Graduate Student, Centre for Cultural Research
Institute for Culture and Society
Thesis Title: Mobility, Modernity, Identity: The World in Phnom Penh and Phnom Penh in the World
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Tim Winter
Ien Ang |
About
In September 2010, Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen, lauded Phnom Penh’s recent progress, linking new buildings, vehicles and goods in the city to Cambodia’s emergence as a “modern society in the modern world”. But what does it mean to be ‘modern’ in Phnom Penh, and what constitutes local knowledge of the ‘modern world’? As a predominantly rural, post-conflict country, there are many local reference points, both historical and contemporaneous, against which superior ‘modern’ status can be cast. At the same time there is a growing awareness of people and places that are vastly more ‘modern’, as residents are increasingly engaged with and affected by mobilities – of people, capital, popular culture, images and information – connecting Phnom Penh with modern cities throughout the Asian region and beyond. It is in this context that popular knowledge is established of who, where and what is ‘modern’.
This thesis builds on recent explorations of the meaning and usefulness of theorising what it is to be modern by authors such as Ferguson (2006) and Cooper (2005). It will seek to establish the ways in which the residents of Phnom Penh understand themselves to be or not be modern, and through what connections these understandings are produced. It will explore Cambodian imaginings of local, regional and international ‘poles’ or ‘cores’ of modernity throughout the world, and the implications for academic understandings of modernity. This exploration will take place through analysis of interview data that illustrates upward social mobility and ‘being modern’, positioned within the broader context of the contemporary economic, political and infrastructural changes that have taken place in Phnom Penh over the last decade. These personal accounts are drawn from 88 interviews conducted in Phnom Penh during August and September 2010.
