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 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.
Combining cultural and intellectual history, 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.
eISBN: 978-0-8248-5316-7
Subjects: History, Anthropology, Sociology
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