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ID:
144097
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Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the ongoing hybrid war crimes tribunal taking place in Cambodia — in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) — in relation to the simultaneous eviction of the Boeung Kak Lake community in the capital, Phnom Penh. Presenting these two phenomena alongside one another highlights the contradiction inherent in the liberal peace model's humanitarian rhetoric of societal reconstruction and its economic imperatives, which serve the interests of the elites. The material discussed here suggests that so-called transitional justice interventions may accompany a period of stabilisation, which is good for the global market, but do little to enhance fairness and peace for ordinary people.
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2 |
ID:
107938
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Publication |
2011.
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Summary/Abstract |
Using Cambodia as a case study, this article takes an anthropological stance to explore how the penetration of global neoliberal values impacts upon understandings of moral order and thereby influences gender-based violence in war-torn societies. It argues that the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment programmes and radical free-market reforms affect not only the politico-economic climate but also moral, social and cosmological order. This can generate fears about the decay of 'culture' and, since female propriety is often equated with national virtue, the female body may then be subjected to intense policing and violent disciplining. The article describes how some Cambodian women are responding to violations by seeking moral rehabilitation in the Buddhist temple. Although the patriarchal structure of the temple may seem to be anything but empowering for women, religious participation by violated women makes cultural sense. The material presented here therefore challenges us to consider whether Cambodia's brutal history and supposedly misogynistic culture is experienced as the greatest threat for vulnerable women today, or whether it is the absorption of war-torn societies by the global system, and the cultural disintegration this is felt to engender, that is the more pernicious factor.
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3 |
ID:
078176
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Publication |
2007.
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Summary/Abstract |
Cambodia is now in the midst of reconstruction after decades of organised violence and socio-cultural disruption. This paper explores how rural Cambodians are trying to recreate order in their local worlds and it questions what impact the recent deluge of consumer values, delivered through a post-socialist political filter, is having on these efforts.
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4 |
ID:
075397
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Publication |
2006.
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Summary/Abstract |
The issue of security has recently gained acute relevance for theoreticians and policymakers, but the way in which culture relates to security has yet to be given the attention it deserves. This article argues that all discourses and practices of security - ours as well as those of others - are cultural in nature, are historically positioned, and therefore inescapably plural. The article uses a case study of today's revival of Buddhism in Cambodia to illustrate how an anthropological approach may be applied in order to begin challenging the inherent ethnocentricity of much security theory. It explores a particular indigenous scheme of security, and how that scheme relates to power and moral legitimacy. The way Cambodians understand and deal with danger should, it is contended, alert us to the need for social scientists and policymakers to seek culturally sensitive understandings of security. This may help us make sense of local behaviour that may seem unreasonable according to our values; it can provoke us to check and refine our theory rather than indiscriminately apply it; and it may help limit the hegemony of privileged systems of ideas and the violence these can sometimes do to disempowered systems.
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5 |
ID:
108965
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Publication |
2011.
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Summary/Abstract |
This article draws upon recently-gathered anthropological and other data from Cambodia to explore how some Cambodians move beyond the constraints of social differentiation and order to access higher realms of meaning. This enables communion, security and liberation from social patterns of misrecognition. Gender is one of the primary principles of social differentiation and in recent years the relationship between gender, security and development has attracted the interest particularly of feminist scholars. Attention is often focused upon the misogynistic aspects of gender differentiation. Proponents of this kind of discourse tend not to concern themselves with how women and men may actually transcend rather than challenge gender order or with how they may commune with one another in ways that generate security. Focusing instead on the notions that are meaningful to the members of a given society may reveal some of the shortcomings of current security, development and feminist discourse. The material presented here is analysed by adapting some of the ideas that Roy Rappaport developed in his study of the 'cognized models' and liturgical rituals of the Maring of New Guinea. Rappaport's model helps to reveal how, by navigating multiple and overlapping levels of meaning, Cambodians may negotiate and even invert social order in ways that can be transformative, emancipatory and healing.
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