Dissertation Research: Religion and Recovery in Post-Conflict Cambodia

康奈尔大学博士候选人考特尼·沃克将在马格努斯·菲斯克斯博士的监督下，在柬埔寨战后农村重建的背景下进行精神实践研究。这项研究是由最近的经验和理论工作的宗教和仪式，其中突出了特定的地方过程，在不断的相互作用与更大的历史叙事和社会政治条件。例如，地方精神实践不是过去的静态残余，而是积极参与实践者的政治，经济和历史世界。工作的研究将调查精神实践的综合性和潜在的分裂性工作，作为一个小村庄，在战争和种族灭绝的创伤后融入现代化并重建社区生活。研究将在柬埔寨的一个农村进行，2000年流离失所的家庭刚刚重新定居。通过持续的民族志参与，包括参与者观察，与佛教僧侣，尼姑和村民的正式和非正式访谈，精神景观的地理测绘，以及体现仪式实践的文件，将审查以下研究问题：在快速现代化的柬埔寨农村，这种做法如何体现持续的政治压迫和饱受战争蹂躏、贫困的村民的持续创伤？宗教习俗和理解如何影响柬埔寨今天的民主进程？与灵魂、鬼魂和佛教修行的接触是否为治愈和重建提供了可能性？它们是否也会为分裂和暴力创造机会？这项研究很重要，因为它将检查创伤后的做法和使用精神活动来调解生活经验。它将重新审视和扩展现代性和灵性的社会科学理论，并将对创伤，重建和社会愈合过程的学者感兴趣。这种理解可以为冲突后社会的和解政策提供信息，并提高我们对大规模创伤（特别是暴力和战争造成的创伤）后社会治愈相关过程的理解。资助这项研究也支持社会科学家的教育。

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.