Skip to Main Content

Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos

Online ISBN:
9780824869724
Print ISBN:
9780824838898
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press
Book

Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos

Simon Creak
Simon Creak
University of Melbourne
Find on
Published:
31 December 2014
Online ISBN:
9780824869724
Print ISBN:
9780824838898
Publisher:
University of Hawai'i Press

Abstract

This 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, the book illuminates a nation that has no reputation in sport and is typically viewed, even from within, as a country of cheerful but lazy people. It 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. The book travels 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. Despite increasing female participation since the early twentieth century, the book 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. The book outlines the complex ways in which these motifs, through sport and physical culture, articulate with state power.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close