Embodied Nation

Simon Creak

Simon Creak

Embodied Nation

Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos

In: Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory, 59

Edited by: David P. Chandler and Rita Smith Kipp

University of Hawaii Press | 2015

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824853167

Overview
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About this book

This strikingly original book examines how sport and ideas of physicality have shaped the politics and culture of modern Laos. Viewing the country's extraordinary transitions—from French colonialism to royalist nationalism to revolutionary socialism to the modern development state—through the lens of physical culture, Simon Creak's lively and incisive narrative illuminates a nation that has no reputation in sport and is typically viewed, even from within, as a country of cheerful but lazy people. Creak argues that sport and related physical practices—including physical education, gymnastics, and military training—have shaped a national consciousness by locating it in everyday experience. These practices are popular, participatory, performative, and, above all, physical in character and embody ideas and ideologies in a symbolic and experiential way.

Embodied Nation takes readers on a brisk ride through more than a century of Lao history, from a nineteenth-century game of tikhi—an indigenous game resembling field hockey—to the country's unprecedented outpouring of nationalist sentiment when hosting the 2009 Southeast Asian Games. En route, we witness a Lao-Vietnamese soccer brawl in 1936, the fascist-inspired body ethic of the early 1940s, the novel modes of military masculinity that blossomed with national independence, the spectacular state theatrics of power represented by Olympic-inspired sports festivals, and the high hopes and frequent failures of socialist sport in the 1970s and 1980s. Of central concern in Creak's narrative are the twin motifs of gender and civilization. Despite increasing female participation since the early twentieth century, he demonstrates the major role that sport and physical culture have played in forming hegemonic masculinities in Laos. Even with limited national sporting success—Laos has never won an Olympic medal—the healthy, toned, and muscular form has come to symbolize material development and prosperity. Embodied Nation outlines the complex ways in which these motifs, through sport and physical culture, articulate with state power.

Combining cultural and intellectual history with historical thick description, Creak draws on a creative array of Lao and French sources from previously unexplored archives, newspapers, and magazines, and from ethnographic writing, war photography, and cartoons. More than an "imagined community" or "geobody," he shows that Laos was also a "body at work," making substantive theoretical contributions not only to Southeast Asian studies and history, but to the study of the physical culture, nationalism, masculinity, and modernity in all modern societies.

Author information

CreakSimon:

Simon Creak is lecturer in Southeast Asian History at the University of Melbourne.

Reviews

Christopher E. Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal:
Simon Creak’s outstanding and highly original study explores how colonial and pre-colonial conceptions of the body and sports contributed to the making of modern Laos and how physicality became a weapon in the cultural contests of the Cold War. This is a fascinating account of how colonial, national, and communist leaders used physical culture to embody quite literally their political projects throughout the twentieth century.

Grant Evans, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Laos:
This superb, well-written book shows how nationalism became embodied through state promoted physical practices promoting discipline. For those interested primarily in Laos, it is a treasure trove, showing how sport emerged from play and ritualised play to become a central metaphor of Lao nationalism. For those whose main interest is in sport theory, Creak supplies a wonderful case study that can be emulated.

It is unusual to conclude a review by quoting from the glowing statements to be found on the dust
jacket of the book that is being reviewed. In this case, however, the words used to describe Embodied
Nation are fitting – “superb”, “well-written”, “outstanding” and “highly original”. Creak has much to
offer sport scholars as well as those with a specialist interest in the modern history of Laos or in
south-east Asia more generally. He is to be heartily congratulated on this fine publication.

Creak’s book … will be the authoritative account of this history for years to come.

Meanwhile, the book, rich with photographs and rare illustrations, provides a unique narrative of Laos’s (modest) performance in international competitions and at meets with “fraternal countries” during the Cold War.

Creak provides with Embodied Nation an easy to understand historiography of Laos, which does not lose itself in technical terms and thus provides, and also provides non-specialist readers a fascinating read from a hitherto unique perspective.

Simon Creak’s book is a rewarding read not only for regional specialists, but also for any historian and anthropologist interested in the social and political dimensions of sports.

Embodied Nation succeeds in taking on a fundamental if neglected aspect of the political history of Laos from colonial times to current post-socialist developmentalism. Creak’s argument that the interest in the body has been a constant through different regimes is compellingly presented, and his work will become a reference for all interested in the anthropology of the state in Southeast Asia, inspiring hopefully similar research on other countries in that region.

This is an insightful and intellectually demanding study, and theoretical references do not in places make it easy reading. . . . Footnoting is extensive, and so is the bibliography. In conclusion, the book makes a substantial contribution to Lao historiography, and will be required reading for those with a serious interest in Lao history.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	ix
Abbreviations Free access PDF PDF	xiii
Language Conventions Free access PDF PDF	xv
Map Free access PDF PDF	xvi
Introduction Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
1. Making a Modern Tradition Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	22
2. Renovating the Body, Restoring the Nation/Race Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	52
3. Embodying Military Masculinity Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	84
4. Sport and the Theatrics of Power Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	118
5. Representing Meuang Lao in Southeast Asia Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	140
6. Socialist Cultures of Rhetoric and Physicality Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	167
7. Mobilizing the Revolution Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	195
8. Vientiane Games, 2009 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	226
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	247
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	289
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	311
About the Author Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	329
Other Volumes in the Series Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	331

Embodied Nation

Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos

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