The Human Sciences Encounters in Phnom Penh

From Robespierre to Pol Pot – Nuon Chea, via Stalin, Hilter& Mao: A Psyco-Analytical Approach to History

From Robespierre to Pol Pot – Nuon Chea, via Stalin, Hilter& Mao: A Psyco-Analytical Approach to History

15 February 2017 in the meeting room of Royal University of Fine-Arts

In this talk, Professor Jean Artarit will propose to recall the experience of terror under Democratic Kampuchea, by approaching it through the depths of the human psyche, dwelling on narcissistic phenomena observed among most revolutionaries. Pol Pot and Nuon Chea who are being in denial of their past involvement in the tragedy of the second half of the 1970s are the obvious cases in point.

He will also speak about the collective sub-consciousness and the mythical history of Cambodia.

Biography:

Dr. Jean Artarit. Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, a psychoanalyst, a psychiatrist from the French hospitals, former head of Psychiatry at Bichat Hospital in Paris, expert at the tribunals, has written a number of books of psycho-history among which one on Robespierre (CNRS edition), and others on various members of the Convention during the French Revolution and on Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France during the First World War.

He has now been working on the Khmers rouge for a number of years. 

CINEMATIC FORCES OF MODERNITY AND TRADITION IN អនអើយស្រីអន (AN EUIL SREY AN) 1972, by Phally Chroy

Cinematic Forces of Modernity and Tradition inអនអើយស្រីអន(An Euil Srey An) 1972

Date: May 19^th, 2017

By : Phally Chroy

Abstract:

អនអើយស្រីអន(An Euil Srey An)is a 1972 popular film from the Cambodian Golden Age of Arts directed by the Golden Age director Ly Bun Lim. During the 1990’s,អនអើយស្រីអនresurfaced in various Cambodian communities in the United States and helped imagine a particular moment of Cambodia for diasporic Cambodian refugee children. In this presentation, Phally Chroy will investigate the film’s thematics that shaped a “mythos” of Cambodia for Cambodian refugees and Cambodian-Americans to examine memory and popular culture as a force of “encapsulation” and mythmaking.

This presentation contextualized critical theory and methodological approaches that analyzes memory theory, reporting how individuals construct narratives through a reading of personal history and popular culture. The presentation will be based on textual and visual analysis of “Khmerness”, instances of cultural references to Khmer notions of religion, mythology, arts, etc.., and recording their appearances in the film. The data collected was juxtaposed with current scholarship on Cambodian-American identity for analysis and critique from memory research from sociology and current publication on Cambodia-American identity.

Biodata: Phally Chroy is a Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University. His research covers Cambodia, cosmopolitanism, and critical theory.

Microfinance in Cambodia

Microfinance in Cambodia

By: Maryann Bylander (Assistant Professor, Lewis & Clark College)

W. Nathan Green (PhD candidate, University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Andrea Blobel-Perez, Peter Bradley, Lacey Jacoby (Lewis & Clark College students)

27 June 2017 at Royal University of Fine-Arts.

Abstract:This interdisciplinary panel examines the microfinance landscape in Cambodia, aiming to shed light on the wider impacts of the expansion of microcredit across the country.   

Biodata:

Maryann Bylanderis an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lewis & Clark College (USA), and holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been studying Cambodia for the past decade, and her work focuses broadly on questions of migration, credit/debt, rural livelihoods, gender, and the environment. Recent studies have been published inInternational Migration Review, Migration Studies, Development and Change, and Oxford Development Studies, and Gender, Place and Culture.She is on the editorial board ofWorld Development Perspectives, and is a former board member of both PEPY and the NGO Education Partnership Cambodia. She will be returning to Cambodia in 2017-2018 as a Fulbright Scholar through the ASEAN Research Program. 

W. Nathan Greenis a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently conducting dissertation research about microfinance and land markets in southern Cambodia with grants from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program and the Center for Khmer Studies.  Recent work has been published in theAnnals of the American Association of Geographers,andE-International Relations, as wellThe Phnom Penh Post.   

Andrea Blobel Perez, Peter BradleyandLacey Jacobyare Lewis & Clark undergraduate students.  They are each pursuing BA degrees in Sociology & Anthropology.  With Dr. Bylander, they were recently awarded a ASIA Network Grant to research the meanings of microcredit in Cambodia. 

Key-words:Microfinance, Credit, Debt, Rural Livelihoods 

Unknown Silks of Cambodia. 20’s and 30’s Years

Title:Unknown Silks of Cambodia. 20’s and 30’s Years

Name of the author:Bernard Dupaigne

Date :  4 August 2017

Biodata : Former Head of Ethnology department at the Musée de l’Homme, Paris, he has studied extensively the weavings in Cambodia in 1968-1970. He has visited the Khmers, Chams, Malays and Chveas weavings villages.

He published a full book about the textiles of Hindouists Chams in Vietnam:Les Chams hindouistes du Vietnam.Tissages rituels d’un royaume disparu, Paris, éd. Sépia, septembre 2015, 184 p., 150 ph. coul., 41 ph. n. et bl.

He is the author of the recently publishedLes Maîtres du fer et du feu dans le royaume d’Angkor, CNRS Éditions, « Bibliothèque de l’Anthropologie », mai 2016, 440 p.

And of theDictionnaire insolite du Cambodge. Cosmopole, novembre 2016, 160 p.

Abstract : The author will show the silks produced in the Cambodians villages in the 70’s. Those from the National Museum of Phnom-Penh, now lost, and made in the 30’s; those from the “Exposition Coloniale Internationale, Paris, 1931” kept in Paris. And thepidan, silks with Buddhist themes, offered by the ladies devotees to their local pagodas in the 30’s, and also missing, destroyed in the years 1975.

Khmers, Chams and Chveas textiles are quite different and easily distinguishable. 

Infrastructure as Creative Action: Online Buying, Selling, and Delivery in Phnom Penh

Title:Infrastructure as Creative Action: Online Buying, Selling, and Delivery in Phnom Penh

Date:27 October 2017

Time:6:00 PM

Place:Meeting room, Royal University of Fine-Arts

Name of the author: Margaret Jack

Biodata: Maggie is a PhD candidate at Cornell University in the Department of Information Science, advised by Professor Steven Jackson. Maggie utilizes her academic background in the history of science and professional experience in the technology industry to approach problems of global computing with multiple lenses. Her work lies at the intersection of human computer interaction and science and technology studies. Maggie has ongoing ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in the technology community in Phnom Penh since January 2014. She is supported in 2017-2018 by a National Science Foundation grant to conduct dissertation research in Phnom Penh; this project investigates the ways that contemporary Cambodian technology producers and media creators reconstruct past forms of media, often using Internet platforms, contextualized through a history of modern media technologies (television, radio, cinema) in Cambodia. She is a foreign language and area studies fellow and a student of the Khmer language and Southeast Asian studies program at Cornell.

Abstract:

The lecture will present a complex global sales and logistics network based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which utilizes Internet tools (particularly Facebook) as well as a suite of offline tools such as feature (non-smart) phones, paper receipts, and motorcycles to facilitate the buying and selling of clothes and other commodities. Against the gap or import models that sometimes limit understandings of technological change and circulation, we argue that the consumers, business owners, delivery drivers, and call center staff play active and formative roles in producing this infrastructure, integrating new tools into older cultural practices and determining how they work within the limits and conventions of the environment. She argues that resourceful and imaginative activities such as these constitute a form of creative infrastructural action and are central to the ways that new tools circulate in the world, though they often go unrecognized as innovation.

Maggie collected the bulk of the data for this paper in January and June-August of 2016. She conducted over 30 formal interviews with Cambodian shop owners turned- e-commerce-entrepreneurs, online shoppers, call center staff, and delivery drivers, and engaged in many more informal conversations with Cambodian youth about online buying. She also conducted participant observation in shops and accompanying drivers on delivery runs.

Key-words: logistics, e-commerce, infrastructure, post-colonial computing, ethnography, information and communication technology for development (ICTD) 

La pagode khmère les cent plus anciens sanctuaires du Cambodge ... et quelques autre

“THE KHMER PAGODA. The 100 most Ancient Sanctuaries in Cambodia…and a few more”

Name of the authors: Danielle Guéret and Dominique Pierre Guéret

Date: 14 December 2017 at 6:00 PM

Biodata :

Danielle GUÉRET, Honorary Lecturer at the École du Louvre in Paris, and at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh from 1992 to 2006 and 2010-2012. 

PhD in archeology

PhD in history of art

-      L’Art Khmer. Reflets des civilisations d’Angkor, Somogy, 1997 ;

-      Le Cambodge. Une introduction à la connaissance du pays khmer, Kailash, 1998 ;

-      Cambodge, Art, Histoire, Société, co-author with Dominique Pierre Guéret, Actes Sud / Imprimerie nationale, 2009.

Dominique Pierre GUÉRET, Retired French General, co-lead administrator of UNTAC, 1992-1993. UNDP head of mine clearance organization in Cambodia: 2000-2006.

PhD in history of art

-      Cambodge, Art, Histoire, Société, co-author with Danielle Guéret, Actes Sud / Imprimerie nationale, 2009.

Abstract:

During a field work from 2004 to 2015, Dominique Pierre Guéret analyzed the architecture and Danielle Guéret the paintings of Cambodian pagodas and they are now publishing a summary of their research in  their new book : The Khmer Pagoda : The 100 most Ancient Sanctuaries in Cambodia ... and a Few More. 

Having done a thorough analysis of the architecture and murals, the orators will give some general description of the pagodas, explain the essential themes of these paintings and describe some of the most interesting pagodas built before 1975 that have survived Cambodia's chaotic recent history in the different areas of the Cambodian Kingdom. They identified some 3,000 pagodas in the course of their field work and took pictures of about 2000 of them, among which they selected some 560vihara built between the xixth Century and 1973, some 200 of them still having preserved paintings. Sadly, some of those pagodas run the risk of being pulled down by devotees wishing to gain merits, like recently the main pagoda in Kompong Thom city. 

Key-words:Cambodia, Buddhism, Buddha, Siddhārtha, Rāmāyaṇa, monastery,watt, sanctuary,vihāra, pagoda, architecture, paintings, murals, substrate, French Protectorate, French Indochina.