Creating Laos

Author : Søren Ivarsson
Publisher : NIAS Press
ISBN 13 : 8776940233
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Creating Laos written by Søren Ivarsson and published by NIAS Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the process through which Laos came into existence under French colonial rule through to the end of World War II. Here, Laos's position at the intersection of two conflicting spatial layouts of "Thailand" and "Indochina" made its national form a particularly contested process. Rather than analyze this process in terms of administrative and political structures, the book discusses how a specific idea about a separate "Lao space" and its culture was formed.

Author : Simon Creak
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824875125
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Embodied Nation written by Simon Creak and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This strikingly original book examines how sport and ideas of physicality have shaped the politics and culture of modern Laos. 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 lively and 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 by locating it in everyday experience. These practices are popular, participatory, performative, and, above all, physical in character and embody ideas and ideologies in a symbolic and experiential way. Embodied Nation takes readers on a brisk ride through more than a century of Lao history, from a nineteenth-century game of tikhi—an indigenous game resembling field hockey—to the country's unprecedented outpouring of nationalist sentiment when hosting the 2009 Southeast Asian Games. En route, we witness a Lao-Vietnamese soccer brawl in 1936, the fascist-inspired body ethic of the early 1940s, the novel modes of military masculinity that blossomed with national independence, the spectacular state theatrics of power represented by Olympic-inspired sports festivals, and the high hopes and frequent failures of socialist sport in the 1970s and 1980s. Of central concern in Creak's narrative are the twin motifs of gender and civilization. Despite increasing female participation since the early twentieth century, he demonstrates the major role that sport and physical culture have played in forming hegemonic masculinities in Laos. Even with limited national sporting success—Laos has never won an Olympic medal—the healthy, toned, and muscular form has come to symbolize material development and prosperity. Embodied Nation outlines the complex ways in which these motifs, through sport and physical culture, articulate with state power. Combining cultural and intellectual history with historical thick description, 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.

Author : Joshua Kurlantzick
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451667892
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Great Place to Have a War written by Joshua Kurlantzick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how America’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy. January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA’s Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public—and most of Congress—Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. With “revelatory reporting” and “lucid prose” (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA’s clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since—all the way to today’s war on terrorism.

Author : Viliam Phraxayavong
Publisher : Silkworm Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book History of Aid to Laos written by Viliam Phraxayavong and published by Silkworm Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally presented as: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Sydney, 2007.

Author : Douglass C. North
Publisher : World Bank Publications
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 50 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Limited Access Orders in the Developing World: a New Approach to the Problems of Development written by Douglass C. North and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: The upper-income, advanced industrial countries of the world today all have market economies with open competition, competitive multi-party democratic political systems, and a secure government monopoly over violence. Such open access orders, however, are not the only norm and equilibrium type of society. The middle and low-income developing countries today, like all countries before about 1800, can be understood as limited access orders that maintain their equilibrium in a fundamentally different way. In limited access orders, the state does not have a secure monopoly on violence, and society organizes itself to control violence among the elite factions. A common feature of limited access orders is that political elites divide up control of the economy, each getting some share of the rents. Since outbreaks of violence reduce the rents, the elite factions have incentives to be peaceable most of the time. Adequate stability of the rents and thus of the social order requires limiting access and competition-hence a social order with a fundamentally different logic than the open access order. This paper lays out such a framework and explores some of its implications for the problems of development today.

Author : Boike Rehbein
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1351859358
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Society in Contemporary Laos written by Boike Rehbein and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Introduction: Religion, capitalism and society -- Part I Capitalism and sociocultures -- 1 Sociocultures and history -- 2 Colonial transformation -- 3 Socialist transformation -- 4 Capitalist transformation -- Part II Habitus groups and classes in Laos -- 5 Capitalism, social structures and inequality -- 6 The emergence of classes in Laos -- 7 Habitus groups -- 8 Milieus and language-games -- Part III Layers of meaning and practices of religion -- 9 Religion and division of work -- 10 Objective layers of religion -- 11 Ethos and religion -- 12 Religious ethos and belief: A case study of Ban Pha Khao -- Conclusion -- References -- Subject Index -- Names Index

Author : Grant Evans
Publisher : Allen & Unwin
ISBN 13 : 9781864489972
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Short History of Laos written by Grant Evans and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2002 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the history of Laos, discussing such topics as its early kingdoms, French rule, the Royal Lao Government, and the impact of the Vietnam War.

Author :
Publisher : Cinco Puntos Press
ISBN 13 : 1935955195
Total Pages : 43 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mali Under the Night Sky written by and published by Cinco Puntos Press. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mali Under the Night Sky, a 2011 Skipping Stones honor book, is the true story of Laotian American artist Malichansouk Kouanchao, whose family was forced by civil war to flee Laos when she was five. Before the war began, Mali lived an idyllic life in a community where she felt safe and was much loved. But the coming war caused her family to flee to another country and a life that was less than ideal. What did she carry with her? She carried her memories. And they in turn carried her across the world, sharing where she is from and all that she loves with the people she meets. Terry Hong of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program’s BOOK DRAGON, giving context to Youme’s remarkable book, said, “Today, December 7, marks the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, ‘a date which will live in infamy,’… Seven decades later, infamy lives on, stealing childhoods, families, homes, lives. Now as another year comes to a close, we pray for peace … again and again … again and again … [Mali Under the Night Sky] is another hopeful, urgent prayer.” And the Midwest Book Review calls it “a soul-stirring picturebook about the difficulties faced by wartime refugees, and deserves the highest recommendation.” Youme Landowne is an energetic and joyful painter, book artist, and activist who thrives in the context of public art. Youme has lived in and learned from the United States, Kenya, Japan, Laos, Haiti, and Cuba. In all of these places, she has worked with communities and individuals to make art that honors personal and cultural wisdom, creating community murals, illustrating tiny books, and teaching poetry in schools.

Author : Robert D. Sander
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806145897
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Invasion of Laos, 1971 written by Robert D. Sander and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-02-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1971, while U.S. ground forces were prohibited from crossing the Laotian border, a South Vietnamese Army corps, with U.S. air support, launched the largest airmobile operation in the history of warfare, Lam Son 719. The objective: to sever the North Vietnamese Army’s main logistical artery, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, at its hub, Tchepone in Laos, an operation that, according to General Creighton Abrams, could have been the decisive battle of the war, hastening the withdrawal of U.S. forces and ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. The outcome: defeat of the South Vietnamese Army and heavy losses of U.S. helicopters and aircrews, but a successful preemptive strike that met President Nixon’s near-term political objectives. Author Robert Sander, a helicopter pilot in Lam Son 719, explores why an operation of such importance failed. Drawing on archives and interviews, and firsthand testimony and reports, Sander chronicles not only the planning and execution of the operation but also the maneuvers of the bastions of political and military power during the ten-year effort to end Communist infiltration of South Vietnam leading up to Lam Son 719. The result is a picture from disparate perspectives: the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations; the South Vietnamese government led by President Nguyen Van Thieu; and senior U.S. military commanders and army aviators. Sander’s conclusion is at once powerful and persuasively clear. Lam Son 719 was doomed in both the planning and execution—a casualty of domestic and international politics, flawed assumptions, incompetent execution, and the resolve of the North Vietnamese Army. A powerful work of military and political history, this book offers eloquent testimony that “failure, like success, cannot be measured in absolute terms.”

Author : Grant Evans
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789748709048
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Laos written by Grant Evans and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laos stands at the center of mainland Southeast Asia, sharing borders with all the main states in the region including China, so that when one touches on Laos, one touches the heart of the region. This study of culture and society in Laos inevitably leads into broader issues associated with all the surrounding societies and cultures concerning their origins and contemporary developments. Essays focus on the creation of the idea of Laos and its culture, whether it be through literature, tourism, or the activities of nationalists, thereby contributing to more general debates on the nature of Southeast Asian nationalism. They look at questions of minorities in Laos and issues of ethnic change. And they look at Laos in its regional context, and at Lao businessmen in their new global context. Grant Evans is reader in anthropology at the University of Hong Kong.