Dissertation Research: Religion and Recovery in Post-Conflict Cambodia

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Cornell University Doctoral Candidate, Courtney Work, under the supervision of Dr. Magnus Fiskesj, will conduct research on spiritual practices in the context of post-war rural village reconstruction in Cambodia. This research is driven by recent empirical and theoretical work on religion and ritual, which highlights particular local processes that are in constant interplay with both larger historical narratives and sociopolitical conditions. Local spirit practices, for example, are not static remnants from the past, but are actively involved in the political, economic, and historic worlds of practitioners. Work's research will investigate the integrative and potentially divisive work of spiritual practice as a small rural village incorporates modernity and rebuilds community life after the traumas of war and genocide. Research will be conducted in a rural Cambodian village, newly resettled by displaced families in the year 2000. Through sustained ethnographic engagement consisting of participant observation, formal and in-formal interviews with Buddhist monks, nuns and villagers, geographic mapping of spiritual landscapes, and documentation of embodied ritual practices the following research questions will be examined: What aspects of spiritual practice are revived and deployed in a rapidly modernizing rural Cambodia, and how does this practice bring expression to continued political repression and the ongoing traumas of war-torn, poverty stricken villagers? How do religious practices and understandings affect the democratic process in Cambodia today? Do engagements with spirits, ghosts, and Buddhist practice open possibilities for healing and reconstruction? Can they also create opportunities for division and violence? This research is important because it will examine post-traumatic practices and the use of spiritual activities to mediate lived experience. It will revisit and expand upon the social science thery of modernity and spirituality, and will be of interest to scholars of trauma, reconstruction, and processes of societal healing. Such understandings can inform policies of reconciliation in post-conflict societies and improve our understandings of processes related to social healing following massive traumas, particularly those inflicted by violence and warfare. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.