Sacred bribes and violence deferred: Buddhist ritual in rural Cambodia

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 4-14

  Work, Courtney ^a  

^a Cornell University ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL TRADITION; MODERNIZATION; MORALITY; RURAL AREA; RURAL SOCIETY; VIOLENCE; RELIGION;

CAMBODIA;

EID: 84897889759     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463413000581     Document Type: Article

References (106)

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3. See Charles F. Keyes, 'Communist revolution and the Buddhist past in Cambodia', in Asian visions of authority: Religion and the modern states of East and Southeast Asia, ed. Charles F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall and Helen Hardacre (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994);
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7. Anne Ruth Hansen, 'Gaps in the world: Harm and violence in Khmer Buddhist narrative', in At the edge of the forest, p. 57.
8. The notion of a return to normalcy by way of Buddhism is also important among the rising middle class and scholars. For a well-done volume on the subject, see Alexandra Kent and David P. Chandler, ed. People of virtue: Reconfiguring religion, power and morality in Cambodia today (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2008).
9. Alexandra Kent, 'A Buddhist bouncer: Monastic adaptation to the ethos of desire in today's Cambodia', Journal of Contemporary Religion 24, 3 (2009): 291-303. The monk in Kent's story, the 'Buddhist bouncer', physically tackles violent youths at his temple's celebrations, putting an end to violence during the dances.
10. Émile Durkheim, The elementary forms of religious life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 [1912]).
11. Clifford Geertz, Negara: The theatre state in nineteenth-century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980);
12. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, politics, and power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
13. Catherine M. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
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18. and Judy Ledgerwood, 'Buddhist ritual and the reordering of social relations in Cambodia', South East Asia Research 20, 2 (2012): 191-206.
19. for descriptions of the spirits and transactions that inhabit the imaginary of the Pchum? Bin?d? in contemporary Cambodia. For pre-Khmer Rouge accounts, see Eveline Porée-Maspero, Étude sur les rites agraires des cambodgiens (Paris: Mouton, 1962), pp. 315-59;
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23. Alan Klima, The funeral casino: Meditation, massacre, and exchange with the dead in Thailand (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)
24. Heonik Kwon, Ghosts of war in Vietnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), for provocative discussions of the relationships with the dead in mainland Southeast Asia.
25. Ledgerwood, 'Buddhist ritual and the reordering of social relations in Cambodia', pp. 191-205.
26. See François Bizot Le figuier àcinq branches: Recherche sur le bouddhisme khmer (Paris: Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient [EFEO], 1976) and Le don de soi-même: Recherches sur le bouddhisme khmer (Paris: EFEO, 1981).
27. Maha Thera Narada, A manual of Abhidhamma (Abhidhammattha sangaha) (Kuala Lumpur: Buddhist Missionary Society 1975 [1956]), www.buddhanet.net, pp. 311, 338.
28. See Katherine A. Bowie, 'The alchemy of charity: Of class and Buddhism in Northern Thailand', American Anthropologist 100, 2 (1998): 469-81, for a discussion of the merit associated with giving, especially the parity of the relationship between offerings to beggars and to monks.
29. See Judy L. Ledgerwood, 'A tale of two temples: Communities and their wats', in Anthropology and community in Cambodia: Reflections on the work of May Ebihara, ed. John A. Marston (Caulfield: Monash University Press, 2011).
30. for a recent discussion of the undiminished importance of meritmaking in Cambodia, also May Mayko Ebihara, 'Svay, a Khmer village in Cambodia' (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1968)
31. Charles F. Keyes, 'Merit-transference in the kammic theory of popular Therava-da Buddhism', in Karma: An anthropological inquiry, ed. Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel, pp. 261-86 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), for historical precedent.
32. Susan M. Speigel, 'The role of the monk in Cambodian Buddhism: Crisis, change and continuity' (M.A. thesis, Northern Illinois University, 2009).
33. Webb Keane, Christian moderns: Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 19.
34. David P. Chandler, 'Going through the motions: Ritual and restorative aspects of the reign of King Duang', in Centers, symbols, and hierarchies: Essays on the classical states of Southeast Asia, ed. Lorraine Gesick and Michael Aung-Thwin (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1983), pp. 106-24;
35. Yang Sam, Buddhism in Cambodia 1795-1954;
36. Stanley J. Tambiah, World conqueror and world renouncer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
37. Yang Sam, Khmer Buddhism and politics from 1954 to 1984;
38. Nadezhda Bektimirova, 'The religious situation in Cambodia in the 1990s', Religion, state, and society 30, 1 (2002): 63-72.
39. Elizabeth Guthrie, 'Buddhist temples and Cambodian politics', in People and the 1998 national elections in Cambodia: Their voices, roles and impact on democracy, ed. John L. Vijghen and Caroline Hughes (Phnom Penh: Experts for Community Research, 2002), pp. 55-73;
40. Judy Ledgerwood, 'Ritual in 1990 Cambodian political theater: New songs at the edge of the forest', in At the edge of the forest, pp. 195-220.
41. John Marston, 'Constructing narratives of order: Religious-building projects and moral chaos', in At the edge of the forest, pp. 163-94;
42. Gyallay-Pap, Reconstructing the Cambodian polity, p. 93.
43. Guthrie, Buddhist temples and Cambodian politics.
44. Simon Springer, Cambodia's neoliberal order: Violence, authoritarianism, and the contestation of public space (London: Routledge, 2010);
45. Caroline Hughes and Kheang Un, eds, Cambodia's economic transformation (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2012);
46. Sovachana Pou, 'Progress and challenges of education in Cambodia today', in Cambodia: Progress and challenges since 1991, ed. Sothirak Pou, Geoff Wade and Mark Hong (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012).
47. Caroline Hughes et al., 'Local leaders and big business in three communes', in Cambodia's economic transformation, pp. 245-65;
48. Andrew R.C. Marshall and Prak Chan Thul, 'China gambles on Cambodia's shrinking forests', Reuters, 7 Mar. 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/ 03/07/us-cambodia-forests- idUSTRE82607N20120307;
49. Paul Vrieze and Kuch Naren, 'Six villagers reported shot in Snuol land dispute', Phnom Penh Post, 29 July 2012.
50. Ian Charles Harris, ed., Buddhism, power and political order (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 3.
51. Bunchan Mul, 'The umbrella war of 1942', in Peasants and politics in Kampuchea, 1942-1981, ed. Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua (London: Zed, 1982).
52. Bektimirova, The religious situation in Cambodia in the 1990s, p. 67.
53. Ian Harris, Cambodian Buddhism: History and practice (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), pp. 190-224.
54. Simon Springer, 'Culture of violence or violent orientalism? Neoliberalisation and imagining the "savage Other"in post-transitional Cambodia', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34, 3 (2009): 305-19.
55. See also Heng Seiha, Kim Sedara, So Sokbunthoeun, Decentralised governance in a hybrid polity: Localisation of decentralisation reform in Cambodia (Working Paper no. 63, Cambodian Development Resource Institute, Phnom Penh, 2011).
56. For a discussion of the ways that monks become embroiled in this process see Ian Charles Harris, 'Entrepreneurialism and charisma: Two modes of doing business in post-Pol Pot Cambodian Buddhism', in Expressions of Cambodia: The politics of tradition, identity, and change, ed. Leakthina Chan-Pech Ollier and Tim Winter (London: Routledge, 2006).
57. Penny Edwards, 'The moral geology of the present: Structuring morality, menace and merit', in People of virtue, pp. 213-38;
58. Hughes et al., Local leaders and big business in three communes, p. 259.
59. Kent, 'Peace, power and pagodas', pp. 77-97;
60. Harris, 'Entrepreneurialism and charisma';
61. Speigel, 'The role of the monk in Cambodian Buddhism'.
62. The same distinction between state power and Buddha power is noted in, William Collins, Grassroots civil society in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: Center for Advanced Study, 1998).
63. See Joakim Öjendal and Kim Sedara, 'Korob, kaud, klach: In search of agency in rural Cambodia', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37, 3 (2006): 507-26.
64. Kent, 'Peace, power and pagodas', p. 77.
65. Collins, Grassroots civil society, p. 27.
66. Caroline Hughes, The political economy of Cambodia's transition, 1991-2001 (London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. xx.
67. Maha Thera Narada, Manual of Abhidhamma, p. 311.
68. Kent, 'A Buddhist bouncer', pp. 291-303.
69. Melina T. Czymoniewicz-Klippel, 'Bad boys, big trouble: Subcultural formation and resistance in a Cambodian village'.
70. Youth & Society (2011): 1-20 [online, doi: 10.1177/0044118X11422545].
71. James W. Messerschmidt, Masculinities and crime: Critique and reconceptualization of theory (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993);
72. See also Gary Barker, Dying to be men: Youth, masculinity, and social exclusion (London: Routledge, 2005).
73. George Coedès, Inscriptions du cambodge (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1937-66).
74. Seni Ni uan Huat, Cpâp prus, cpâp sri (Bhnami Beñ: Seni Ni uan Huat, 1965).
75. see, Robert W. Connell, 'Masculinities and globalization', in Gender through the prism of difference, ed. M.B. Zinn, P. Hondagneu-Sotelo, and M. Messner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
76. Richard Howson, Challenging hegemonic masculinity (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 73-6.
77. N.L. Deutsch and E. Theodorou, 'Aspiring, consuming, becoming: Youth identity in a culture of consumption', Youth and Society 42, 2 (2010): 229.
78. Trude Jacobsen, 'Being broh: The good, the bad, and the successful man in Cambodia', in Men and masculinities in Southeast Asia, ed. Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 95.
79. Typically knives, swords, and clubs-no one can afford a gun.
80. See Sean Afnan Morrissey, 'Performing risks: Catharsis, carnival and capital in the risk society', Journal of Youth Studies 11, 4 (2008): 413-27.
81. Relations between the Khmer and the Cham in Cambodia are not typically marked by violence; see Kok-Thay Eng, 'From the Khmer Rouge to Hambali: Cham identities in a global age' (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2013). This contrasts with some Muslim minorities in Southeast Asia
82. , see, Moshe Yegar, Between integration and secession: The Muslim communities of the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, and western Burma/Myanmar (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002);
83. Irving Chan Johnson, The Buddha on Mecca's verandah: Encounters, mobilities, and histories along the Malaysian-Thai border (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012).
84. See Annuska Derks, Khmer women on the move: Exploring work and life in urban Cambodia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), pp. 179-83, for a discussion of morality and agency among Phnom Penh's migrant workers.
85. Durkheim, The elementary forms of religious life.
86. Durkheim, The elementary forms of religious life, Ibid., p. 164.
87. Keane, Christian moderns, p. 20.
88. Brian Massumi, Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).
89. Keane, Christian moderns, p. 172.
90. Keane, Christian moderns, Ibid., p. 338.
91. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, pp. 105-6.
92. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, Ibid., p. 399.
93. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, Ibid., pp. 8, 218.
94. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 250.
95. Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael Puett and Bennet Simon, Ritual and its consequences: An essay on the limits of sincerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 42, 25.
96. Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael Puett and Bennet Simon, Ritual and its consequences: An essay on the limits of sincerity, Ibid., p. 100.
97. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, p. 106.
98. Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and religion in the making of humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 51.
99. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 175.
100. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, p. 105.
101. See Chandler, 'Going through the motions';
102. Harris, Cambodian Buddhism: History and practice, p. 46.
103. Penny Edwards, Cambodge the cultivation of a nation, 1860-1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), p. 169.
104. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 175.
105. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, p. 218.
106. Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, Ibid., p. 106.