I picked up A Time to Dance, A Time to Die because I briefly studied the Strasbourg Dancing Plague of 1518 at university as a supposed example of emotional contagion, and, when I flicked through it in the shop, I saw that Waller also favoured psychological explanations. His thesis is that the plague was a form of psychological mass hysteria stemming from the supernaturalism, helplessness and despair of late Middle-Age Strasbourg and its surroundings. Although it takes a while to establish convincingly, it ends up being a surprisingly compelling theory, especially since Waller links the 1518 epidemic to other similar dancing plagues that occurred elsewhere in Europe in the preceding centuries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this means that the book's real strength is placing the plague within its social context: the poverty and hardship suffered by the third estate, the corruption and excess of the medieval Church and bourgeoisie, and the way this conflict manifested itself in not just the dancing plague, but anti-clericalism, the Bundschuch Movement and, a few years later, Luther and the beginning of the Reformation. However, the focus on social factors meant that, for me, the exploration of the zeitgeist was more absorbing than some of the analysis of the plague itself, which could be a bit repetitive, and also seemed facile in some places and unnecessarily deep in others.
The last chapter is where Waller really clinches his argument about the suggestibility and power of the subconscious mind, and the way that it can express psychological distress in pre-progammed ways specific to a society, its belief system, norms and stigmas. He draws in a wide ranges of other incidences as examples, such as the Tanganyika laughter epidemic, shell shock and tarantism, and explores the science behind these somatic expressions of pyschological distress. Although it makes sense for this to be the concluding chapter, in some ways I wish the discussion of neurosicence had come earlier, because it was essential to the whole thesis, and it is this context that makes the thesis so plausible. Overall, this was a solid exploration of the Dancing Plague, which was very impressive when it came to explaining the social unrest of early 16th century Strasbourg. However, one thing that did annoy me was the lack of footnotes, made worse by the fact that the notes are acutally in the back of the book, just not referenced to anything in particular. Maybe it's because it's meant to be a popular history and so the publisher didn't want to make it seem intimidatingly academic, but there is nothing pretensious about making sure that people can access information easily.
Christchurch Ruptures had some interesting content, but if I'd had to read the words 'rupture', 'ruptures', 'rupturing' or 'ruptured' one more time, I'd be writing to you from a hospital bed after a ruptured brain aneurysm.
I suppose it's good Pickles kept relating everything back to her thesis, but I wish she'd been able to do so without such constant and overt reiteration of one word. To give you a taste, here's an excerpt from a page-and-a-half of text in the conclusion:
The ruptures identified in this book indicate how the city might regroup and move on. Chapter 1, with its discussion of ruptured landscapes, warns of being ideologically trapped in the past. [2 sentences excluded]. The rupturing of Christchurch has shown that being open to continual change is the best way forward.
The discussion of ruptured peoples and heritage in Chapter 2 suggests that respect for all peoples, regardless of race or ethnicity, and regardless of length of residency in the city, is the way to proceed. [5 sentences excluded].
Chapter 3 indicates the possibility of learning from the strengths of the past. The Canterbury earthquakes have ruptured 'the People's Republic of Christchurch', bringing that radical heritage into question. [3 sentences excluded].
Chapter 4 reveals that conformity and opposition to diversity is unproductive. Post-quake Christchurch has the chance to rise from a ruptured Gothic identity as a creative and inclusive place. (p. 169-170)
It goes on, but you get the picture. Now that I've got that out of my system, I can talk about the book itself.
As you may be able to tell from the tagline, it's more focused on the history of Christchurch and how this has determined post-quake responses, rather than post-quake Christchurch itself. I didn't know that much about the history of Christchurch - apart from the whole pilgrim thing - so I found this to be valuable. I also found a lot of value in the way the town's history was framed in terms of tension and coexistence between social conservatism (originating in the 'God's own Paradise' attitude of the first Anglican settlers) and radicalism (expressed in the many social movements and prominent reformers centred in Christchurch, including Kate Shepherd and Norman Kirk). However, this did lead to many intriguing local personalities and movements being brought up and dismissed in short order, and these sometimes read like a laundry list.
In fact, overall - and even excluding the whole 'rupture' thing - Pickle's writing could have been more engaging. Nonetheless, it was straight-forward and accessible, which is far preferable to over-intellectualism.
Another reason I appreciated the historical focus is that I was already familiar with what is discussed when the focus did switch to the post-quake environment, particularly the debate surrounding the fate of the Cathedral, and I suspect many New Zealanders will find the same. But we do tend to have selective memory when it comes to Christchurch, invoking the 'Kia Kaha' spirit when convenient, and just as conveniently forgetting that their struggle is ongoing the rest of the time. Pickle highlights that this struggle isn't only related to the physical environment, but it also discursive in nature: how do Cantabrians re-constitute a city with a contested but highly mythologised history, and where different experiences have lead to a proliferation of opinions over what 're-building' looks like. It's a question that resonates much further than New Zealand, and touches deeply on identity.
Pickle does draw some conclusions, as you can see from what I quoted above, but they're haphazardly thrown in right at the close of each chapter, and then at the end of the book, and they were cursory. Sometimes it also seemed as though they were only tangentially related to what she had been talking about. I'm sure that they were extremely relevant, but I think that the historical focus (with the exception of Chapter 5) and the short length of the concluding paragraphs meant that what she regarded as the modern-day implications or lessons to be learnt weren't drawn out quite as explicitly as I would have liked.
This book has left me with two conclusions. The first is that if look at the word 'rupture' too much, it looks as if it's spelled wrong. The second, more charitable one comes from reading both Christchurch Ruptures and the excellent The First Migration: Maori Origins 3000BC - AD 1450and is that BWB Texts, the imprint who published these books, is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to educate themselves on New Zealand's past, present and future without breaking the bank. Their titles cover a wide range of interesting topics, spanning history, anthropology, economics, sociology, medicine and science, as well as memoir and many of the authors are well-known New Zealand academics and personalities, including Michael King, Atholl Anderson and Claudia Orange. I only wish that Australia had something similar (the closest thing I can think of is the Quarterly Essay), but I'm going back to New Zealand at Christmas so I'll stock up on more BWBs then.
Kicking the Kremlin by Marc Bennetts covers Putin's rise to and consolidation of power, and dissidence against him. It was interesting and well constructed, but in many ways, I wish either that I'd picked a book with a slightly different focus, or that this book had been written later and, essentially, was a different book itself. Bennetts raised several key points that I hadn't necessarily explicitly understood about Russia. The first is the importance of the 'good tsar, bad boyars' mentality that has persisted throughout the ages, which allows Russians to be dissatisfied with aspects of their lives, and yet still support the man in charge, because localise this dissatisfaction on their regional officials. Related to this is the idea that Western-style democracy simply doesn't and won't work in Russia, justified by the great demographic and geographic spread of its people, and by historical example. All politicians aim to create an 'us' and a 'them', but Putin has been very successful at this. I wasn't familiar with the situation surrounding Putin's rise to power, but it was interesting to see how the war in Chechnya created an Other and a sense of fear, and how he leveraged this to increase his popularity and demonstrate that he was the man for the job. There are obvious parallels here to the war in Ukraine and the current NATO/Russia tension but the book can't draw them out because it concludes its narrative in 2013 and was published a month before the annexation of the Crimea in March 2014. In the West, our picture of protest in Russia is one of Pussy Riot and mass demonstrations, but Bennetts draws out the lack of unity amongst dissenters. There's the far right, the far left, and many small groups in between, but there isn't - or maybe I should say wasn't, as of the end of the book - any mass movement that was universally appealing to people dissatisfied with Putin. Even people who were successful rallying points, like anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, had trouble connecting with wider audiences and movements. Bennetts also highlights the 'why now?' aspect of to the dissidence faced by Putin, who has been in power (including the time he spent as Prime Minister with his ally Medvedev as President) since the turn of the century. After the societal trauma of the collapse of the USSR and the tumult of the Yeltsin years, people liked Putin because he brought stability and economic security. They weren't so concerned with abstract political freedoms so long as there was bread on the table. Now, however, there is an younger generation who only remember these times as a child, if they remember them at all, and some do not feel that it should be an either/or scenario. Overall, I'm not sure how relevant the book's conclusions, made in 2013, actually are. So much has happened in the interim - Crimea, Ukraine, M17, Sochi, Syria, just general tension between Russia and NATO/the US - that, in many ways, Kicking the Kremlin has more of a historical feel than a current affairs one. As a result, I've come away feeling like I don't have solid understanding of dissidence in Russia, despite reading a whole book on it. Essentially, for whatever is happening today, all that I've read is just the backstory, and I guess that's why it was in the bargain bin at the bookshop. EDIT: It was been brought to my attention in the comments that Bennetts released an updated version of Kicking the Kremlin this year entitled I'm Going to Ruin Their Lives. I haven't read it (yet), but if he grapples with everything as well as he does in Kicking the Kremlin while discussing the current situation in Russia, I imagine it would be well worth the time.
At a basic level, I don’t really need to provide a
synopsis for Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi, because the title does it for me. As the name conveys, it is
the biography of a city that has undergone rapid and haphazard expansion, and
of its citizens. But it’s more than that, because Inskeep
has used Karachi as a microcosm to to explore many broader phenomena. Firstly, there's the history. Just like the country as a whole, Karachi's physical and social landcape has been shaped by Jinnah and the Partition, by military coups and the Bhuttos, by growing Islamisation and conservatism. However, as much as the story of Karachi is linked to its national context, it's also a remarkably universal one, of refugee crises, housing insecurity and unchecked and
uneven development, of division along ethnic lines and of partisanship and
corruption.
Inskeep tells these tales with unerring compassion and insight,
which is why the trigger-happy quote given pride of place on the dust cover
makes me so angry. It says:
[This book] will interest anybody who wants to understand
the wars the United States is fighting, as well as anyone worried about the
future of Pakistan, which may be the most important question facing the world
today. Impressively structured and briskly told, Instant City is the Friday
Night Lights of terrorism.
I’m sorry, but that guy did not read the same book I did. The book I read mentioned the US’ military entanglements maybe twice, and while Islamic extremism is woven throughout the book, Inskeep handles it very judiciously. His treatment of it is an exercise in perspective, a reminder that only tiny percentage of terrorism spills over into the West. Like the 2009 Ashura bombing that opens the book, or the bombings that happened in Lahore over Easter, the vast majority of terrorism is citizens of a country killing citizens of the same country who are ideologically, ethnically and/or religiously different (or sometimes people who aren't, but who simply get caught in the fray).
In the Note on Sources that concludes the book, Inskeep writes: if this book succeeds at all, it lets the city speak for itself and be judged on its own terms. And it does. It doesn't buy into the problematic discourses that the West constructs around Pakistan, the Muslim world and the Global South, but neither does it pull its punches. Inskeep is present throughout as a narrator, but he makes few judgements or conclusions, prefering instead to let his interviewees speak for themselves. Where things are contentious, he provides all interested parties a chance to give their side of the story.
Ultimately, it's these traits that take Instant City out of the realm of simple biography, and make it into a discerning analysis of the complexities and contradictions of Karachi, and Pakistan as a whole. I have a policy of not rating non-fiction, but if I did, Instant City would be a definite 5 stars.
In the past few years, much ink and many more bytes of data have been spent discussing Adam Goodes. For those outside Australia or those who can't quite remember how exactly we got to where we are today, Goodes is an Indigenous Australian player of Aussie Rules football. While playing a game in 2013, a young girl - only 12 or 13 years old - yelled out "ape" at Goodes as he ran past. It was not the first time such a slur had been directed at Goodes on the field, but that day he alerted security, and the girl was ejected from the game.
It was a small thing in of itself, but it acted as a massive catalyst. The next year, Goodes was recognised as Australian of the Year for his "elite place in AFL history" and for being a "great role model and advocate for the fight against racism" (NADC 2014). He was featured in a prominent awareness campaign run by the Australian Human Rights Commission, including the below video:
Throughout the 2014 and 2015 AFL seasons, Goodes was booed loudly when he ran onto the field, or whenever he had the ball. This precipitated a massive national debate about whether or not the booing was racially motivated. Many people, the booers amongst them, said that it was just because Goodes was playing for the opposite team, and that really, in a way, it was a compliment. They booed because he was such a good player. Others admitted that - in a roundabout way - they booed Goodes because of his race: by speaking out against racism, he was being divisive, and there was no place for people who tried to stir trouble. There were messages of support as well of course, but they were drowned out amidst the vitriol. Goodes took leave from playing, and later announced his retirement from professional football.
But this week, he was thrust into the spotlight - and the national debate - again, when department store David Jones announced Goodes as one of their brand ambassadors. Their Facebook page was quickly overrun by racist posts and declarations from people saying they'd never step in David Jones again. Once more, there were messages of support, and through counter-mobilisation and Facebook's curation systems, these ended up being the more dominant of the two.
But the question remains, what exactly is Australia's problem with Adam Goodes? We call it racism - and it is racist - but it's not that quite simple. From 2011 onward, Indigenous model Samantha Harris was a David Jones ambassador, and no-one said a peep. But Adam Goodes has become a flashpoint, a litmus test of Australian society's pretensions and self-delusions, our ideas of what we are, and what we are not.
In this massive, bubbling pot of ill-will aimed toward Goodes, racism is only one ingredient. It's mixed in with ethnocentrism, nationalism and Tall Poppy Syndrome. An inherent part of the Australian psyche, Tall Poppy Syndrome is where those who have succeeded in their field or "get big heads" are forcibly humbled or 'cut down' by a begrudging public. Another analogy that is used is the crab mentality, based on the observation that, if one crab attempts to climb the wall of the bucket in which it is confined, its compatriots will drag it back down. However, all crabs are not dragged back down with equal force. There's an undeniable aspect of "knowing your place" that makes attacks against non-white Australians - particularly Indigenous Australians - extra vicious.
So, it's not necessarily Goodes' indigeneity that offends people, it's that he's Indigenous and proud; Indigenous and taking a stand against racism; Indigenous and, ultimately, not playing by society's tacit rule of turning the other cheek. Because it's mostly okay to be an Indigenous tall poppy. So long as you are apolitical and don't make a point of being Indigenous, everything is hunky dory. Australia at large will only acknowledge your ethnicity on its terms, when it wants to hold you up as an example for feel-good moments like this year's rugby league grand final. You'll used by the Patriot brigade to show that look, they are not racist, they don't have anything against Jonathan Thurston, Deborah Mailman or whomever.
But as soon as you become a poppy that is swaying independently of the winds of society, the status quo is upset and everything changes. Society's blindfold is ripped away, and we are forced to look at our own ugly reflection in the mirror. We don't providea fair go for all, and we are not a shining beacon of multicultural success. And that's when the claws come out, when people's perception of themselves, and the world they live in, is threatened. That's why we have this segue so common it's almost a cliche: "I'm not racist, but...". People are reaffirming their identity, their place in the world, before they launch into an attack on those who threaten it. And no-one is more threatening than Adam Goodes, who reminds Australia that he is not just Australian by miming an Indigenous war dance or refusing to take racist taunts lying down.
We saw the same phenomenon last week, when Indigenous actress Miranda Tapsell, stated on television that, because of the racism she has endured, she "did not identify as Australian". The online response was a textbook case of what I have been describing, with many comments in the vein of this one:
What a divisive, inflammatory show and a hateful, one-sided woman. Address the venom that comes out of "her people's" mouths....Cry me a river...not listening to sooks with thin skin...Broken record, victim, victim.
I couldn't help but from altering spelling and grammatical errors as I came across them, but you still get the picture. The insult of "sook" - meaning a cry-baby or weak, overly emotional person - is a favoured tool to pull Indigenous non-conformers back down the bucket walls and into the mire. The idea is that all the wrongs done to Indigenous Australians are in the past, and "they" should "get over it". As a concept, it is entirely based on the national self-delusion of equal treatment and equal opportunity I have discussed above. It's ironic, given Australia still commemorates the myth of the brave and egalitarian ANZACs one hundred years later. For one, it's "lest we forget", and for the other, it's "you sook, why are you flogging a dead horse?".
By retiring and stepping mainly out of the public limelight, Goodes has refused to be the escapee crab. He's tried to remove himself from the bucket that is the Australian public sphere. Unfortunately, it's followed him to a position at David Jones that has hitherto been so unremarkable it barely receives an inch or two in the business or fashion sections of the newspaper.
The break up between Goodes and the Australian public has been as acrimonious as the rest of their relationship. But, hopefully, one day, Australia will be grown up enough to say "It's not you, it's me", and Goodes will be able to rescind the metaphorical AVO he's taken out on us all. In the meantime, there's always another crab. Australia will turn to ripping them down, and Goodes will be all but forgotten.
If you are wondering why I haven't posted much in the last month, it's because I've been on holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia. It's prompted some thinking about the way I've seen Cambodia represented, and how this reflects on our society more then it does on theirs. Cambodia is not a country that sits high in the West's consciousness; it conjures up little more than images of Angkor Wat and a vague yet still horrifying knowledge of the Khmer Rouge years. It is also on our radar, at least in Australia, as a destination for backpackers and voluntourists. Visiting orphanages while travelling Cambodia has become highly popular, spawning a backlash from governments, NGOs and the media who are concerned about the booming industry of fake orphanages which separate children from their parents and institutionalise them for the benefit of Western visitors. UNICEF estimates that only one in every five children in Cambodian 'orphanages' is actually parentless. While in Cambodia, I came across these UNICEF-branded ads often - in restaurants, fair trade shops, even on the backs of toilet doors:
If I had not read Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joel Brinkley prior to entering Cambodia, the significance of many little things, such as these posters, would have passed me by. I can't rate Cambodia's Curse as a book; as a romance reader who likes feel-good reads, I have no way to judge it or even articulate my feelings that well. It's interesting and disturbing on a lot of different levels, first and foremost in the content it discusses but also in a more subtle way, in the way it reveals the ongoing legacy of centuries of colonialism and Western cultural imperialism. For example, in the introduction Brinkley declares "Cambodia is the only place where the bulk of the nation, more than three-quarters of its people, still lives more or less as they did 1,000 years ago", citing both elements of Khmer culture, which I will discuss later, and a lack of 'modern' infrastructure as his evidence for this statement. However, I would posit that any claim that a culture or nation is static should be taken with a grain of salt. By their very definition, cultures are dynamic things, constantly undergoing processes of change, growth and reconciliation with outside beliefs and practices. The idea of non-Western cultures as timeless is a pervasive one, and although we have discursively seperated it from its roots, it still has the power to breed race hierarchies and binaries. At times it seemed as though Brinkley's entire thesis was built solely around this latent cultural imperialism. His key point is that Cambodia is inherently susceptible to corruption and other societal ills, which he sees as the natural progression of the age-old system of patronage described below:
Unequal exchanges between the wealthy and powerful and the poorer and dependent are referred to as patron-client relationships. Both sides provide goods and services to the other. The patron possesses superior power and influence and uses them to assist his clients. The clients in return provide smaller services and loyalty over an extended period of time. The relationship is complementary, with both sides benefiting. The client is protected and assured a minimum level of subsistence. The patron in turn has followers, who serve to increase his power....For Khmer, as for Thais, the norm of reciprocity, the moral underpinnings of the system, are found in Buddhist notions of merit, karma and dharma. A leader is born into his advantageous position because of meritorious action in previous lives, this is his karma. This leader should then fulfill his dharma, or prescribed duty as a person of this status, by acting as a generous and righteous leader. He therefore redistributes goods and provides protection to those in his care. - J. Ledgerwood, 'Understanding Cambodia: Social Hierarchy, Patron-Client Relationships and Power'
Brinkley contends that, when these relationships are transposed on to the present day, they breed corruption and widen the divide between rich and poor as patrons take more and more, and return less and less benefits to their clients. At first, it seems a fairly sound judgement, but when combined with the aforementioned idea of a changeless culture, it leads to conclusions that I feel are misguided and which play down the role the outside world - particularly the West - has exerted on Cambodia. Brinkley introduces the reader to his thesis about patronage with another sweeping statement: "far more than almost any other state, modern Cambodia is a product of customs and practices set in stone a millenium ago" (loc. 420). To him, the Khmer tradition of patronage has made the Cambodian people passive and apathetic, unable or unwilling to help themselves. This is a puzzling conclusion. If the Cambodian people shy away from upsetting the status quo, surely one cannot underestimate the way foreign powers and their ideologies have continually buffeted the nation around throughout the 20th century. Shortly after the end of the French colonial occupation, Cambodia came to the attention of the West as an adjunct to the Vietnam War, when it was suspected that the Viet Cong were moving supplies over the border. The USA and her allies dropped 2,756,941 tons of bombs on Cambodia during the Vietnam War - more than all the combined Allies dropped in World War II -and supported an erractic would-be dictator. In consequence, Cambodians fled to the forests and joined the emerging Khmer Rouge, as the deposed king urged them to do. The Chinese also provided military and financial support against the American-backed regime. When the Khmer Rouge began to seize control of rural areas and refugees began to bring horrible stories over the borders, the US was convinced, in that black-and-white way of Cold War thinking, that it was offshoots of the Vietnamese communists who were responsible. However, even if the refugees had been believed, there is nothing to say that intervention would have been more forthcoming; 1976 was an election year in the US, and, after the Fall of Saigon, the Western nations wouldn't have touched South East Asia with a barge pole. The Iran Hostage Crisis commandeered the world's attention, and when Vietnam could no longer countenance the masses of people fleeing, they invaded and deposed the Khmer Rouge, installing a government largely constituted of former Khmer Rouge commanders who had seen the way the wind was blowing and defected. Given the choice between awarding Cambodia's seat in the General Assembly to Vietnamese puppets or the Khmer Rouge, the UN - guided by the US - chose the Khmer Rouge, relegitimising them and helping them retain de facto control over large swaths of the country. When civil war broke out, the US, Vietnam, China and the USSR all armed different factions in the power struggle. After blithely ignoring the Khmer Rouge years and subsequent decades of unrest, the UN finally sat up and took notice in the 1990s, buoyed by a new faith in people-power after the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Bloc. They formed a special body, UNTAC, and threw $1.6 billion at the 'problem' that was Cambodia in the most ambitious state-building program since post-WWII Germany. Then, after only eighteen months and while a coalition government was still being formed, UNTAC was downsized and then dismantled, the UN chastened by its failure to prevent genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia.
Do not get me wrong, Brinkley covers all of what I have laid out above, and there are many more instances of foreign intervention in Cambodian affairs littered throughout his book, but he constantly comes back to this idea that Khmer culture itself is responsible for the situation in which the nation finds itself. It's a conclusion that, to me, doesn't hold up under examination. Ultimately fatalistic about the country's chances of betterment, Brinkley quotes many aid workers and foreign officials who lament that progress is not being made. They all say it is the fault of the government, and bemoan the Cambodian people for not being suitably outraged to affect change. An ex-US ambassador, also quoted by Brinkley, used to warn colleauges to "be careful, because Cambodia is the most dangerous place you will ever visit. You will fall in love with it, and eventually it will break your heart". Looking back over quotes such as these in the writing of this piece, I was put in mind of a verse by Kipling, the poster child of imperialism, that was included in an English textbook I taught out of in India:
Take up the White Man's burden
The savage wars of peace-
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
— The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling
The analogy might seem a bit extreme at first, but if you take out the first line and the reference to heathens - the two elements at which people are most likely to recoil - the sentiment is remarkably similar to that of Brinkley and his interviewees. And I am not alone in my assessment of the book; one reviewer on Goodreads says that he seems "replused by everything he is reporting", utilising "colonial overtones". Even Joel Whitney, writing for the New York Times says:
...given Washington's role today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it might have been braver if he [Brinkley] had chosen to hold Americans, and not just Cambodians, accountable for the suffering he so movingly describes.
And therein is the essensce of my problem with Cambodia's Curse. It's not necessarily that Brinkley puts forward a thesis with which I disagree, but the way this contributes to hegemonic discourses about 'the West and the rest' that continue to dominate foreign relations between nations and determine their place in the global community.
But to give credit where credit is due, Brinkley's book has a truly astounding collection of statistics, and I've included some below as a final aside to give some context on the situation in Cambodia, to which I have unspecifically referred throughout this piece:
In 2009, Cambodia's average per capita income was between 500-600 USD, while a third of all Cambodians lived on less than 1 US dollar a day (Cambodian Human Rights and Development Assosciation, cited loc. 4949)
42% of all children suffer from stunting, while the national average life expectancy is only 61. (Cambodian Human Rights and Development Assosciation, cited loc. 4949)
Only 20% of all rural Cambodians have access to toilets or clean water (Cambodian Human Rights and Development Assosciation, cited loc. 4949)
Again of 2009, 1 of every 185 pregnant women died in childbirth (UN, cited loc. 4080), and 1 child in 10 died before the age of five (unreferenced source, cited loc. 3011)
Around 1.5 million Cambodians are food insecure, unable to get enough food to supply 2000 calories a day (World Food Program in Cambodia, cited loc. 3355). However, as of 2009, the nation produced an rice surplus of 2.5 million tons, which the government sold to Vietnam, Thailand and others (unreferenced source, cited loc. 3348).
In 2004, it is estimated government officials stole up to $500 million, around half of the state's annual budget and the same amount as that collected from tax and other internal revenue streams (the other half of the budget coming from foreign government and NGO donations) (unnamed US Embassy report, cited loc. 2980)
During the UN state-building intervention in Cambodia from 1992-3, each UN employee was given a daily living allowance of $145 USD in addition to his or her salary, equivalent to a year's income for most Cambodians (unreferenced source, cited loc. 1308). In the same one year period, the number of sex workers in Cambodia tripled (Crochet 1997; not cited in Brinkley)
From studies conducted in the early 2000s, it is estimated that around 47% of all Cambodians have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or symptoms of other psychotic conditions (M. Sothara, cited loc. 2295).
As of 2004, it was estimated that one-quarter of all Cambodian men regularly beat their wives and children. At the end of the decade, it had risen to one-third (unnamed Cambodian government report, cited loc. 2310). It is suggested this is a result of the nation's widespread PTSD, which is now being passed on to a new generation who have grown up with dysfunctional and possibly abusive parents defined by the trauma they suffered under the Khmer Rouge (Reicherter, ctied loc. 2306).
