The Middlestage: State-Sponsored Overseas Chinese Academics and China's Managed Cultural Globalisation

Chen, Tian

The Middlestage: State-Sponsored Overseas Chinese Academics and China's Managed Cultural Globalisation

Doctoral Thesis

2021

Abstract

This in-depth ethnographic study focuses on state-sponsored Overseas Chinese Academics (OCAs) and China's managed cultural globalisation based on two years of multi-sited fieldwork in South Africa, Australia, and China. Extending Goffman's (1956) theoretical frameworks of everyday dramatism such as the frontstage and the backstage, I adopt the middlestage as the primary conceptual lens of my investigation. The middlestage of China's managed cultural globalisation is examined as a fluid and embodied space where state-sponsored OCAs and Chinese state institutions negotiate power in the process of producing performances. I argue that for state-sponsored OCAs, the middlestage of China's managed cultural globalisation is simultaneously a space of curation, negotiation, and re-imagination. The research also incorporates an ethnographic fiction titled The Islanders and provides a thick description of my state-sponsored OCA participants' life trajectories. The Islanders reveals how individual OCAs curate their performances and self-presentations, negotiate their social mobility and identities; and reimagine their realities whilst seeking conviviality on the middlestage. The thesis discusses and demonstrates how ethnographic fiction can be used as an essential tool for anthropological research.

Keywords

Anthropology

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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