Book Review:

Review of Embodied
Nation
R E V I E W E R : R E V I E W E R : A N D R E W M O R R I S 2 3 S E P, 2 0 1 5

Simon Creak, Embodied Nation: Sport,

Masculinity, and the Making of Modern
Lao s (University Of Hawaii Press, 2015)

Reviewed by Andrew Morris

Laos has taken part in seven Summer Olympic

Games since 1980 (joining the Soviet-led
communist boycott in 1984), usually sending
three to five athletes, who have never won an
Olympic medal. The peninsular Southeast
Asian country of some seven million people has taken part in nine
Asian Games, winning a total of 10 medals (none gold) and regularly
finishing at the very bottom of the medal table. Despite this
discouraging record, however, Simon Creaks Embodied Nation
reveals how modern sport and physicality has shaped the modern
history of this product of French colonialism. It would be difficult for
Creak to pretend that his subject is self-evidently crucial to the
histories of Southeast Asia or to the world of modern physical
culture; he in fact describes contemporary Laos as a minnow in the
sporting world (p. 223). However, as the reader soon discovers,
international medals won that is, gaining the hundredths of a
second on a 100-meter dash here, the few extra punches landed in
the boxing ring there are not the point when one looks at this
question seriously. Indeed, is it possible that we might learn more
from the institution and evolution of modern sport and physical
culture in a country where big-time sporting success does not compel
the entire population, than in one where it does, and where these
ideologies lie more obviously close to the surface of daily life and
belief?

Creaks narrative is built upon a keen sensitivity to theoretical

analysis; he is as comfortable with Alonsos notions of physical
practice and national consciousness as he is with Archambaults
1960s work on Lao cosmogonies, Geertzs notion of the theatre state
and power through spectacle, and Verderys work on revolution and
language. Again, it is precisely because Laos is not the traditional
home of legendary sporting greatness that Creak is able to explicate
more clearly why, where and how the varied ideologies of modern
sport have been bought, sold, pursued and abandoned by French
colonial agents, Lao statesmen and fascist strongmen, Soviet, Chinese
and Vietnamese advisors, and contemporary young women sprinters
and swimmers alike.

After a theoretical introduction, the books eight chapters are

chronologically organized, although Creak does much more than
present any simple timeline of sporting contests, records, and
performances. Actually, this strength of the book is also related to
what I would consider its greatest weakness: there are many
moments where Creaks theoretical analysis would be strengthened
even more with specific examples, from the historically significant
National Games competitions of the 1960s (pp. 124-137) or Lao-Thai
boxing matches of the 1970s (p. 205), for instance. When did athletes
specific choices, or referees decisions, or spectators chants and
behaviors affirm or challenge the dominant sporting ideologies of the
time? In an academic twist on the old sportswriter clich of thats
why they play the game, the study of modern sport and physical
culture often depends on an accounting of the spontaneous, the
unscripted, the unforeseen drama that this cultural site for all its
obvious flaws can still deliver.

Creaks chronological account succeeds, though, by illustrating just

how many twists and turns (related to the obvious national/political
transitions that Laos has endured) this nations sporting culture has
gone through. The focus of Chapter One is on the authentically Lao
field hockey-like game of tikhi, the study of which by necessity takes
us through the colonial history of Frances creation of Laoss own
unique history and culture, the games possible relationship to polo,
its link to native religious ceremonies, its cosmological implications
for the ruling regime, and its usefulness in expressing and defining
class boundaries and rivalries (pp. 24-47). From here we move to
Chapter Two and its focus on the Vichy-era Lao Nhay cultural
renovation movement of 1941-45 a fascinating study of how fascist
and racial doctrines from the metropole filter into the self-definition
of the residents of the colonies being traumatized in the precise
name of these ideologies. This is a fascinating chapter which tells a
story that perhaps could only be Lao: the role of meditation (pp. 71-
72) in the militarized curriculum of the cole Locale des Cadres
dducation Physique du Laos is a very evocative example of the
ways that traditional and modern cultures swirled through the
world of young Lao men and women of the World War II moment in
Southeast Asia. Memories of this movement are even more
fascinating; we can see the complexity and room for indigenous
innovation within this seemingly tightly bound site of colonial fascism
when one participant later recalls how We will never forget [the Lao
Nhay movement] We were well disciplined which gave us the
feeling that the Lao can rule themselves. (p. 77)

Chapter Three follows the militarization of masculinity in newly

independent 1950s Laos. Continuities from the Vichy era and their
mixture into new nationalist symbolism are most memorably
referenced by a striking 1950 photograph of uniformed male students
of the cole Locale des Cadres de Jeunesse et dducation
Physique saluting (with straight arms) the national flag outside the
famed That Luang stupa (p. 99). This gendered view of body and
nation carries into the 1960s and Chapter Four, which mainly
investigates Laoss National Games competitions of 1961 and 1964.
Although, as pointed out above, more specific athlete- or spectator-
centered memories or accounts would have enriched this section, the
examples that Creak provides here, particularly with regard to the
Olympic-inspired but uniquely Lao National Games flame (p. 126),
evoke quite effectively the dreams of a modern Laos that could be
united through the affections and desires at the heart of competitive
sport.

The collapse of the institution of the National Games came in 1964

with the overthrow of Major General Phoumi Nosavan. At this point in
Creaks narrative, in Chapter Five, another important historical
throughline, that of Laoss dynamic of emulation and rivalry with
both Vietnam and Thailand (p. 142), reemerges. This crucial element
of modern Southeast Asian history is also part of what makes Creaks
account so specific to Laoss modern heritage, at the same time that
he is addressing the institution and adaptation there of these
universalized ideologies of modern sport. Laoss participation in the
South East Asia Peninsular (SEAP) Games between 1959-75 was
defined by these rivalries and by their willingness to accept and take
pride in their more powerful neighbors often condescending praise
of Lao manners, sportsmanship and discipline, if usually not their
actual sporting prowess. Victories of a different sort mental
strength, progress and trying ones hardest could be won and
advertised domestically, although at some point some in the Lao
press began to critique this too-easy satisfaction with last place (pp.
144-152). Lao-Thai antagonism could be relived and replayed on the
soccer pitch, where once in a while the Lao youth actually could beat
their big brother (p. 154). Sustained sporting ties to Vietnam,
meanwhile, came about via the rise of the Pathet Lao communist
movement, which is ahistorically but tellingly credited by many as
achieving the true birth of modern Lao sport by sending
representatives to the 1966 Asian GANEFO (Games of the New
Emerging Forces) in Phnom Penh (pp. 163-164). In this account, the
history of French/colonial/fascist/bourgeois-inspired Lao sport simply
does not count as authentically Lao, even if Creak allows us to see
how closely related these modern sporting ideologies truly are.

After this sporting Year Zero, Lao physical culture achieved full
development, as outlined in Chapters Six and Seven, with the heavy
involvement of Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese assistance under Lao
Peoples Democratic Republic rule beginning in 1975. For the next
decade or so, Lao sport was dominated by discourses of political
education and new socialist people, the weaknesses of old-regime
sport as anti-masses, anarchic, elitist, and authoritarian, and the
physical continuum between sport, calisthenics, and labor. Most
revealing is the communist-era emphasis on how enjoyable, lively,
and fun all of this New Lao Sport was (p. 198-199) a clear sign that
in reality this drab and preachy cultural sphere was experienced by
the Lao revolutionary masses as anything but enjoyable, lively, or fun.
It is also during this time that Laos entered the Olympic movement
for the first time, in large part due to Moscows hosting of the 1980
Olympic Games. Especially since most of their Southeast Asian rivals
joined the US-led boycott of these Games, Lao authorities could now
speak of having helped their small nation to catch up with their
longtime nemeses in this vital realm (p. 211).

Creaks Chapter Eight concludes Embodied Nation by focusing on the

25th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games held in Vientiane in 2009. This
mini-mega event allowed Laos to show off the nations modest
commercial progress, charming traditions, political stability, and
healthy sportsmanship. These SEA Games also brought out some of
the most important trends and forces in Lao society today: Chinas
financial influence (the Chinese Development Bank financed the new
National Stadium), Laoss continued rivalry/aspiration relationship
with Thailand, and suspicion of their Vietnamese neighbors financial
and political ambitions in Laos (pp. 227-228, 237-238). But overall the
combination of 110 medals for the Lao hosts (seventh most of 11
participating nations), public nationalist jubilation over these
successes, tourism gold, and official foreign recognition of an
excellent Games (pp. 230-231) made this event a universally
recognized success. These discourses place Lao sport at the center of
21st-century neoliberalist sporting ideology simply the most recent
paradigm shift of so many since the early days of French rule. Creaks
book is an excellent guide to these many transitions and how the
people of Laos have experienced them; it will be the authoritative
account of this history for years to come.

Andrew Morris is Professor of History at California Polytechnic

State University at San Luis Obispo. His works include Colonial
Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan (2010)
and Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical
Culture in Republican China (2004) , both published by the
University of California Press.