Hybridization of Sport and Culture in Southeast Asia: The Case of Chinlone

Abstract

Chinlone is an ancient Burmese ball game that is considered to be the national sport of Myanmar. What makes the sport truly unique is that it is not competitive in nature, and this is a fact that makes it different in comparison to other major ball games. The primary purposes of this paper is to further understand Chinlone’ s history and how it is differentiated by other kickball games of Southeast Asia. During the colonization of Burma by the British, it began to adhere to the more ‘Western idea of sport’, something which was nonexistent in traditional Burmese society. Then, in the postcolonial period, it was used as a nation-building tool by the newly independent Burmese government to instill a sense of national pride and unity amongst the people of Myanmar, and it was during this period that the sport truly went through a process of ‘gamification’ where it was completely changed to resemble a modern sport.