Politics

This book contributes to the ongoing debate on the complex transition in weak states from war to peace and from authoritarianism to liberal democracy. The analysis assesses the impact of foreign intervention on Cambodia's state and societal structures.

Scholars from a number of disciplines have, especially since the advent of the war on terror, developed critical perspectives on a cluster of related topics in contemporary life: militarization, surveillance, policing, biopolitics (the relation between state power and physical bodies), and the like.

This fascinating book recounts the remarkable tale of a career U.N. official caught in the turmoil of international and domestic politics swirling around Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. First as a member of the U.N. transitional authority and then as a personal envoy to the U.N. secretary-general, Benny Widyono re-creates the fierce battles for power centering on King Norodom Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and Prime Minister Hun Sen.

On October 23, 1991, four Cambodian factions and many external powers signed a UN Permanent Five-initiated peace agreement to end the Cambodian conflict. This book explains the UN role in turning the Cambodian battlefield into a ballot box.

This is the first book on the transformations wrought by Cambodia's 2002-08 economic boom. It explores the impact of the boom on governance, economic structure, and opportunities for the poor. It provides new insights into the relationship between economic growth and political stability in post-conflict societies. It is a cross-disciplinary study involving Cambodian and foreign scholars.

This book is an account and analysis of the United Nations peacekeeping operation mounted in Cambodia between 1991 and 1993 in fulfillment of the 1991 Paris Peace Settlement. Though jeopardized by lack of Khmer Rouge cooperation, the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (U.N.T.A.C.) successfully guided Cambodia back to democracy and relative peace. Findlay reveals the successes and failures of U.N.T.A.C. and draws useful lessons for future U.N. peacekeeping operations.

While international criminal courts have often been declared as bringing ‘justice’ to victims, their procedures and outcomes historically showed little reflection of the needs and interests of victims themselves. This situation has changed significantly over the last sixty years; victims are increasingly acknowledged as having various ‘rights’, while their need for justice has been deployed as a means of justifying the establishment of international criminal courts. However, it is arguable that the goals of political and legal elites continue to be given precedence, and the ability of courts to deliver ‘justice to victims’ remains contested.

Illuminating developments in contemporary Cambodia with political and aesthetic theory, this book analyses the country’s violent transition from socialism to capitalism through an innovative method that combines the aesthetic approach and critical theory.

This ambitious cross-disciplinary study of Buddhist modernism in colonial Cambodia breaks new ground in understanding the history and development of religion and colonialism in Southeast Asia. In How to Behave, Anne Hansen argues for the importance of Theravada Buddhist ethics for imagining and articulating what it means to be modern in early-twentieth-century Cambodia.

May Mayko Ebihara (1934–2005) was the first American anthropologist to conduct ethnographic research in Cambodia. Svay provides a remarkably detailed picture of individual villagers and of Khmer social structure and kinship, agriculture, politics, and religion. The world Ebihara described would soon be shattered by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.