ABSTRACT
This paper explores civil-society mobilisations around the Preah Vihear Temple, today a world heritage site located in Cambodia, on the border with Thailand. More specifically, the paper seeks to increase our understanding of the ‘peace-building’ resistance that is played out by different civil-society actors with regard to the Temple. This case displays how both the governments and civil societies in each of the two countries bend relationships between the ‘past’, the ‘present’, and the ‘future’ in general, and in relation to ‘identity’ in particular, in order to construct narratives of nation-building. The Temple has been used in discursive constructions of national collective identity in Cambodia and Thailand, respectively; constructions that, among other things, embrace shifting notions of time and temporality. Whereas much analysis of peace-building resistance concentrates on larger-scale actions, this paper adds to previous research by giving priority to more subtle forms of resistance and describing how civil-society actors resist by ‘bending’ prevailing conceptions of time and temporality.
Introduction
This paper deals with civil-society mobilisations around a world heritage site – the Preah Vihear Temple in Cambodia, which is an ancient building that has been at the centre of a difficult border dispute for more than a century (Kasetsiri, Sothirak, & Chachavalpongpun, 2013, p. 23). More specifically, the paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the various ‘peace-building’ resistance strategies that are played out by different civil-society actors in regard to the Temple. The Temple case displays how not only the regimes, but also the civil societies in Cambodia and Thailand, bend the relationship between the ‘past’, the ‘present’, and the ‘future’ in general, and in relation to ‘identity’ in particular, in order to construct different narratives about the two nations concerned. Thus, the Temple has been used in different discursive constructions of national collective identity in the two countries; constructions that, among other things, embrace shifting notions of time and temporality. Starting from this observation, the paper will offer new ways of theorising civil-society-based peace-building resistance in relation to different temporalities and how this resistance is entwined with different performed identity positions. Hence, this paper adds to previous analyses of peace-building resistance, which tend to concentrate on larger-scale actions, by investigating everyday resistance in civil society to the nation’s attempts to ‘arrest time’ (Adam, 2006).
The Temple, which is located in the northern part of Cambodia and borders eastern Thailand, was built during the six-centuries-long Khmer Empire. The ancient building has, as indicated above, served as a means of underpinning and affirming the unity of the respective states; this, by extension, has fed different conflict patterns over the years. Recently, the Temple question has flared up again and turned into open violence between various actors from Cambodia and Thailand. The current tense situation between the two neighbouring countries can be partially understood by reference to how various actions (or non-actions), conscious, or unconscious, by international actors such as Google Maps, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have been interpreted and used by various local actors. For example, the world heritage listing of the Temple by UNESCO in 2008, as interpreted locally, turned it (once again) into an object of nationalist political posturing, various civil-society-based activities, and, by extension, recurring military clashes within as well as between Cambodia and Thailand.
Various civil-society groups have intensified the conflict. To illustrate this point it could be mentioned that civil-society groups from Thailand have illegally entered the disputed area in Cambodia in order to ‘liberate’ the Temple. On 15 July 2008, for example, three members of the Dharmayatra, which claims to be a Buddhist peace pilgrimage group, crossed the Cambodian border in an attempt to raise the Thai flag over the disputed area and demanded the return of the Temple to Thailand. According to Cambodian sources, their trespass on Cambodian soil has led to Thai troops crossing the border to ‘help’ the intruders.1 Events like this, performed by participants in civil society, not only in Thailand but also in Cambodia, have contributed to make an already tense situation even tenser.
However, other civil-society groups, both in Thailand and in Cambodia, have acted in opposite ways. Peaceful resistance against nationalist discourses has thus been played out against what are comprehended as different sites of power. Among other things, the Buddhists and Khmer Society Network in Cambodia, together with the People Empowerment Foundation in Thailand, created a project called Khmer-Thai People Relationship Building in 2009. Its aim is to contribute to the improvement of the situation by promoting Dharma practices and various other people-centric approaches. These organisations have, inter alia, jointly organised peace workshops in the city of Siem Reap.2 It is evident then that the civil societies in both countries are significantly heterogeneous in regard to their roles in the conflict over the Temple.
Considering the above, this paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of various civil-society-based peace-building resistance activities around the Temple. How is the performed resistance of civil-society actors constructed from, for example, current discourses, prevailing temporalities, and constructions of national identity? In particular, the paper seeks to understand peace-building resistance in terms of (re)constructing time in relation to various identity constructions in the discursive and historical context of the Temple. Thus, this paper will contribute – theoretically but also empirically – to our knowledge of civil-society-based peace-building resistance.
So far, most researchers interested in resistance and social change have focused on the role and impact of collective actions such as revolutions, strikes, and boycotts. In addition, resistance has often been analysed in binary terms, such as violent/non-violent or confrontational/non-confrontational (Amoore, 2005; Vinthagen, 2005). In this paper, however, we will instead give priority to more subtle forms of resistance, in particular how civil-society actors resist by ‘bending’ prevailing conceptions of time and temporality. Put differently, the paper will embrace a critical engagement with micro rather than macro complexities; that is, we will focus on representations as resistance rather than on social movements and large-scale revolutionary change.
The next section outlines a short historical and political background to the current conflict. Thereafter, in Sections 3 and 4 we introduce our theoretical framework and some related previous research in regard to the concepts of civil society, temporality, and identity, respectively. These sections aim to identify the position and contribution of this paper. Following this, in Section 5, using our theoretical frame, we analyse some newly collected primary data. This analysis is primarily based on twenty in-depth interviews that were made in Cambodia in 2012 with civil-society actors, non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers, journalists, politicians, international civil servants, and other stakeholders in the conflict. How does the practice of constructing time and national identities materialise in terms of resistance activities of the emergent civil societies, and how does this result in a strategy and aspiration in relation to peace and reconciliation? On an overall level, the analysis is motivated by an interest in positive social change and the factors that trigger peaceful societal transformation, peace, and reconciliation. In a final section, some major conclusions are presented.
The conflict of Preah Vihear
The Preah Vihear is a temple traditionally considered to have been built and subsequently modified several times by successive kings during the Angkorian period (AD 802–1431). Thus, the Temple bears elements of various architectural styles (Interview, UNESCO staff member, Phnom Penh, December 2012). Most of the Temple, however, was built during the first half of the twelfth century during the reign of Suryavarman I and Suryavarman II, the latter of whom also built the much more well-known Angkor Wat (Chandler, 2008, p. 35; Corfield, 2009, pp. 11–12).
The Preah Vihear Temple, due to its prolonged construction period, is believed to be an unique Temple in the context of the Khmer Empire.
Since a king generally built only one temple it must have meant a way of controlling military power; the temple [due to this] is a symbol of great emperor power, a significant monument with great value for the self-respect and pride of Cambodians (Interview, UN employee, Phnom Penh, 2012).
Thus, as is reflected in the above quotation, the Temple often constitutes an important reference point for various actors who want to mobilise modern Cambodia by referring to the country’s glorious ‘past’ (Hinton, 2006).
Chandler (2008) concludes that the two dates mentioned above, AD 802 and 1431, should not be seen as an absolute start or ending of the building of the Temple, but are nonetheless years that are worth mentioning since they mark what is often considered to be Cambodia’s ‘period of greatness’. For long periods during these six centuries, the Khmer Empire was the most powerful state formation in Southeast Asia and, at its peak, it covered much of what is today Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and southern Vietnam. The Khmers were great builders and, during the Angkor Empire, the landscape was filled with monumental sanctuaries, grand reservoirs, and canals as well as an extensive road network.
In 1432, however, the Siamese (Siam was the name of Thailand until 1949) captured Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire. Following this invasion – but also due to numerous other factors, such as increasing maritime trade, which removed the Angkor strategic lock on the region, over-population in the cities, together with climate change that brought extended drought to the area – the Khmer Empire gradually vanished and Cambodia was ruled as a vassal state between Siam and Vietnam until 1863, when the country was turned into a French protectorate and thereby avoided being swallowed completely by its more powerful neighbours (see further Chandler, 2008, Ch. 3–9; Corfield, 2009, Ch. 1–3).
The current conflict between Cambodia and Thailand, where the Preah Vihear Temple constitutes its very core, has, according to the ICJ, its fons et origio in a number of boundary agreements between France, the main coloniser of Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century, and Siam, that were signed between 1904 and 1908. This series of agreements was, in turn, a response to the Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1893, which concluded a violent conflict between France and Thailand during the same year. Together, these treaties established the boundaries of what eventually became Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. Following the Franco-Siamese Boundary Treaty of 23 March 1907, the French Army also mapped the frontier regions. The final maps that located the Preah Vihear on Cambodian soil were communicated to the Siamese Government in 1908 and, at the time, the drawn boundary lines were not officially protested against (ICJ, 1962; Strate, 2013, p. 42).
The Temple first became more widely known to the outside world when France withdrew from Cambodia after some 90 years of occupation. Shortly after, in 1954, Thailand established a police post just north of the Temple and hoisted the Thai flag over the ruin. After long, difficult, and inconclusive negotiations, the new and independent Cambodian government eventually turned to the ICJ in 1959 to ask for assistance in solving the conflict with Thailand. In June 1962, the Court presented its judgment, ruling that the Temple belonged to Cambodia. The judgment was, however, split (9–2) and for several reasons Thailand only reluctantly accepted it (ICJ, 1962; Silverman, 2010, p. 4; St John, 1994, p. 64).
Following a nomination from Cambodia, the UNESCO in 2008 decided to list the Preah Vihear Temple as a ‘world heritage’ site, something that added new conflict patterns to an old conflict. This time, the Thai protests did not focus on the Temple per se, but rather on the still-disputed 4.6 square kilometres of land surrounding the Temple, which was not part of the 1962 ICJ judgement (Silverman, 2010, pp. 4–5). The dispute between Cambodia and Thailand has since led to periodic outbreaks of deadly violence and, in consequence, Cambodia once again turned to the ICJ in 2011; this time to ask for assistance in interpreting the exact meaning of the 1962 judgment (ICJ, 2013). The Court ruled that the Temple was in Cambodian territory and that both countries should withdraw their troops from the site and the surrounding area. The ICJ, however, did not conclude where the border between the two countries should fall. The 2013 decision clarifies the expression ‘vicinity’, which was used in the 1962 judgment, by defining it as the whole promontory in which the Temple is sited. But the promontory is just a small part of the 4.6 square kilometre land area that is still disputed. Thus, the ICJ has ultimately not ruled on the entire disputed area but rather has left it to the two countries to finally resolve the border issue over the remaining land (ICJ, 2013), which is something that has proved to be challenging.
The difficulties in resolving the Temple conflict are due to various historical constructions, but also to recent political developments. According to Strate (2013, pp. 41–43), the Thai claims to the Temple are understood by the Cambodians as a result of historical Siamese imperialism in the region. In line with this, Hinton (2006, p. 463) states that: ‘For many Cambodians, the fear of being culturally and economically dominated is intermingled with a strong belief that the Thai “imperialists” also look down upon them.’ This polarisation between the Khmer and Thai nations in relation to the conflict with Thailand is also revealed in our interviews. One Cambodian respondent, for example, said: ‘The cause [of the conflict], the main cause is two things: the one is the political incongruences, and the second is extreme nationalism’ (Interview, civil society representative, Phnom Penh, 2012).
In Thailand, however, the story is quite different from the above-mentioned fears of the Khmer population. Here, Thailand is described as the victim, while France is described as the perpetrator. According to this narrative, the Thai leaders surrendered the Temple to France in order to remain a sovereign state. Thus, in Thailand the Temple is associated with the legacy of western imperialism and in particular the territory ‘lost’ to the French imperialists (Strate, 2013, pp. 41–43).
This interpretation has influenced recent political developments in Thailand and, by extension, the events of the Temple conflict. In May 2014, the Thai Army carried out a military coup. This event was the culmination of several political crises in Thailand that have occurred since 2008, which, on an overall level, have been characterised by violent struggles between the so-called Red Shirts (the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship) and Yellow Shirts (or more formally: the People’s Alliance for Democracy). The opposition in Thailand prior to the coup, primarily the nationalist Yellow Shirts, strongly opposed the Cambodian claims to sovereignty over the Temple and argued that the issue remains unresolved. In fact, a diverse and many-headed assemblage of critics has accused them of using the Temple in order to undermine the Thai government (Kasetsiri et al., 2013). In January 2013, the Alliance demanded, among other things, that the Thai government should ‘not accept the international court’s jurisdiction since 1962 [but] push Cambodians from the area around the temple’ (The Nation, 2013).
After the coup in May 2014 the military leaders in Bangkok, who are supported by the Yellow Shirts, have accused Cambodia of secretly supporting the Red Shirts in an attempt to topple the new military leaders. The Thai military has also recently erected barbed wire in the vicinity of the Temple. This time, at least so far, the Cambodian response has only taken the form of peaceful protest (Thearith, 2014). In sum, this shows that the Temple still catalyses political developments and it would be premature to rule out future outbreaks of violence.
Underlying the Temple conflict are thus, in Cambodia as well as in Thailand, strong nationalistic discourses. Different constructions of national identity in relation to history and temporality fuel civil-society-based strategies that underpin the conflict. But as suggested by, for example, Hinton (2006, p. 468) and briefly indicated above, in both countries there also exist alternative streams of discourses – ones that are calling for peace and understanding. In what follows, we will further elaborate on this peace-building resistance and some of its various expressions.
Temporality and time
A relatively recent trend in the social sciences and humanities is to ‘revisit’ the concepts of time and temporality (see e.g. Braidotti, 2006; Firth & Robinson, 2014; Grosz, 2005; Weston, 2002). This is, for example, done by Firth and Robinson (2014) who, among other issues, discuss what they label the mainstream or dominant view of time, which is sometimes referred to as ‘linear’ or ‘clock’ time (see also Adam, 2006). This perception embraces time as a ‘succession of psychological states or instants of consciousness, existing in a linear and irreversible progression’ (Firth & Robinson, 2014, p. 382). In this view, there is an identification of reality with presence and the ‘present’ is the central moment of time. In the mainstream conceptualisation of time, the past and the future are understood as former or later ‘presents’. Time, in some senses, can be understood as an eternal ‘present’, which proceeds in equal periods, is distinct from lived durations, and clashes ‘sharply’ with cultural temporalities (Firth & Robinson, 2014, p. 382).
This dominant conception of time could be analysed as a ‘biopolitical’ strategy if we see it as an aspect of the disciplining of time that was established early in capitalist history (Firth & Robinson, 2014, p. 384). The techniques of biopolitics function to ‘incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimise and organise’ (Foucault, 1976, p. 136). This constitutes a power that takes ‘charge of life’ (Foucault, 1976, p. 143; see also Baaz, 2015). In the words of Sylvester (2011): ‘By biopolitics is meant the administration of lives and livelihoods via discursive “rules” that establish and regulate normal processes of life by regulating bodily activities such as birth, death, gender, marriage, work, health, illness, sanity, rationality and so on.’ From this perspective, the analysis of time in relation to power, resistance, and civil-society mobilisations becomes even more compelling.
The notion of temporality is of course central to disciplines such as history, which offers a number of insights here. Different constructions of time are exemplified by, among others, the Russian mediaeval historian Aron Gurevich, who has explored the temporality of the mediaeval period. He contends that mediaeval people felt themselves on two temporal planes at once: on ‘the plane of local transient life, and on the plane of those universal-historical events which are of decisive importance for the destinies of the world – the Creation, the birth and the Passion of Christ’ (Gurevich quoted in Dinshaw, 2007, p. 110). Carolyn Dinshaw similarly suggests that we should reject the idea of a linear historicism in its entirety. Instead, we should consider multiple temporalities in the ‘present’.
The possibility of heterogeneous and multiple temporalities gives us new analytical means to understand power, resistance as well as change, and, as we will see further below, peace. Ernst Bloch, for example, explores how Germans, who felt stranded in the past in the face of what they experienced as an alien modernity, were recruited by the National Socialists back in the 1930s. This shows how different temporalities can be encountered as very significant social and political forces (Dinshaw et al., 2007, p. 178; Lilja, Baaz, & Vinthagen, 2015). Or in other words, the National Socialists deployed a temporal asynchrony and used it as a political tool. In line with this, Dinshaw et al. (2007) suggest that heterogeneous temporalities should be addressed as political means. Heterogeneous temporalities can be used for destruction as well as expansion.
Resistance, power, and time are also closely entangled from the standpoint of colonial and postcolonial experiences. Different temporal logics have been embraced in order to preserve the colonial situation. The claims of the colonised for equality were often met with a request for patience. They were also promised that the equality in question would be realised in the future. In this way, the power relations between the coloniser and colonised involved a ‘time contradiction’ as the ‘future’ and a possible emancipation made sustainable power relations in the ‘present’ possible. The ‘future’ was working against the colonised through their ideology’s stress on the forthcoming equality. In addition, the colonial project’s mission was already in the process of being born and was formulated according to the principle of its own coming dissolution. The metropolis promised a profound transformation of power distribution in the ‘future’, as long as the power structure was preserved ‘today’ (Azar, 2009; Lilja et al., 2015).
History and/or Postcolonial studies, but also Feminist and Queer studies are increasingly focusing on time and different temporalities. According to Dinshaw et al. (2007, p. 182), for example, ‘queer time’ is the perverse turn away from the narrative coherence of adolescence–early adulthood–marriage–reproduction–child rearing–retirement–death. Queer time, therefore, denotes a critique of the careful social scripts that guide the majority. This is a twist and turn away from current hetero-normative temporality, in favour of ‘the embrace of late childhood in place of early adulthood or immaturity in place of responsibility’. Put differently, queer temporalities can be viewed as non-synchronised time sequences that are not occurring at the predetermined or regular intervals that denote a hetero-normative reality (Dinshaw et al., 2007).
These examples display, on the one hand, the nexus between ‘hetero-normativity’ and, on the other hand, notions of temporality and identity. The current hetero-normative temporality informs the identity positions of the heterosexual person, thus making time and temporality important issues when discussing various subject positions. With this in mind, we will draw upon Stuart Hall’s understanding of ‘images of identity’ and Braidotti’s conceptualisation of ‘figurations’. Identification in this regard is partly viewed as transformation towards an image of identity. Or as expressed by Hall (1996, p. 6): ‘Identities are thus points of temporary attachment to the subject positions that discursive practices construct for us. They are the result of a successful articulation or “chaining” of the subject into the flow of discourses.’ Identification is then the process of articulation, a suturing to a subject position, but there is never a total match between the articulation and the position (Hall, 1996, p. 3). In our interpretation, identifications emerge through various processes of self-reflection, in which the subjects become representations, maintainers, and ‘benders’ (resisters) of various identity positions.
Here, we are adopting the idea of images of identity as described by Hall. However, to this outline should be added that these images of identity are not only metaphorical or symbolic ways of thinking, but rather material – that is, embedded and embodied – social positions. From this it follows that identities can be understood and related to the social and material conditions of their very existence. Or following Braidotti’s terminology, it is important to draw a (new) cartography of prevailing material and discursive contexts in order to understand emerging subject positions. The locations of the subjects differ and those differences determine how the subjects materialise. Thus, a decentred and multi-layered vision of the subject emerges as a dynamic and changing entity that is situated in shifting contexts. Here it is important to acknowledge different ‘axes of differentiation’, such as class, race, ethnicity, gender, age, and others, and how they interact with each other in the constitution of subjectivity (Braidotti, 2011, p. 4).
Below, we will display and analyse how perceptions of time prevail in the interviews we have made. In particular, we will put forward new ways of theorising civil-society-based peace-building resistance in relation to different temporalities. The concept of temporality will then be understood in terms of humans’ perception of time. This includes exploring the existence of ‘multiple temporalities operating in the same moment’ (Dinshaw, 2007, p. 110). When analysing time and temporality, we will look for how these are entangled within different constructions of identity and performed identity positions.
In what follows, ‘resistance’ will be considered as basically productive, on the grounds that it creates new relations, products, ideas, discourses, and activities. Following Michel de Certeau (1984), it is the resistance act – the way of acting – that will be analysed below. Thus, the particular effects or outcomes of resistance will not be explored; we will only map various forms of resistance that aim to undermine the power-loaded discourses that in the past have resulted in violent practices in relation to the Temple. Or in other words, alternative discourses about ‘time’ and emerging temporalities will be discussed as a form of peace-building resistance. We add ‘peace-building’ to the concept of resistance as the respondents, with their strategies, appear to promote discourses and constructions of national identity which do not encourage practices of violence.
Civil society, time, and temporality: some previous research
Much civil-society research tends to focus on the spatial dimension of a ‘sphere’ or ‘sector’ in which civil-society-based activities occur, while temporality is generally ignored (see e.g. Baker, 2002; Fine, 1997; Fioramonti & Thümler, 2013; Glasius, 2012; White, 1994). Studies of civil society also tend to include the ‘past’ implicitly – through notions of ideology or religion, rather than in more direct ways. The ‘future’ also has an indirect and implicit character in these studies. It chiefly emerges in terms of various utopias or future-oriented visions.
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. Some researchers do connect temporality and different time experiences to civil-society-based attempts to challenge hegemonic relations in society (see e.g. Castells, 1997; Santos, 2006). Castells (1997, pp. 125–126), for instance, addresses the environmental movement from a time/temporality perspective, arguing that the movement is projecting a new, revolutionary temporality. To illustrate how this is done, Castells constructs the concept of ‘glacial time’, which implies that the relationship between humans and nature is long-term and operates in intergenerational terms. Santos (2006, p. 22) similarly postulates heterogeneous temporalities, and implies that there exist several different non-linear temporalities at once in various communities. Among these he proposes, for example: ‘circular time, cyclical time, glacial time, the doctrine of the eternal return … [and] event time’. Civil-society activism is performed in accordance with different temporal logics: ‘[F]rom the instant time of mass protests to the longue durée of indigenous peoples’ struggles for self-rule, not to speak of the infinite temporality of utopia’ (Santos, 2006, p. 128).
Moreover, when addressing previous research on civil society, time, temporality, and resistance, it is useful to add experiences from culturally oriented social movements. These movements have highlighted the ‘pre-figurative’ politics of future-oriented movements that try to build elements or whole worlds of a different imagined reality. In this sense, they are in fact embodying their aspired future (Epstein, 2002; Young & Schwartz, 2012). A good example of this is time-sharing systems where work is exchanged without money (such as local exchange trading system, or LETS). Thus, this is carried out by civil-society actors who practise resistance by making material (what they hope to be) the ‘future’ in the ‘present’.
Previously, we have also explored strategies of resistance that involve different temporalities by interviewing civil-society actors against environmental degradation in Japan (Lilja et al., 2015). The aim of this analysis was to add to the discussion on ‘civil society’, resistance, and environmental politics by starting from the concept of temporality. The analysis concluded that, among other things, resistance in various civil societies is carried out by the introduction of a second temporality into people’s mind-sets. Or in other words, organisations such as the Niwano Peace Foundation seem to suggest that the Japanese population ought to embrace two temporal planes at once: one being the plane of local transient life (a hetero-normative reality) and the second plane being the connection between present and future realities (of environmental degradation) (Lilja et al., 2015; cf. Dinshaw, 2007, p. 110). All in all, previous research results, not only our own but also that of others, thus indicate that resistance, power, and time are closely entangled.
The nexus – resistance, power, and time – is also acknowledged within feminist studies. Feminist civil-society-based resistance is increasingly analysed in relation to time and different temporalities. During the 1970s, several feminist activists formulated their goals and resistance with reference to an idealised future – a world without gender identities. The desire for a feminist utopia provided the very motivation for resistance. Just as in the case of the Japanese environmental movement, this strategy implies the bringing in of the ‘future’ in order to make contemporary resistance possible. There is, however, currently also another pattern that can be seen in regard to gender relations. Weston (2002) argues that there is a paradox of liberation that also affects the feminist resistance. It is a popular belief, at least in North America, that the lives of women today are better than ever. To deal with this, a new concept has been introduced: ‘post-feminism’, since ‘today’ is formulated in such a way that it undermines the possibility of resistance.
Our analysis of the Temple conflict will be informed by or relate to the above attempts to discuss temporality in relation to the concepts of civil society, resistance, peace, and various subject positions. Ultimately, we want to add some aspects to this important groundwork that have been ignored so far, by considering how perspectives on temporality should enter the civil-society debate in conflict situations.
Some brief notions on methodology, methods, and material
On an overall level, this paper is designed in an inter-disciplinary way that seeks to move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and capture the complex interplay between historical, political, legal, and cultural factors in regard to the conflict over the Temple (and various surrounding civil-society-based peace-building resistance strategies).
In order to better understand the peace-building resistance that has been played out by Cambodian and Thai civil society in regard to the Preah Vihear Temple, we have, among other things, carried out twenty interviews in Cambodia in 2012 with various civil-society actors, NGO workers, journalists, politicians, international civil servants, and other stakeholders in the conflict. In order to protect the safety of the respondents, their identities have been kept anonymous.
The selection of respondents was made in cooperation with local research partners with proven knowledge of the conflict. The interviews were open-ended and semi-structured. During the interviews, which were recorded, the respondents were given the opportunity to address questions of relevance to them in order to give us a broader understanding of the processes at work. The interviews in Cambodia were carried out by a research assistant, primarily in Phnom Penh, and were then analysed by the authors of this paper. Firstly, we listened to all the interviews and read the accompanying notes made by the research assistant. We then labelled relevant words, phrases, and sentences, mainly those related to perceptions of time and temporality, with the aim of being able to (further) theorise underlying patterns. Finally, these underlying patterns were analysed with reference to our theoretical points of departure and in relation to previous research. A local assistant accompanied the research assistant during the interviews and, besides interpreting from Khmer to English when necessary, the former also provided valuable insights in regard to the interview answers.
In addition to the interviews, other sources of information, such as scholarly texts, various official documents, judgments, and comments from the ICJ and media websites have been used, with the aim of getting a broader picture of the conflict and the resistance to it. This material has been analysed in a similar way to the interviews.
Constructions of time, temporalities, and the Temple conflict
We depart from the construction of time and different temporalities in order to get a sense of the resistance that characterises the responses of some civil-society actors in regard to the Temple conflict. As stated above, temporality – that is, humans’ perception of time and the social organisation of time – is key to understanding relations of power and civil-society-based peace-building resistance. It is not unusual that time and the existence of different temporalities, as indicated above, are used as biopolitical tools for different political purposes. By referring to certain temporalities, the regimes embrace human bodies as receivers and transmitters of knowledge about the Temple issue. In line with this, many Cambodians draw heavily upon the ‘past’ when explaining the Cambodian ‘present’ and the Cambodian self-identity. For example, one respondent said as follows:
The conflict between Thailand and Cambodia over Preah Vihear is actually not a new matter. ( … ) For me [the Temple] is a symbol of this country, the Khmer empire. That is why it has become a symbol for the Cambodian so-called ‘prosperity period’. In other words, you can say that it symbolizes the Cambodian identity (Interview, Research fellow, Phnom Penh, 2012).
The Temple itself is not a problem, the problem is the politicians. They use the Temple, you know, as a tool [provoking] people to support their political parties. In Thailand they have internal problems, and they change the direction to focus on the border, in order to get more support from their people. And at the same time, the Cambodian politicians also see opportunities, you know, to provoke nationalism among the young people, especially in 2008 when the temple became a world heritage and people congratulated to this achievement, so that people will support the leadership of the government. ( … ) The general opinion is that the politicians play around on this issue [of the Preah Vihear Temple]. ( … ) The cause was first the temple itself; that Thailand claimed the temple and that it belonged to them. But later on, the politicians got involved in this and discussed this and the people saw that it was a political issue, not a Temple issue; because in Thailand they are used to provoke nationalism. First the Temple itself, then it came on the political agenda (Interview, Director at a NGO, Phnom Penh, 2012).
Resistance by various civil-society actors meets the biopolitical implications of the single temporality that are promoted by the government. As in the above quotation, the respondent questioned and deconstructed the government’s storyline by pinpointing the politicians’ agenda behind this story. The respondent justified his viewpoint by suggesting that the Temple had previously been a non-issue. Thus, by showing that the Temple discourse is rather new, the respondent tried to resist the ‘common’ history of the Cambodian nation. This resistance also implies another alternative temporality. The respondent suggested:
I think that during the Pol Pot time [1975–1979], people did not care about their country and everything around them, they just took care of themselves, [focusing on] how to find something to eat. So, at that time people were not interested in the Temple. The value of the Temple is dependent on the situation, not on the people (Interview, Director at a NGO, Phnom Penh, 2012).
I’m not a pacifist. There are reasons to fight. But 4.6 square kilometres of dirt is not one of them. If we give up the Temple the dispute is over. Is not trade and commerce more important? Preah Vihear is just a pile of stones (Vanijaka, Bangkok Post, 6 February 2011; quoted in Strate, 2013, p. 42).
Interestingly enough, bringing-in-the-‘present’ as peace-building resistance is similar to other subaltern strategies of resistance within yet other power relations. In reference to the colonial and postcolonial experiences discussed above, the claims for equality by the colonised were often met with a request for patience and a promise of equality in the future. The colonised had the ‘future’ working against them. Thus, in order to be able to demand equality in the ‘present’, they would have to neglect, negotiate, or dismiss the ‘future’ and the ideology of the forthcoming equality (Azar, 2009). In some ways it becomes a matter of removing the ‘future’ from the ‘present’ as a strategy of resistance. In this sense, this resistance strategy is similar to the resistance of the civil society in Cambodia as well as in Thailand. However, in the former cases it is the ‘past’ that is distorted or dismissed.
This discussion indicates several things, not only about our conceptualisation of ‘civil society’ and how its resistance practices change depending upon various constructions of time, but also on how the ‘doing’ of various civil societies and their resistance is carried out in relation to the ‘past’ as well as the ‘future’. In addition, it also indicates the ways in which civil-society actors employ various and multiple temporalities as a means of peace-building resistance. By emphasising the ‘present’, they promote another temporality by removing the ‘past’. Separating the ‘past’ from the ‘present’ as a strategy of resistance, however, might be problematic since the Khmer identity is built on the ‘past’. In fact, different temporalities are connected to various identity positions. For example, as stated above, the heterosexual identity position often draws heavily on the hetero-normative temporality of adolescence–early adulthood–marriage–reproduction–child rearing–retirement–death (Dinshaw et al., 2007, p. 182). Thus, temporalities are entangled with identity. This implies that various constructions of time and temporality are related to the Khmer identity and the construction of national images of identity. This identity/temporality nexus might also make the strategy of separating the ‘past’ from the ‘present’ less effective. People are often very unwilling to give up their identities. Or as expressed by Judith Butler:
Certainly, we cannot simply throw off the identities we have become, and Foucault’s call to ‘refuse’ the identities we have become will certainly be met with resistance ( … ) how are we to understand not merely the disciplinary production of the subject, but the disciplinary cultivation of an attachment to subjection (Butler, 1995, pp. 243–244)?
I think Preah Vihear can be characterized in a way that ( … ) It is a kind of a mix of ( … ) If you talk about the Temple, you have to talk about the beliefs and the culture of the two countries, the Thai and the Khmer. We both have similar religious and cultural beliefs, we are almost exactly identical. In Thailand you see the former Khmer empire, the provinces there. So it is not easy to distinguish between the contemporary borderline, which was marked by the French in the early 20th century. You cannot just draw a borderline between beliefs, culture and people, because they are still there. That is why to me this question is very hard to answer. The Thai are former Khmer. On the other side of the border they are former Khmer (Interview, Cambodian researcher at a local NGO, Phnom Penh, 2012).
Conclusions
Our discussion and analysis above have shown how time and temporality are used both as means of power and civil-society-based peace-building resistance. Two main findings follow from this analysis.
Firstly, one civil-society-based peace-building resistance strategy against the dominant nationalistic and violent discourses is to introduce another temporality, which dismisses the ‘past’–‘present’–‘future’, while also abandoning the ‘past’ in favour of the present. By removing the ‘past’ while embracing the ‘present’, actors in both Cambodia and Thailand have tried to resist the Temple conflict and its implications.
Secondly, we could conclude that most positions of identity are informed by various conceptions of time and temporalities. This has implications for resistance, peace-building resistance included. One implication is that the resistance of embracing the ‘present’, while letting go of the ‘past’, might be less effective as it opposes prevailing patterns of identification. Disconnecting from certain identity positions might be both painful and difficult. However, one respondent constructed new images of identity connected to an alternative temporality, in which both the Khmer and Thai nations were presented in hybrid and overlapping versions. The respondent introduced a new temporality, which did not subscribe to the stereotyped categories ‘Khmer’ and ‘Thai’ and their contingent history. In this way, the very foundation of the conflict is undermined and new identity positions are created in the nexus of temporality/identity. This move is made possible as notions of time and temporality inform various formations of identity. Together, this helps us to understand peace, reconciliation, and the role of peace-building resistance in conflict transformation as well as how these concepts and activities are entangled together in both intimate and political life.
Notes
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Niclas Lantz for conducting the interviews in Cambodia and Katrina Hirvonen for providing valuable input to the project. We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers appointed by the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology for their detailed and very helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.