Reconfiguring Security: Buddhism and Moral Legitimacy in Cambodia

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.

The geopolitics of Buddhist reincarnation: contested futures of Tibetan leadership

“…Framed by both the Chinese and exile Tibetan authorities as a key source of legitimacy, Buddhism – and the issue of reincarnation in particular – has become a highly contested issue. As such, this case raises important questions regarding how ‘legitimacy is acquired and how social roles, power relations, and actions are ascribed meaning and value’ (Kent , 346). Buddhist geopolitics thus foregrounds the importance of examining the politicisation of religion (Grundy‐Warr ) and the role religion plays in shaping relations between power, legitimacy and (embodied) sovereignty.…”

Postwar Youth Violence: A Mirror of the Relationship between Youth and Adult Society

“…Although the Pagoda system was emptied of its religious content, it provides important resources for day-to-day survival and youth integration (Kent 2006). Men between the ages of 16 and 18 have the opportunity to study and serve the community for a year as an important pathway to adulthood.…”

Revolutionary securitization: an anthropological extension of securitization theory

“…In this connection, our main claim is that, notwithstanding its fruitful application to societies other than Western democracies (Bubandt 2005;Kent 2006;Wilkinson 2007;Vuori 2008), securitization theory retains what we call an implicit 'liberal' premise: that security, in its paradigmatic form, pertains to the protection that a state or other sovereign entity is able to provide to guarantee the conditions of its citizens' existence as relatively autonomous or free agents. In contrast to existing attempts to show how, suitably elaborated, this model can be 'applied' to various non-Western contexts, our anthropological strategy is to use the contingency of empirical materials (namely the Cuban Revolution and the political forms it instantiates) as a means for transforming the basic coordinates of the model itself.…”