266 The Journal of Asian Studies

wave. Besides, Dalits have been much less seduced by Narendra Modi than any other
caste group, nearly whatever their social class.
These minor caveats do not diminish the merits of Thachils remarkable book, the
first attempt to analyze in detail how the BJP can derive some electoral dividends
from social work in local pockets.

CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT
Sciences Po (Paris) and Kings College London
jaffrelot.schlegel@orange.fr

SOUTHEAST ASIA
SINGLE-BOOK ESSAYS

Embodied Nation: Sports, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos. By

SIMON CREAK. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. xiv, 327 pp. ISBN
9780824838898 (cloth).
doi:10.1017/S0021911815001989

The country of Laos has not had much success in the world of competitive sports
zero Olympic medals; zero World Cup appearances; very few games, matches, or races
won in the Southeast Asian Games; and virtually no chance of ever hosting any major in-
ternational sporting event. There is a distinct lack of facilities, resources, and experienced
international advisors and coaches. Therefore, a book on the history of sports in Laos
seems more like a joke told by acquisitions editors at happy hour than an actual publica-
tion. Simon Creak is certainly bold, because he actually did decide to write and submit
this book to a prestigious university press. We are all the better for his decision to take
this chance. It turns out that focusing on sports, masculinity, and physical culture (or
perhaps physique-culture) tells us more about the rise of Marxist socialism, international
relations, dictatorship, and nationalism in Laos than nearly any other study in the past
three decades.
This is one of the most fascinating books I have read in years. While there are certain
questions and bodies of research that could have been explored further, this is a highly
readable and entertaining book, as well as a theoretically provocative study. Let me
just highlight a few reasons students of Laos and Southeast Asia more broadly should
read Embodied Nation. First, from the very beginning, Creak focuses on the 194690
period that has been largely ignored in Lao studies. Most research focuses on modern
development studies or preWorld War II history. Studies of Marxism and socialism in
Laos tend to focus on 197591, but by looking at sports culture and politics before
and after 1975, we see both changes and continuities. The lack of focus on the 1950s
and 1960s is primarily because access to the archival material for this period is difficult.
Creak pored over material from government archives (a challenge in itself), popular mag-
azines, travelers reports, photographs, physical education handbooks and curricular ma-
terial, and pre- and post-colonial French archival materials. For example, his inclusion of
 Book ReviewsSoutheast Asia 267

a study of sports under the influence of Vichy France is quite illuminating and one hopes
that it will inspire more studies of this period. Second, Creak never studies Laos in iso-
lation. By focusing on sports, especially international sporting contests, he shows how Lao
culture and politics was in constant negotiation with French, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese,
American, and Cambodian politics. In this way he expands on the highly recommended
work of Vatthana Pholsena and Grant Evans. Like Pholsena, he does not focus only on the
lowland or Theravada Buddhist Lao. Like Evans, he does not project ideas of modern
Laos back onto the past. Indeed, he shows that creating a Lao physical culture and a par-
ticular type of Lao masculinity did not depend on invoking a timeless culture and ethno-
centric pride. If cultural marketing by the Lao government pre- or post-socialist Laos
tried to focus on glorious kings, artwork, temples, or battles of a distant past, then the
present culture would seem like a lesson in loss and decline. For many governments
(through the tools of museums, textbooks, national curriculum, and national holidays)
promoting national pride means invoking the powers of longevity; origins; and past mil-
itary, literary, scientific, and artistic accomplishments. Laos, however, like many countries
in Eastern Europe and Africa, did not really exist as an independent nation-state prior to
the twentieth century. Therefore, it was a new country that politicians, business owners,
and athletes could create. Sports became a defining feature of this newly unified Laos.
Sports became as important to Lao identity as a national language, religion, flag, or
public education system. Sports were a perfect vehicle for forming a national culture,
because they could incorporate indigenous sports like tikhi; regional sports like canoe-
racing; and international sports like boxing, shooting, weightlifting, and soccer. Studying
sports teaches us a lot about the dynamics of cultural formation and the subtleties behind
local and regional political conflicts.
Besides exposing previously unexplored sources and providing the definitive history
of athletics and physical culture in Laos, Creak makes a major contribution to the study of
gender in Southeast Asia. Indeed, I think Embodied Nation would be a welcome addition
to syllabi in gender and sexuality courses in general. Womens studies approaches have
thrived in the field of Southeast Asian studies over the past twenty years. Recently,
there has been a rise in thorough studies of sexuality, especially homosexuality, in Philip-
pine, Thai, and Indonesian studies. However, Creaks focus on masculinity and physicality
(instead of sexuality specifically) is relatively unique. I particularly enjoyed his engage-
ment with the work of Ana Maria Alonso. Alonso has shown that a focus on sport is a par-
ticularly revealing way to study the building of national culture, because it has a way of
turning the obligatory into the desirable (p. 241). Watching and promoting sport is
not threatening and can break down class, linguistic, and ethnic barriers. It forms, as
Creak and Alonso argue, everyday structures of feeling (p. 8). The ideological and
sensory become fused. It is almost as if sports became a way of making nationalism
part of a young mans (and in this case, almost always male) muscle memory. Although
Creak does not argue this specifically, his work further indicates that heteronormativity
and androcentrism are not normative or central naturally. They need to be constructed
and continually bolstered by institutional (religious, governmental, and educational)
and economic forces within a nation-state.
There are a couple areas that I wish Creak had explored. There is very little study of
Soviet influence, either through Vietnam or directly from Russia, on sport and physicality
in Laos. Creak does discuss this briefly in chapter 7. I particularly wanted him to give
more attention to the visiting Soviet teams to Laos and Lao athletes who, like academics,
trained in the Soviet Union. This omission is a major problem with the study of Laos in
268 The Journal of Asian Studies

general: a distinct lack of the use of Russian and East German sources. Still, it is hard to
criticize him for this, as he would probably not have had much success accessing this ma-
terial with or without reading knowledge of Russian. Second, in the same section that he
briefly discusses Soviet visits, he mentions in passing that Laos, like other communist
countries in the 1970s and 1980s, emphasized trying to connect liveliness, fun, and
happy revolutionary spirit (pp. 196202). I would have liked to have seen Creak
discuss the promotion and institutionalization of Lao leisure culture and public culture
in general outside of professional or formal team sports, but I recognize that in this
already lengthy study, this might have taken him a bit far afield. Finally, and this is
more of a personal interest, Creak discusses the controversy behind the funding and
building of a large stadium for the Southeast Asian Games in 2009. I thought he might
have spent more time discussing the roles stadium and sports facilities architecture
played in building nationalism in Laos. Overall though, this book on an unlikely
subject has generated a number of new questions in this reviewers mind, and it
should become a model for the study of masculinity and sports culture across the
region and beyond. I highly recommend Embodied Nation for scholars and students in
Asian studies, and for courses in gender and sexuality and sports history more broadly.

JUSTIN THOMAS MCDANIEL

University of Pennsylvania
jmcdan@sas.upenn.edu

Post-Tsunami Recovery in Thailand: Socio-Cultural Responses. By

MONICA LINDBERG FALK. London: Routledge, 2015. 206 pp. ISBN
9781317690139 (cloth).
doi:10.1017/S0021911815001990

Monica Falk, a Swedish anthropologist, has written an ethnographically rich book on

the societal and religious aftermath of the devastating tsunami that hit southern Thailand,
as well as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and southern India, in late December 2004. Falk carried
out interviews and observations in the province of Phang Nga following the tsunami.
Seventy-eight percent of the nearly 5,400 deaths, 66 percent of the injured, and 59
percent of the missing were reported from Phang Nga (table 1.1, p. 11). The hardest
hit were villages along the coast, especially those of Austronesian-speaking Moklen/
Moken, formerly known as Sea Gypsies because of their periodic moves from place to
place. Although the Moklen/Moken were not ethnically Thai, they did receive some
aid and were included in the memorials. By contrast, the large number of mainly
illegal Burmese workers in the province were essentially invisible to relief workers.
This was also true of thousands of upcountry Thai, mainly from the northeast, who
worked in resorts in the province. While the Thai press gave particular attention to the
death of Poom Jensen, the autistic son of Princess Ubolratana and the grandson of the
king, international attention focused on the deaths and suffering among the thousands
of Western tourists who had been visiting resorts on the west coast of southern Thailand,
the largest number of whom were in Phang Nga. The film The Impossible, about the af-
termath of the tsunami, is typical in its focus on the suffering of foreigners. Falk, a native
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.