Violence and the Civilising Process in Cambodia

Abstract

In 1939, the German sociologist Norbert Elias published his groundbreaking work The Civilizing Process, which has come to be regarded as one of the most influential works of sociology today. In this insightful new study tracing the history of violence in Cambodia, the authors evaluate the extent to which Elias's theories can be applied in a non-Western context. Drawing from historical and contemporary archival sources, constabulary statistics, victim surveys, and newspaper reports, Broadhurst, Bouhours, and Bouhours chart trends and forms of violence throughout Cambodia from the mid nineteenth century to the present day. Analysing periods of colonisation, anticolonial wars, independence, civil war, the revolutionary terror of the 1970s, and postconflict development, the authors assess whether violence has decreased and whether such a decline can be attributed to Elias's civilising process, which identifies a series of universal factors that have historically reduced violence.

Cascades of Violence: War, Crime and Peacebuilding Across South Asia

“…We think that, at least until 1914, Pinker (2011) is right that not only Europe (Eisner 2003), but also Asia (Broadhurst et al 2015;Spierenburg 2008Spierenburg , 2013ter Haar 2000) experienced perhaps nine centuries of long-run decline in the rate of violence from killing by war and crime (including state crime).…”

“…Broadhurst et al 2015;Eisner 2003;Pinker 2011;Spierenberg 2008Spierenberg , 2013. Scholars in the tradition of Elias (2000) conceive this as a 'civilising process ' (e.g.…”

“…Scholars in the tradition of Elias (2000) conceive this as a 'civilising process ' (e.g. Pinker 2011;Spierenberg 2008Spierenberg , 2013, referring to data from the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, England, Scandinavia and across Europe and Asia (Broadhurst et al 2015;ter Haar 2000).…”

“…Whether scholars of Europe such as Elias himself are accounting for the decivilising reversals of the Holocaust or scholars of Cambodia (Broadhurst et al 2015) are accounting for the decivilising reversals of the Khmer Rouge genocide, there is a struggle within the terms of that theory to accommodate such dramatic reversals. We conclude in Chapter 11 that the risks of cascades of domination and violence and the opportunities for cascades of nonviolence and liberation are always in contest at any historical moment.…”

Socio-political Violence in Cambodia Between 1990 and 2008: An Explanatory Mixed Methods Study of Social Coherence

“…We know that the entire Cambodian population wants peace'. (Thayer, 1998b) The most compelling and rigorous accounts of declining socio-political violence in Cambodia after 1993 have been presented by The Asia Foundation and Broadhurst, Bouhours, and Bouhours (2015). For example, as shown in Figure 11, The Asia Foundation (2017) compiled data on politically motivated killings in Cambodia from 1993 to 2013, finding a sharp decrease from 380 killings in 1993 to 40 killings by 1998, with a steady decline to 23 in 2008 and to zero in 2013.…”