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Reconfiguring Security: Buddhism and Moral Legitimacy in Cambodia

Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark

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.

Key Words: security • anthropology • Cambodia • Buddhism • moral • legitimacy

Security Dialogue, Vol. 37, No. 3, 343-361 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0967010606069179


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