Kung Fu Fighting: The Cultural Pedagogy of the Body in the Vovinam Overseas Vietnamese Martial Arts School

This paper explores the pedagogic practices by which Overseas Vietnamese elites seek to enlist the young in a shared conception of Vietnamese identity in the context of a martial arts organisation. It shows how the contradictory principles of gerontocratic and meritocratic social structuration, iden...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Carruthers, Ashley (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 1998
In: The Australian journal of anthropology
Year: 1998, Volume: 9, Issue: 1, Pages: 45-57
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:This paper explores the pedagogic practices by which Overseas Vietnamese elites seek to enlist the young in a shared conception of Vietnamese identity in the context of a martial arts organisation. It shows how the contradictory principles of gerontocratic and meritocratic social structuration, identified in the Vietnamese system of person reference, are given embodied form in the school's practice. The paper concludes with a reflection on how incorporation into this habitus and the relation to the Vietnamese body it offers may act as a defence, albeit an ambivalent one, against classifications of the Vietnamese body as abject emanating from the host society.
ISSN:1757-6547
Contains:Enthalten in: The Australian journal of anthropology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/taja.1998.9.1.45