that addressed the capoeirista's demographic factors, history within the martial art, and attitudes toward foreign capoeiristas' participation in the local capoeira community. Following this section of the interview, participants were asked to sort 11 different characteristics of the pilgrims such as race, nationality, ability to speak Portuguese, skill, etc., that were written on index cards into five piles according to their level of importance.
The documents analyzed in this study came from a repository of capoeira-related newspaper articles that had been retained at the local library. A majority of these articles were written in the 1990s and 2000s. Many of these specifically reflect the rising participation of non-Brazilians in capoeira as well as their growing visibility in the city when they come to train with local mestres.

Acquisition of legitimacy
An apprenticeship pilgrim is any individual who feels compelled to visit the place of an art or sport's origin in order to demonstrate and deepen his or her commitment to that practice. The pilgrimage is often intrinsically and extrinsically motivated, though the interplay between these two types of motivation should be an area of future study. For example, in anthropologist Marvin Sterling's study of Japanese performers of Jamaican dancehall music, many individuals reached a point at which they were intrinsically motivated to visit Jamaica. Junko Kudo, who went on to be the first non-Jamaican to win a dancehall dance competition, visited Jamaica because "she said she wanted to know 'if my dance is okay in Jamaica or if I misunderstand reggae dance'" (Sterling, 2010, pp. 127-128). When she arrived in Jamaica, Kudo sought out a dancer named Stacy, who became her mentor (Sterling, 2010, pp. 127-128). This is not an isolated incident; Sterling described it as "the familiar story of Japanese seeking to prove their mettle at the artistic source" (Sterling, 2010, pp. 127-128). In addition to personal satisfaction, these artists also received external rewards. Japanese music groups that traveled to Jamaica were able to obtain dub plates with vocals from prestigious Jamaican performers. This increased their legitimacy and put them in a position from which they could compete for international titles.
Apprenticeship pilgrimage is particularly common in martial arts in part because of how globalization has structured these social fields. While capoeira has only been practiced outside of Brazil for the past 40-50 years, other martial arts spread beyond their native boundaries much earlier. Over time, instructors pass their knowledge onto new students who have no genealogical or cultural connection to the land from which the art originated. When these students become teachers themselves, many use apprenticeship pilgrimage as a way to increase their marketability (Miller, 2010). For example, a European kungfu student religiously saved his money so he could spend a few months training at the Shaolin Temple in China, treating it like "a kind of graduate school where he could acquire the necessary accreditation to attract more kungfu students" (Polly, 2007, p. 141). In cases such as these, consumers' perception of a teacher's authenticity is the motivational factor driving the pilgrimage. In other cases, the quest for authenticity is less economically driven.
The idea of tourism reviving the spirit is nothing new (Graburn, 1989). Nor is the idea that our alienation from the products of our labor drives us to seek authenticity in the lives of others (Mac-Cannell, 1976). While the quest for existential authenticity can be traced back to Rousseau and his belief that people should indulge the desires of their true inner selves, this impulse has been intensified by the alienating effects of capitalism and commercialism, which allows objects to do the work of announcing their owner's authentic identities or their owner's desire to be seen as authentic (Lindholm, 2008; see also Chaney, 1996 on lifestyles). Some approach this project through consumption of goods and others through the consumption of experience (Cohen, 1988). Thus, what is remarkable about apprenticeship pilgrims is their postmodern privilege to construct an identity from the offerings of a global buffet as well as the way intense commitment to that identity drives their consumption of experience via extreme tourism practices.
A growing recognition of the conflict between their commitment to capoeira and the demands of everyday responsibilities (Stebbins, 1992, p. 56) was occassionally mentioned by apprenticeship pilgrims in this study as a factor leading to their travel. One individual, in particular, who had a high-paying job in the computer field realized it was time to visit Brazil when he identified his pattern of taking long lunch breaks and cutting his hours short so he could practice capoeira in a nearby park. But whereas Stebbins observes a tendency for amateurs seriously pursuing a leisure activity to have to take occasional breaks from their skill development in order to attend to mundane affairs such as work or school (1992, p. 74), apprenticeship pilgrims are taking a break from mundane affairs so they can single-mindedly pursue their development within their chosen genre.
Despite the apprenticeship pilgrim's devotion to this identity making project, how they are actually received while making the pilgrimage is not a given. Much scholarship has been devoted to the relationships between hosts and guests involved in tourism relationships. In some scenarios, locals will create false fronts or institute protective boundaries to hide their private lives from the prying eyes of tourists (Boissevain, 1996). In other cases, locals actively transform their culture to invite touristic consumption. In the hallmark volume, Hosts and Guests, Greenwood comments upon the extent to which tourist demand can transform private ritual into public performance (Greenwood, 1989, p. 178). Some apprenticeship pilgrims will be more like Bruner's vision of a postmodern tourist who is content to watch a show as long as it is well done (2005), while still others are more similar to MacCannell's vision of tourists who will push into the backspaces of a culture to try and find the really real (1976).

The economy of authenticity
An individual's commitment to a genre may drive an individual to prove his or her credibility to others in the social field by developing the sanctioned behaviors and dispositions prevalent within the field. Once acquired, an individual can use these characteristics to claim a more privileged position within the field, gain insider information and become ever more deeply connected to the power holders, eventually becoming a power holder him or herself. In globalized performance genres where the seat of power still resides in the place of origin, apprenticeship pilgrimage is an important strategy in this process. The model I have created for capoeira, a traditional yet improvisational genre that is often used to promote both national and ethnic identities, starts with existential authenticity as a motivational factor, followed by a stage in which individuals collect cultural capital (traditional and charismatic) so they can move into a legitimate peripheral participation role from which they are better able to embody the form of the art and gain credibility in the social field at large.
Here, I define cultural capital as a corpus of cultural resources, including knowledge, skills, attitudes, and heritage, which have been integrated into a field's system of reproduction to the degree that one must embody them if he or she hopes to advance within the field (Bourdieu, 1977). In short, cultural capital can be thought of as the non-monetary assets that allow one to advance within a particular social field. In an essay on the relationship between sport and social class, Bourdieu cautions his readers that a model explaining the distribution of sport activity across social classes would necessarily involve an accounting of the economic and cultural capital needed to enter those fields (Bourdieu, 1991, pp. 367-368). In the case of capoeira, and potentially in other cases of apprenticeship pilgrimage as well, a certain level of economic capital is necessary to travel to the pilgrimage site as well as guarantee access to the training grounds; however, once that cost had been met, further success depends upon one's accumulation and deployment of cultural capital. But what makes apprenticeship pilgrimage differ from the scenarios described by Bourdieu is that the pilgrim must acquire cultural capital that matters to the host society rather than his or her own. Thus, this cultural capital is not acquired by virtue of one's own social class and enculturation, but either by chance in the case of traditional forms of cultural capital or by personal initiative in the case of charismatic forms of cultural capital.
Existential authenticity for self-assessing and externally oriented pilgrims Existential authenticity refers to the feeling of fit between one's personality and an experience or practice, whether drawn from one's own culture or borrowed from another. In a sense, existential authenticity is what makes the legitimacy hierarchy matter to capoeiristas. Because they feel that capoeira is such an integral part of who they are, they are highly invested in claiming legitimacy. Like tourists operating in the existential mode as described by Cohen, these individuals both recognize their alienation from their home society and have "fully committed to an 'elective' spiritual centre" in another society (1979, p. 190).
Capoeiristas who complete apprenticeship pilgrimages do so because their sense of self has become so deeply intertwined with their participation in the art. Whether they began practicing capoeira to get fit, to make friends, or because they were awed by the beauty of it (all reasons that have been provided by participants), the phase of participation in which they currently are is no longer casual. Individuals in this study reported walking away from high-paying, prestigious jobs so they could pursue their passion for capoeira more fully and abandoning romantic relationships rather than compromise on their training regimens. Among those for whom capoeira is a core part of their existential authenticity, some are content with their own belief that they are credible performers; others, however, seek outside validation.
At this juncture, it bears remembering that not all tourists share the same motivations nor the same criteria for evaluating the outcomes of their trip (Uriely, 2005). Both groups of pilgrims would be classified as allocentric tourists in Plog's (2001) scheme because traveling to an unfamiliar place and putting one's identitiy on the line by performing to an unknown and highly esteemed audience involves significant risk. Yet, there are clear distinctions between the group of pilgrims labeled as self-assessing apprenticeship pilgrims with those that are more externally oriented. These differences, however, seem largely a matter of personal temperment and no clear categorizations can be made at this time based on pilgrims' demographic features. Both types are intrinsically motivated and appear keenly focused on how participating in sport at this particular locale with the specific human resources available (mestres) has the ability to transform one's physical capabilities and status within the community. They, nonetheless, have different benchmarks against which they will measure their success.
Self-assessors are defined as those pilgrims who are content with their own judgments about the authenticity of their experiences and whether or not they have experienced resultant growth. The externally oriented apprenticeship pilgrims, on the other hand, use external signals such as community acceptance to determine whether or not they have been successful, and extrinsic rewards (validation) tend to reinforce intrinsic motivation. During an interview, an American pilgrim said: If you say you've been to Bahia, it just gives you that much more … I don't want to say authenticity, but something that connects you to the community. We all pass through here. This is where the mestres were at that time when Capoeira Angola was resurging.
Wary of the connotations of the term authenticity, she tries to avoid it but still communicates a belief that visiting Bahia is an important event for capoeiristas, not only for their own development, but also for how they will be seen by others. This is an example of an externally oriented pilgrim. While she certainly has intrinsic motivation to become a better capoeirista, she also values the respect of others within the community.
For both the self-assessing and externally oriented pilgrims, the embodied nature of the pilgrimage is an important component. Intensely physical challenges can fit into an individual's self-making project, a part of existential authenticity, in ways that overly constrained workaday routines cannot (Wang, 1999, p. 363). Existential authenticity is often closely associated with the body and embodied experience because of the seemingly incontrovertible proof physicality brings to experience. According to Hinch and Higham, for Westerners whose quotidian routine perpetuates the myth of mind-body dualism, focusing on the embodied nature of sports tourism contributes to the sense that one has had an authentic experience (2005, p. 253). This engagement confirms beyond any doubt for the tourist that his or her experiences are authentic because the body as a medium of experience is beyond doubt (Lindholm, 2008, p. 48).
The self-assessing apprenticeship pilgrims seek this bodily engagement with the destination on their own terms. For example, in 2008, I met one female capoeirista who was taking a novice level capoeira class at a local language school. She was dressed in the capoeira uniform she had brought from the USA and was wearing a yellow belt that demonstrated her intermediate rank. Her performance in this class suggested that her level of mastery far exceeded the learning objectives of the basic session. When I asked where she was training, she said that she had not yet decided if she was going to train with an official group. She was uninformed about the local school politics and was not yet comfortable moving about the city. For her, it was enough to be in the city itself and interact with this single instructor at a very superficial level, surrounded by tourists with absolutely no capoeira training.
Like other self-assessing apprenticeship pilgrims, she planned to visit other tourist sites such as the Afro-Brazilian cultural museum, the folklore shows, and souvenir market. This group of apprenticeship pilgrims appears more likely to buy tourist souvenirs with images of capoeiristas, whereas the other group is more invested in noncommodified mementos of their engagement with the local community. The self-assessing apprenticeship pilgrims are also likely to observe a roda at a famous academy without participating or take a handful of capoeira classes geared toward tourists without formally joining a group.
For the externally oriented capoeira pilgrims, the most significant validation comes from mestres and other players in Brazil. To this end, they will attempt to join a capoeira group, oftentimes one that has an affiliation with the academy where they trained back home. Joining a group will almost invariably involve a financial commitment, and paying a "gringo price" (higher fare for non-Brazilians) is normal. Whereas the self-assessors often take classes at a handful of academies, most of the externally oriented capoeira pilgrims devote themselves exclusively to one academy and attempt to become as deeply engrained in the life of that group as possible. Within the group where my 2008 research was focused, pilgrims regularly volunteered in community outreach programs and sometimes were even asked to teach class if the primary instructor was out of town.

Acquisition and deployment of cultural capital
To prove themselves, externally oriented apprenticeship pilgrims will draw upon all the resources they have available to them. While economic capital does mediate their relationships with local Brazilians, cultural capital is more significant in understanding how non-Brazilian capoeiristas advance through this hierarchically structured social field. The cultural capital that capoeiristas seek to acquire in this phase of their development can be classified into two categories, traditional and charismatic, and are derived from Weber's model of authoritative leadership. Within this model, traditional forms of cultural capital include race, nationality or region of origin, gender, and capoeira lineage. All of these except lineage are inherent qualities; however, lineage is included here because once a student has selected a mestre under whom to study, the choice becomes relatively permanent. Charismatic forms of cultural capital refer to more mutable qualities such as one's personality, attitude, willingness to learn Portuguese, etc.
Whether or not individuals within the social field choose to admit this, qualities that inhere from one's birth or upbringing can and do give some individuals a leg-up in the race for legitimacy. According to the capoeira legitimacy hierarchy, the ideal capoeirista would be an Afro-Brazilian male from Bahia who could trace his training lineage back to one of two founding fathers. Because the compartmentalization of our modern life and the splintering of our various identities leads us to romanticize the "simple lives" led by others, authenticity is generally associated with the rural, ethnic, and folk in society, rarely with the middle or upper classes. Thus, it is not surprising that while poor Afro-Brazilian men often occupy marginal positions in Brazilian society at large, they are simultaneously assumed to be the most authentic performers of the art. Though most of the capoeiristas interviewed in this study denied the importance of blackness for advancement within the social field, it remains true that most of the leadership positions within capoeira are occupied by Afro-Brazilian men and popular depictions of capoeiristas are almost exclusively black males.
Determining the relative importance of race and nationality within capoeira is difficult, though some individuals place emphasis on the latter category. One well-known mestre claimed that "learning Capoeira Angola was not impossible for [foreigners] … but a German would have to 'sacrifice more' to achieve proficiency" because his or her body was not accustomed to the habits demanded by the Afro-Brazilian aesthetic (Downey, 2005, p. 196). Being exposed to capoeira from an early age likely increases one's ability to become a practitioner someday, but there are many Brazilians who do not have this kind of exposure because of their regional identity, class background, etc. Nonetheless, being Brazilian is a form of traditional cultural capital that can facilitate one's acceptance into the social field. Non-Brazilian pilgrims by definition lack this kind of capital and must look to other sources when implicitly making their case for acceptance.
Genealogy, or lineage, is another traditional factor that may be used to bolster one's claim to authenticity. Within the genre of music known as the blues, another form that has traditionally associated blackness with authenticity, Rudinow characterizes authenticity as "the kind of credibility that comes from having the appropriate relationship to an original source" (Rudinow, 1994, p. 129). Lineage is a ready-made way for artists to prove that they are naturally authentic by virtue of their connections within the field, whether they are biological or apprenticeship based. Take Eminem, for example, a white rapper whose authenticity is frequently questioned because of his race. Dr Dre's mentorship legitimized Eminem's presence in the rap community and facilitated his rise to prominence (Armstrong, 2004, p. 338).
In the globalized context of modern capoeira, many groups that started in Brazil now have satellite schools all over the world. The pilgrims coming from those schools have the easiest time connecting with local schools in Brazil because the path has been smoothed by their affiliation with the larger network. For example, the woman mentioned in the opening vignette hailed from an American satellite of the Brazilian group and had spent years training with the head mestre. In addition to having this personal connection, her familiarity with school policies and expectations also facilitated her integration into the host group. On the other hand, pilgrims who travel to Brazil without these connections must rely on other forms of cultural capital to get their foot in the door.
Recall that the ultimate goal for the externally oriented apprenticeship pilgrim is acceptance into a training relationship. For capoeiristas who must master a tricky idiom that balances tradition and innovation, merely joining a group and taking a few classes will not suffice. They need to enter into a position of legitimate peripheral participation from which they have special access to the master's verbal and non-verbal instructions as well as invitations to special events that may be off limits to other students. While having the traditional forms of cultural capital may leverage one into such a position, in most cases, the pilgrim will need to exhibit other characteristics as well. Inherent qualities, such as the traditional forms of cultural capital described above, may provide the simplest route to authenticity (Peterson, 2005(Peterson, , p. 1086), but are not always sufficient in and of themselves to guarantee authenticity. In such cases, charismatic factors such as one's personality, attitude, and willingness to learn Portuguese also contribute to one's ascent within the social field.
Charisma, according to Weber, is either divinely bestowed or otherwise "inspires personal devotion by virtue of extraordinary individual qualities" (Titunik, 2005, p. 144). The importance of one's personality here cannot be overstated. I, like many of the Americans and Europeans who came to train at a particular academy in Brazil, was described as being fechado demais (too closed). In other words, we were not as open or outgoing as the Brazilian students at the academy. The externally oriented apprenticeship pilgrims who had the most success in navigating the social hierarchy of the academy, like the woman described in the opening vignette, were often described as muito aberto (very open).
A local capoeirista who has begun taking on an increasingly important role as an instructor and leader within the academy made the observation that some foreigners come to Salvador to exchange information with the local capoeiristas while others just come to take knowledge without respecting locals or giving back to the community. While he respects those who come to enter the social milieu, he closes himself off to those people who simply come to "drink from the fountain and leave". Another individual interviewed in this study said, if you come down here and … you only come to classes, you arrive at seven o'clock and you leave as soon as the class is over, you don't speak any Portuguese, [then] you have no interaction; but if… your Portuguese is good and you hang out and you help, that goes a long way towards becoming a part of the group.
A "tourist" who treats classes as an economic exchange will engage with the community only for the duration of the class period. Those who put in more effort and exhibit humility, on the other hand, are often invited to special events like parties at the mestre's house, trips to the beach, or rodas at other academies.
Speaking Portuguese is another charismatic factor that marked a pilgrim's dedication to capoeira and as being different from typical tourists. This achievement marked a clear division here between the self-assessing pilgrims and those who were externally oriented. While selfassessors probably knew some Portuguese phrases, few were fluent like the majority of externally oriented pilgrims. In addition to dramatizing a pilgrim's dedication, speaking Portuguese was essential for engaging in troca de informac&o (information exchange) with local players and teachers. Because self-assessors had less need for external validation, they had less reason to become fluent in Portuguese. Next to the infusion of cash pilgrims brought to the group, "troca de informacao" was cited as the most important benefit from this kind of tourism. It allowed non-Brazilians to learn more about their hosts, but it also gave the hosts a chance to learn about the places from which the pilgrims came, places most Brazilian capoeiristas will never have the chance to visit. Speaking Portuguese also allowed pilgrims to ask questions in class and decode the messages woven into the lyrics of songs sung during rodas.

Claiming a legitimate peripheral participation role
While these traditional and charismatic forms of cultural capital can open doors to closer interactions with Brazilian capoeiristas, full acceptance depends upon proficient performance in the roda. This correlates with Weber's notion of formal-legal rationality, where leadership is regulated by adherence to a contract. In this case, proper form is the contract. Yet, in an improvisational genre such as capoeira, form is nearly impossible for even masters to articulate because it demands a delicate balance of tradition and innovation. This balance is only achievable after years of practice and is best achieved through a close personal relationship with a teacher.
In the past, apprenticeship was the traditional means of learning capoeira; however, it has become untenable with today's high demand for capoeira instruction. Today, formal classes at academies are the norm. Classes can be quite large, and the group in Brazil that I studied with regularly had 20 or more students in attendance. In this scenario, instruction generally consists of an instructor modeling the movements and students replicating those models as faithfully as possible. This, unfortunately, does not build the improvisational skills that students need to perform successfully in the roda. Many students will build these skills gradually over time as they observe and participate in a vast number of rodas. But most foreigners who travel to Brazil do not have the luxury of that much time. This is why they must artfully deploy the cultural capital available to them so they can leverage themselves into a legitimate peripheral participation role, which affords them extra opportunities to learn how to balance tradition and innovation under a master's tutelage.
Legitimate peripheral participation refers to the way in which people traditionally learn a new skill or trade first by occupying the margins of a group, then taking responsibility for low-skill tasks, then finally coming to embody the more central competencies (Lave & Wenger, 1991). For example, at first a capoeira pilgrim might only be qualified to mop the floor, but she may gradually learn to help strip the wire from old tires so it can be used to fabricate the primary instrument used in capoeira rodas. Eventually, she might become adept enough to repair instruments during the roda itself, a task that is typically performed by very advanced students. This process indexes a pilgrim's commitment to the community and also makes it more likely that he or she will be rewarded with special attention from the mestre.
Externally oriented apprenticeship pilgrims that are able to engage in legitimate peripheral participation are in a better position from which to learn the nuances of this traditional-improvisational form than are others. One woman from Mexico, for example, had become so deeply enmeshed in the academy that some individuals, generally self-assessors who remained more distant from the core happenings of the group, mistook her for being Brazilian. She often arrived at the academy early, stayed to eat lunch with the teachers, and ran her own class through the academy for poor children. She was also rewarded with special attention during class and debates with the mestre that would not have been indulged in by other students, all of which put her on a fast track to understanding the delicate balance between tradition and innovation in performance. As a result, even if she were not the most naturally skilled individual, her performances in the roda met the formal standards of the genre and she was accepted as a legitimate capoeirista throughout the local field in Salvador.
Externally oriented apprenticeship pilgrims who fail to claim a legitimate peripheral participation role, on the other hand, may be disappointed to find that they are treated just like any other tourist. For those capoeiristas, foreign or Brazilian, who achieve a legitimate peripheral participation role, mastery of form and gradual advancement to full participation within the community of practice is greatly facilitated. If successful, their strategic maneuvering will enable a Brazilian mestre to see them as less of a tourist cash cow and as more of an apprentice who has the ability to rise within the ranks of the social field regardless of their nationality.
The four categories in this typology matter. However, existential, traditional, charismatic, and formal claims to authenticity are weighed differently by different audiences. Existential authenticity matters most to individuals looking for a "fit" between their elective practices and sense of self. With some exceptions, traditional claims to authenticity are most salient for society at large, outsiders who evaluate group membership in terms of stereotypes (Grazian, 2004). Charismatic claims to authenticity carry weight for specific, more-or-less autonomous groups (like a particular school/academy) where members know one another and judge each other on their personality and achieved attributes. Formal claims to authenticity matter most within social fields that are structured around common values and beliefs. However, these social fields are too large for members to know one another personally so judgments are made based on individuals' adherence to common standards.
Aside from their importance to specific audiences, a cyclical relationship connects these four categories (Figure 1). Existential authenticity motivates individuals to seek legitimacy. Externally oriented apprenticeship pilgrims' conviction that this practice "fits" with their identity and sense of self makes others' validation of their legitimacy imperative. Pursuit of legitimacy leads them to accumulate cultural capital in the shape of traditional and charismatic claims to authenticity. However, even with these markers, legitimacy in the eyes of the social field at large may be withheld unless they can master the form. In the case of capoeira, this requires socially sanctioned performance of proper technique in the setting of the roda. Traditional and charismatic claims to authenticity give individuals enough capital to enter into a legitimate peripheral participation role, which results in receiving the special attention they need to learn how to balance innovation and tradition within their performances. Should this process be successful, it reinforces the individual's existential identity and may drive him or her to achieve ever-higher levels of visibility within the community such as becoming a teacher or, eventually, a mestre. Figure 1. Acquisition of Legitimacy. This model represents the path an apprenticeship pilgrim might take as he or she attempts to acquire legitimacy within a genre such as capoeira that has ambiguous guidelines concerning how to balance tradition and innovation.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have described apprenticeship pilgrimage as a conceptual tool to help understand travel to specific sites for the express purpose of having one's practice (be it athletic or artistic) legitimized by local legends within that field. While we are accustomed to questioning whether or not tourists are concerned with finding authenticity in the places we visit, and investigating locals' responses to such invasions, we are less accustomed to asking how the tourists are using travel to become more authentic themselves. In the course of presenting a case study of apprenticeship pilgrimage, I have also described an economy of authenticity in which accumulation of cultural capital leads to advancement within the social field. For capoeira, knowledge, heritage, and personality are primary currencies in this economy. The subjective nature of authenticity has complicated scholarly attempts to define and analyze it, but approaching it from the position of legitimacy within an "economy of authenticity" allows us to say why particular notions of authenticity become dominant and how one goes about claiming that status.
When claiming legitimacy in a practice outside of one's own cultural milieu is a central part of his or her existential authenticity, individuals will approach tourism with the zeal of pilgrims. In moving forward, I would like to suggest that we look for other examples of apprenticeship pilgrimage both in the extent tourism literature and in new empirical studies. As mentioned above, pilgrims' motivation and the influence of gender on apprenticeship pilgrimage are two areas ripe for further study. Further, within each case, it is likely that an economy of authenticity can be identified and analyzed. Continuing this line of investigation will provide a deeper understanding of post-modern tourists and how they understand their interactions with their hosts.