Spirit cults and Buddhist practice in Kep Province, Cambodia

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew O’Lemmon
Keyword(s):  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Common Type ◽  
Buddhist Temple ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Democratic Kampuchea

This article focuses on the growth of spirit cults in Cambodia since the end of the Democratic Kampuchea regime through an examination of the most common type of tutelary spirit,neak ta, in Kompong Tralach in Kep Province. The role ofneak tais discussed in relation to Buddhism through their representation in local legends and myths, as reported by villagers and monks, and as the focus of rituals and ceremonies, including some conducted in a Buddhist temple, Wat Kompong Tralach. This provides ethnographic data showing that during and following the destruction of Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge, and the resulting loss of monks and knowledgeable lay Buddhist specialists, Cambodians turned increasingly to older traditions such as the belief in the power and efficacy ofneak tato help fill a void. This examination of the enduring place and growing importance of beliefs such as theneak tacult within Khmer cosmology and religious practice following decades of war and recovery deepens our understanding of the reconstruction of Buddhism in Cambodia.

Agrarian Marxism, Animal Geographies, and non-human labor in Democratic Kampuchea

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110387
Author(s):  
James Tyner ◽  
Stian Rice
Keyword(s):  
Water Buffalo ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
State Building ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Genocide Studies ◽  
Human Labor ◽  
Two Bodies ◽  
Draught Animals ◽  
Democratic Kampuchea

Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) embarked on a genocidal program of sweeping economic, social, and political change. In an effort to modernize Democratic Kampuchea, as Cambodia was renamed, CPK officials forced the entire populace to clear forests; build dams, canals, and reservoirs; and grow rice in an effort to accumulate rapidly the necessary capital for industrialization. In doing so, upwards of two million people died from disease, hunger and malnutrition, torture, and execution. The broad coordinates of the genocide are well-established. To date, however, no scholarship has examined critically the role of non-human animals in the agricultural transformations initiated during the Cambodian genocide. Drawing on two bodies of scholarship, Agrarian Marxism and Animal Geographies, in this paper we examine the role of draught animals in the regime’s plans to build an economy around agricultural expansion and rice production for export. Specifically, we trace the new productive relationships into which Cambodia’s water buffalo and oxen became enmeshed, and the structures of violence within which these animals played an essential part. We find not only that the work of draught animals materially contributed to the CPK’s plans for state-building, but in the process, the new state–animal relationship became an exemplar of the idealized relationship between the CPK and its human laborers. We conclude that the human–animal relationship provides key insights into the mass violence that transpired in Democratic Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge and to this end encourage future engagement with interspecies relationships in the Cambodian context and in genocide studies more broadly.

Role of an architect in projects involving EPC contracts

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 01-15
Author(s):  
Adyathan Dasyapu ◽  
Greeshmika Nagubilli ◽  
Jayanth V Kutcharlapati ◽  
Hari Prasad Guntuku ◽  
Shruti S Nagdeve
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Critical Points ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Common Type ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Related Case ◽  
The Public

Purpose: Engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts are on their way to becoming the most common type of contract used by the private sector for large-scale infrastructure projects. Every project requires a strong relationship between all of the experts participating in EPC projects and the client. This relationship must be solidly established by an architect; otherwise, the project may fail for all parties involved, including the client, contractor, lenders, government, and others. The purpose of this study is to identify if the working of the EPC contracts is favourable for the architectural profession, and to identify the way in which the working could be improved. Methodology: A qualitative approach was applied to analyze the critical points of EPC contracts based upon reviews of related case studies from the public sector and supplementary interviews with professionals in the field. Main Finding: The architect's role in an EPC contract is not crucial and is equal to other stakeholders involved in the project. Also, EPC contractors have the power to dictate the workflow of the project and hence, architects might have to compromise in terms of the design, compensation, etc. Implications: It is very important for every project to have an outcome based on each stakeholders/consultants inputs specially on larger projects, this article is a step towards understanding the role of architects under an EPC contract as the future projects will come under its purview.  Novelty: The study is done under the lens of a newly graduated architect and not as any other professional, thereby trying to develop an understanding for fresh architects.

Time and the Visibility of Slow Atrocity Violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Randle C. DeFalco
Keyword(s):  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Cumulative Effects ◽  
Selective Recognition ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Abstract This article explores the role of time in obfuscating the criminality of international crimes committed through the cumulative effects of various actions that, on their own, appear banal and seemingly non-criminal in nature. It demonstrates how assessments of individual culpability continue to predominantly focus on the identification of discrete transactions that are intuitively recognizable as criminal in nature. This approach helps perpetuate the obfuscation of the criminality of slow, unfamiliar atrocity processes lacking easily identifiable moments of criminality. The selective recognition of atrocity crimes in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period and post-independence Myanmar are analyzed as examples of this failure to recognize the criminality of international crimes committed through slow, attritive means.

Conserving inequality: How private conservation and property developers ‘fix’ spatial injustice in South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110663
Author(s):  
Lerato Thakholi ◽  
Bram Büscher
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Conservation Property ◽  
Private Profit ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Housing Estates ◽  
Property Developers

In 2016, South Africa launched its National Biodiversity Economy Strategy. This strategy aims to facilitate the development of a ‘wildlife economy’ as a solution to unemployment, loss of biodiversity and rural development. Central to the strategy is the role of private conservation actors, who keenly posit their commercial model as the best way to achieve these objectives. This stands in sharp contrast to recent critiques that suggest that private conservation reinforces structural inequality by denying access to land and perpetuating unjust labour conditions. Using ethnographic data from the South African Lowveld region that includes the Kruger National Park, the paper takes these points further by arguing that a rapidly growing alliance between private conservation and property developers actively conserve inequality by maintaining and even extending spatial injustice in the region. Two popular recent manifestations of this alliance in particular, share block systems that distribute ownership of access to real estate in private reserves and wildlife housing estates, have established new conservation-property linkages that entrench capitalist socioecological fixes. Not only do these initiatives lead to further engrained spatial injustice, we conclude that this conservation-property alliance at the centre of the ‘wildlife economy’ also willingly sacrifices environmental sustainability on the altar of white conservation imaginations and private profit.

scholarly journals DAKWAH COMMUNICATION STRATEGY IN EMPOWERING THE LABOR COMMUNITY IN PANJANG DISTRICT BANDAR LAMPUNG CITY TO IMPROVE THEIR RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 353
Author(s):  
Aliyandi Aliyandi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Inhibiting Factor ◽  
Savings And Loan ◽  
The Government ◽  
Taking Care

This research is to explain about the role of Dakwah communication strategy in the empowerment of the labor community in Panjang Sub-District, Bandar Lampung in improving the practice of the implementation of sharia. This is descriptive qualitative research, where the data were collected throuh interviews, observation, and documentation. The data were then analyzed qualitatively using inductive thinking approach. The result of this research shows that the communication strategy used by  the preacher in Panjang Sub-district was by giving motivation through the message of dawah conveyed to the community, Providing religious guidance, including religious activities such as five-time prayer, memorizing prayers, taking care of the corps and protecting the environment, establishing good relations with  the community, either through regular recitation at the ta’lim assembly or taking the advantage of Arisan for savings and loan activities, interacting and seeing firsthand situation and conditions that exist in the community, then cooperate with the government by providing assistance in the form of funds and food. The most inhibiting factor is mad’u, especially in terms of understanding the message (somatic), closed to change (self-image), and motivation, marked by the passiveness  communicant in receiving da’wah from the preacher because the preacher can not fully know the limits of somatic knowledge from the community.

scholarly journals From the Crisis of Secularism to the Predicament of Post-Secularism

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-412
Author(s):  
Michael Staudigl
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Religious Imagination ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Inherent Ambiguity ◽  
Productive Role

Abstract This article offers an interpretation of late modern social imaginaries and their relationship to religion and violence. I hypothesize that the transition from the ‘secular age’ to a so-called ‘post-secular constellation’ calls on us to critically reconsider the modern trope that all too unambiguously ties religion and violence together. Discussing the fault lines of a secularist modernity spinning out of control today on various fronts, I argue that the narrative semantics of the so-called ‘return of religion’ is frequently adopted as an imaginative catalyst for confronting these contemporary discontents – for better and worse. In linking recent work on ‘social imaginaries’ with Paul Ricœur’s discussion of the productive role of imagination in social life, I then explore the transformative potential of religious imagination in its inherent ambiguity. In conclusion I demonstrate that this quality involves a poietic license to start all over, one which can be used to expose both the violence of our beloved political ideals of freedom and sovereignty, as well as their repercussions on religious practice.

scholarly journals Association of Genetic Polymorphisms in GSTP1, GSTM1, and GSTT1 Genes with Vesicoureteral Reflux Susceptibility in the Children of Southeast Iran

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sima SHAHROKHZADEH ◽  
Azam SOLEIMANI ◽  
Dor-Mohammad KORDI-TAMANDANI ◽  
Mohammad Hossein SANGTARASH ◽  
Omid NEJATI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Vesicoureteral Reflux ◽  
Genetic Risk ◽  
Protective Role ◽  
Common Type ◽  
Chain Reaction ◽  
Eastern Iran ◽  
Multifunctional Enzymes ◽  
Glutathione S Transferases ◽  
Polymerase Chain

Background: Vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) disease is the most common type of urinary tract anomalies in children. Genetic risk factors may be associated with the etiology of VUR. The role of the Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) as multifunctional enzymes is cellular oxidative stress handling. This is the first study aimed at evaluating the relative risk of GSTP1, GSTM1, and GSTT1 polymorphisms in VUR susceptibility in children and provides new important insights into the genetics of affected children. Methods: The study was done in 2013 in Sistan and Baluchestan University, eastern Iran. Genotyping of three GSTP1, GSTM1, and GSTT1 genes were determined using the multiplex polymerase chain reaction assay in 216 reactions for 72 VUR children and 312 reactions for 104 healthy controls. Results: The presence of GSTT1 deletion was associated with high risk of VUR in children, whereas GSTP1 and GSTM1 genotypes did not show the same effect. Furthermore, the combination of GSTT1/GSTM1 and GSTT1/ GSTP1 genotypes showed a significant influence on lower risk of VUR in children. Conclusion: Deletion of GSTT1 functional gene is a genetic risk factor causing VUR in children. Interestingly, the combination of GSTM1 and GSTP1 null genotypes with GSTT1 has shown a protective role against risk of GSTT1 deletion.

scholarly journals Accessing Justice Through Victim Participation at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Yesberg
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime ◽  
National Reconciliation

This article explores the role of victims in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) – the forum tasked with bringing leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice. Victims have been afforded broad participatory rights at the ECCC, including the opportunity to be joined as third parties to the trial. These innovations must be applauded. However, the role victims can play in the wider process of national reconciliation remains under-utilised. This article suggests that victim participation can be used to increase public accessibility to the trial to ensure proceedings occupy a more positive, and prominent space in Cambodia's healing process.

scholarly journals Peranan Simbol Benda-Benda Langit Dalam Perkembangan Religi Masyarakat Di Indonesia

1999 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Nfn. Hartatik
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
Global Function ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Rock Paintings

Celestial objects are always present in the form of symbols depicted in rock paintings, nekara, megalithic concepts, symbols of royal triumph and in conventional myths as can be found in the ethnographic data of several tribes in Indonesia. In general, celestial bodies, especially the sun, moon and stars are symbols whose rays are considered to be the source of life, the light of truth and justice that are expected to be able to illuminate mankind. In their development, the role of celestial bodies has shifted from a religious function to a global function that tends to be profane, which includes social and political functions. However, the presence of a symbol representing an infinite character always exists as a generator of feelings of togetherness and a deeper attachment than just a verbal formulation.

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