Sport and Cultural Transformation in Southeast Asia

Despite its wide reception and productive applications in various regions across the world, the Sociology of Sport has only recently begun to gain scholarly attention in the field of Southeast Asian Studies. Recognizing that the role of sport in the region merits thorough and comprehensive analysis, the studies in this volume shed light on the socio-cultural dynamics within Southeast Asia’s sporting sphere.

Demonstrating how Southeast Asian sporting games, during both the precolonial and (early) modern-state eras, have played a key role in broader social processes and social change, and how, in turn, they themselves have transformed in content and meaning, the chapters in this collection reveal how people construct their group, national, economic, and social identities to negotiate with each other in sporting settings across the region and the world during each epoch. This volume covers the long-term development of sport in Southeast Asia, affirming the importance of sport in every era. It opens with discussions of the colonial and early modern eras, before guiding readers through the landscape of sport in postcolonial and Cold War settings. Additionally, the volume highlights several vital contemporary issues in sport, including lucrative international sporting events, the participation of refugees in sports, and sports policy.

Addressing the plethora of aspects of sporting cultures in Southeast Asia which remain relatively, or completely, unresearched by scholars, this volume offers research that is key to understanding the sporting culture of a vast, densely populated, globally significant, and sports-obsessed region.

Charn Panarut is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, at Chiang Mai University, Thailand, specializing in Thai studies. His research spans the sociology of sport, historical sociology, state formation, and the civilizing process.