Kung Fu vs. Radio Calisthenics: The Confucius Institute and Chinese Culture Education in Madagascar

Abstract

AbstractThe Confucius Institute (CI)—a worldwide educational project sponsored by the Chinese government aiming to promote Chinese language and culture—has established its regional headquarters in Madagascar since 2008. The spread of China’s educational projects represents China’s intensive engagement in Africa in the past two decades, as it is usually considered as a form of ‘soft power.’ This paper aims to bring anthropological insights into discourses related to ‘soft power’ where the concept of ‘culture’ is often used but rarely analyzed. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this paper critically examines the practices of teaching and learning Chinese language and culture on the ground. In Madagascar, CI classrooms provide much desired yet unsatisfying opportunities for Malagasy students. CI represents ‘Chinese culture’ as a timeless, bounded, and homogeneous entity by only emphasizing its ‘traditional’ elements. As a result, CI instructors often find their individual understandings of ‘Chinese culture’ incommensurable with the hegemonic concept promoted by CI. Such disjuncture benefits actors of knowledge production but disadvantages those of knowledge application. Malagasy students often find the knowledge they have gained from CI inadequate. As such, CI educational projects share with many other development projects the features of disconnectedness and discontinuity that characterize Africa’s participation in the postcolonial world.KeywordsCultureIncommensurabilityThe Confucius InstituteChina-AfricaMadagascar