Title: Sport, regionalism, and regional history: Thailand’s founding of the Southeast Asian Peninsular Games, 1957-59
 

Speaker: Simon Creak, Associate Professor, Hakubi Center for Advanced Research and CSEAS, Kyoto University
 

Date & Time: Wednesday July 24th, 12:00-13.30
 

Place: Tonan-tei (Room. 201), Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, CSEAS, Kyoto University
 

Abstract:

The Olympic Committee of Thailand founded the biennial South East Asia Peninsular Games (SEAP), forerunner of the region’s biggest and longest-running sporting event, the Southeast Asian Games, in 1959. Then and subsequently, organizers explicitly sought to use the games to promote regional friendship and cooperation among participating countries, which originally included Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand. Regionalist themes were notable for the geographical make-up of the region imagined in the games, i.e. mainland Southeast Asian; the ideological make-up of this “region”, which cut across ideological cleavages in the context of the Cold War; the imagined historical antecedents of this region invoked by organizers; and the use of sport, a cultural practice, rather than politics or economics to promote regionalism. Yet regionalism was not the only force behind the establishment of the SEAP Games. In this paper, I examine how regional sentiments combined with regional history – in the form of Thai and other regional nationalisms, and the Cold War intervention of the United States – in the founding of the SEAP Games. I will also consider how these sometimes-conflicting motifs were brought to life, intentionally and otherwise, in the inaugural 1959 SEAP Games in Bangkok. Based on this discussion, I will conclude with some thoughts about regional history and the study of regionalism in Southeast Asia.

Bio note:

Simon Creak is Associate Professor in Kyoto University’s Hakubi Center for Advanced Research and based in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. His research interests lie in the cultural, political, and intellectual history of modern Southeast Asia, especially the related issues of nationalism, state formation, and regionalism. Much of Simon’s previous work has approached these interests through the study of sport, physicality, and gender in colonial and post-colonial Laos. His first monograph, Body Work: Sport, Physical Culture, and the Making of Modern Laos (University of Hawaii Press), is due to be released in 2014.

Moderator: Prof. Junko Koizumi, CSEAS