Cambodia

A System In Waiting: Improving Service Delivery Through Decentralisation Reforms In Cambodia

by Luc Spyckerelle

Decentralization Reforms and Commune-Level Services Delivery In Cambodia

by Luc Spyckerelle

Transitional Justice in Cambodia: The Coincidence of Power and Principle

by Kirsten Ainley

For publication in Renee Jeffery ed. Transitional Justice in the Asia-Pacific (under review).

More than thirty years after the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the deaths of over one and a half million people, and... more More than thirty years after the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the deaths of over one and a half million people, and after two amnesties for Khmer Rouge crimes were enacted in Cambodia, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has been established, ostensibly to help heal the trauma of victims of Khmer Rouge atrocities and bring about justice. This chapter outlines the key features of the ECCC and assesses its successes and failures according to its own mandate. It goes on, however, to argue that accepting the restricted mandate of the court is a mistake, as it prevents a full discussion of accountability in Cambodia. I argue that the establishment of the ECCC represents less a victory for victims or for advocates of transitional justice than it is a reflection of the interests of the Cambodian government and those international actors who collaborated with a series of repressive regimes in Cambodia, including the current Hun Sen regime. By agreeing to a limited regime of transitional justice, the government has diverted diplomatic and donor attention away from allegations of corruption and human rights abuses in the present, towards its role as ‘saviour of the nation’ in the past. The international community is keen (now) to promote justice in Cambodia, and has significant resources available with which to incentivise or coerce domestic actors to allow a fair and independent court, but seems unwilling to use them. Unfortunately, international principle has coincided with domestic power in a way that does little for the victims of atrocities in whose name the ECCC was established.

Domestic violence report - Signe Leth 2012

by Signe Leth

Branding Authenticity: Cambodian Ikat in Transnational Artisan Partnerships (TAPs)

by Susan Falls

A Christian’s Introduction to the Religious Blending in Cambodia

by Gerard Ravasco

Published in "East Asian Pastoral Review" Vol. 4, No. 1, 2007

Conference paper presented as: "Towards a Christian Pastoral Approach to Cambodian Culture" at The 7th Socio-Cultural Research Congress on Cambodia, 15-17 November, 2004, Royal University of Phnom Penh.

We live in a time of Globalization, where we find ourselves rubbing shoulders and working together in one place with... more We live in a time of Globalization, where we find ourselves rubbing shoulders and working together in one place with all kinds of people belonging to different races and different creeds. We live in a world which now finds itself immersed in deep global conflicts (terrorism, suicide bombings, political retaliations) which many attribute to religious fanaticism. Thus we can only continue to live peacefully if we maintain that respect for each others beliefs. This is the global dimension this paper wishes to bring forth.

In our present situation, if many of us expatriates live far from our own native land and we live with people of another culture, understanding their milieu will certainly help us understand the people of that place. And since religion is tied up to a particular language and culture, particularly here in Cambodia, it would be worthwhile to study the different religious influences brought about through the centuries upon Cambodian culture. Hence the social dimension of the paper.

The third dimension would be a practical one. Understanding the differences between religions, we could focus more on the bridges that unite rather than the walls that separate us. In this way we realize that being different does not lessen our humanity but rather enriches it.

The paper will present a historical overview of the religious history of Cambodia. The literary survey used in this paper will then attempt to list and describe some particular influences of each of these religions (Animism, Brahmanism, Buddhism) to the Cambodian way of living at the present. Then the paper will try to infer some insights on the observations made focusing on how to build bridges for dialogue between Christians and Khmer Buddhists.

The paper searches into the intertwining of Animism, Brahmanism and Buddhism into what is now uniquely Cambodia’s national religion and how this would impact other religions now entering Cambodia specifically Christianity.

Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.

The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of... more The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that have swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well-understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi-nomadic lifestyles, barter economies, and–until recently–widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country’s majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this article examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.

‘Khmer Women on the Move: Exploring Work and Life in Urban Cambodia’. By Annuska Derks. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 20(2): 263-264.

by Sophorntavy Vorng

Book Review

Retour sur le drame de l'Île des Diamants : l'investissement immobilier des grands projets urbains à Phnom Penh

by Gabriel Fauveaud

Cet article se propose de revenir sur la mort, suite à un mouvement de foule qui eut lieu le 22 novembre 2010, de plus... more Cet article se propose de revenir sur la mort, suite à un mouvement de foule qui eut lieu le 22 novembre 2010, de plus de 350 personnes sur le pont d’un grand projet urbain privé actuellement en construction à Phnom-Penh. Il s’agira pour nous, à partir de ce drame marquant, de souligner certaines dynamiques contemporaines de la construction des espaces urbains de la capitale cambodgienne. A travers le grand projet de l’Île des Diamants, nous souhaitons interroger le rôle des grands promoteurs immobiliers dans la fabrication de la capitale. Pour ce faire, nous évoquerons l’internationalisation des modes de construction en Asie du Sud-Est et au Cambodge qui se caractérise par un retrait de la planification urbaine et une multiplication des projets urbains privés. L’exemple de l’Île des Diamants nous permettra d’illustrer certaines grandes tendances de l’urbanisation à Phnom-Penh. Nous montrerons comment l’évolution du discours sur la ville moderne génère des antagonismes au sein de la politique urbaine actuelle, et interrogerons la capacité des grands investisseurs immobiliers à fabriquer des espaces urbains pérennes.

Book review of Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia (2011)

by Ian Baird

Book reviewed by Ian G. Baird, Journal of Asian Studies 71(2): 581-583 (May 2012).

The neoliberalization of security and violence in Cambodia’s transition

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2009. The neoliberalization of security and violence in Cambodia's transition. Human Security in East Asia: Challenges for Collaborative Action. Ed. Sorpong Peou. New York: Routledge, pp. 125-141.

This chapter seeks to deconstruct the implications of shifting security’s frame of reference from the state to the... more This chapter seeks to deconstruct the implications of shifting security’s frame of reference from the state to the individual, and the potential for this scalar adjustment to be colonized by the purely economic goal of market preservation. These concerns are placed in the empirical context of Cambodia’s UN sponsored transition in the early 1990s, which effectively served as the pilot programme of the emerging human security agenda. The UN’s orchestration of the Cambodian ‘peace process’ is argued to have allowed the organization to formalize the newly minted human security doctrine during a self-congratulatory fervor that followed in the wake of what was presumed to be a successful transition to peace. However, the violence that swelled both during and after the transition reveals the human security discourse as deceptive, having very little to do with the prevention of violence other than in a rhetorical sense. Rather, the (in)actions of the international community in response to extrajudicial murders, threats of secession, electoral fraud, and coup d'état suggest that human security can be read as a pretext that effectively translates into the acceptance and promotion of the political status quo, as secured hegemony for the reigning political party means a secured marketplace open to foreign interests.

Gender Relations In the Khmer Home: Post Conflict Perspectives

by Katherine Brickell

2007. PhD thesis: London School of Economics

Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign... more Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of capitalism/primitive accumulation, civilization/savagery, and law/violence, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing 'trilateral of logics'. In deciphering this triadic system, this article offers a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal process, and its civilizing effects, which together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Proceeding as a diagnostic assessment of sovereign power, where although signposted by Cambodia's contemporary experiences of violent land conflict, this article is not intended as a fine-grained empirical analysis. Instead, it forwards a theoretical dialogue where Cambodia's neoliberalizing processes offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique, where in particular it is argued that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodia's legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills, but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.

Cambodia's Legacy and the Responsibility to Protect in Asia

by Alistair Cook

Co-authored with Lina Gong

Articulated neoliberalism: the specificity of patronage, kleptocracy, and violence in Cambodia's neoliberalization

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Articulated neoliberalism: the specificity of patronage, kleptocracy, and violence in Cambodia's neoliberalization. Environment and Planning A. 43 (11) 2554-2570.

Focusing exclusively on external forces risks producing an over-generalized account of a ubiquitous neoliberalism,... more Focusing exclusively on external forces risks producing an over-generalized account of a ubiquitous neoliberalism, which insufficiently accounts for the profusion of local variegations that currently comprise the neoliberal project as a series of articulations with existing political economic circumstances. Although neoliberal economics were initially promoted in the global south through the auspices of structural adjustment programs designed by the International Financial Institutions, powerful global south elites were only too happy to oblige. Neoliberalism frequently reveals opportunities for well-connected government officials to informally control market and material rewards, allowing them to easily line their own pockets. It is in this sense of the local appropriation of neoliberal ideas that scholars must go beyond conceiving of ‘neoliberalism-in-general’ as a singular and fully realized policy regime, ideological form, or regulatory framework, and work towards conceiving a plurality of ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ with particular characteristics arising from mutable geohistorical outcomes that are embedded within national, regional, and local process of market-driven socio-spatial transformation. What constitutes ‘actually existing’ neoliberalism in Cambodia as distinctly Cambodian is the ways in which the patronage system has allowed local elites to co-opt, transform, and (re)articulate neoliberal reforms through a framework that ‘asset strips’ public resources, thereby increasing peoples’ exposure to corruption, coercion, and violence. It is to such an 'articulation agenda' that this article attends, as in seeking to provide a more nuanced reading to recent work on neoliberalism in Cambodia by outlining some of its salient characteristics, I reveal a more empirical basis to theorizations of ‘articulated neoliberalism’.

Telemedicine by email in remote Cambodia

by Paul Heinzelmann

A Rapid Study of Fish and Fisheries; and Livelihoods and Natural Resources along the Sesan River

by Ian Baird

Ian G. Baird (1995)
Report prepared for Oxfam UK and Novib
Ban Lung, Ratanakiri, Cambodia

Wilderness and Cultural Landscape: Settlement, Agriculture, and Land and Resource Tenure in and adjacent to Virachey National Park, Northeast Cambodia

by Ian Baird

Jeremy Ironside and Ian G. Baird (2003)
Report prepared for BPAMP, Ban Lung, Ratanakiri, Cambodia

Fisheries Bioecology at the Khone Falls (Mekong River, Southern Laos)

by Ian Baird

Eric Baran, Ian G. Baird, and Gregory Cans (2005)
WorldFish Center, Penang

Bayfish: A Model of Environmental Factors Driving Fish Production in the Lower Mekong Basin

by Ian Baird

Eric Baran, Ian Makrin and Ian G. Baird (2002)