Violence Against Women in Cambodia: Towards a Culturally Responsive Theory of Change

Abstract

Almost one in four women in Cambodia is a victim of physical, emotional or sexual violence. This article brings together two seldom connected fields: Theory of Change (ToC) and cultural responsiveness in international development. It applies these approaches to a priority in global health, which is to prevent violence against women (VAW) and, drawing on my research on the epigenesis of VAW in Cambodia, develops an argument on the need for interventions to work with tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms. The research draws on an ethnographic study carried out in Cambodia with 102 perpetrators and survivors of emotional, physical and sexual VAW and 228 key informants from the Buddhist and healing sectors. The eight ‘cultural attractors’ identified in the author’s prior research highlight the cultural barriers to acceptance of the current Theory of Change. ToC for VAW prevention in Cambodia seems to assume that local culture promotes VAW and that men and women must be educated to eradicate the traditional gender norms. There is a need for interventions to work with tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms. The cultural epigenesis of VAW in Cambodia is an insight which can be used to build culturally responsive interventions and strengthen the primary prevention of VAW.

Full text

ORIGINAL PAPER
Violence Against Women in Cambodia: Towards
a Culturally Responsive Theory of Change
Maurice Eisenbruch
1,2
Published online: 17 January 2018
©The Author(s) 2018. This article is an open access publication
Abstract Almost one in four women in Cambodia is a victim of physical, emo-
tional or sexual violence. This article brings together two seldom connected fields:
Theory of Change (ToC) and cultural responsiveness in international development.
It applies these approaches to a priority in global health, which is to prevent vio-
lence against women (VAW) and, drawing on my research on the epigenesis of
VAW in Cambodia, develops an argument on the need for interventions to work
with tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms. The
research draws on an ethnographic study carried out in Cambodia with 102 per-
petrators and survivors of emotional, physical and sexual VAW and 228 key
informants from the Buddhist and healing sectors. The eight ‘cultural attractors’
identified in the author’s prior research highlight the cultural barriers to acceptance
of the current Theory of Change. ToC for VAW prevention in Cambodia seems to
assume that local culture promotes VAW and that men and women must be edu-
cated to eradicate the traditional gender norms. There is a need for interventions to
work with tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms.
The cultural epigenesis of VAW in Cambodia is an insight which can be used to
build culturally responsive interventions and strengthen the primary prevention of
VAW.
Keywords Gender-based violence · Violence against women · Cambodia ·
Theory of Change · Ethnography · Buddhism · Violence
&Maurice Eisenbruch
maurice.eisenbruch@monash.edu
1
Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, Monash University,
Melbourne, Australia
2
Royal University of Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
123
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-017-9564-5
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Background
This article brings together two seldom connected fields: Theory of Change (ToC)
and cultural responsiveness in international development. It applies these
approaches to a priority in global health, which is to prevent violence against
women (VAW) and, drawing on my research on the epigenesis of VAW in
Cambodia, develops an argument on the need for interventions to work with
tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms.
ToC, the first seat at the table, is about understanding the best sequence of events
that will lead to a desired outcome (Vogel 2012), such as the prevention of VAW,
and how that change will happen. Vogel’s review report for DFID captures the
elements. ToC approaches have moved into the mainstream in international
development and a key driver for ToC should be country-owned development, with
collaboration with local actors.
Turning to VAW, global efforts to prevent it have been fuelled by a
contemporary ToC, developed in the west and applied globally. What is appealing
about ToC is that, with an open learning approach, it is supposed to make these
assumptions explicit, and to activate and support critical thinking throughout the
program so that dynamic changes can be made in response to changes in contexts
(Vogel 2012).
Seldom, however, do agencies pause to consider whether the assumptions are
appropriate in culturally diverse settings. This is probably because what people in a
group believe to be true about the genesis of VAW can be summarised as ‘culture A
engages in harmful traditional practices’ or ‘culture B champions male hegemony in
which men can abuse women’ or ‘culture C teaches women that they have next-to-
no human rights’ and ‘in a rapidly changing social-economic structure, men in
culture D cannot cope with the increasing independence of women and therefore
seek to control them through violence’. Armed with these sorts of assumptions, and
with little debate, policy makers and program developers design initiatives to tackle
the problem.
The second seat at the table is cultural responsiveness in international
development and evaluation. Chouinard is scathing in her criticism of international
development evaluation for generally omitting culture ‘despite the recognition that
evaluation is an intensely cultural practice’ (Chouinard 2016:237). Chouinard offers
an invaluable conceptual framework for locating culture in international develop-
ment, from which I select a few questions pertinent to this article. The
epistemological dimension of cultural practice includes western versus local
approaches to knowledge construction, with key questions such as which forms of
knowledge are privileged, dominant or excluded and whose voices and perspectives
frame the analysis or are excluded. The ecological dimension includes the broad
social and economic influences, with key questions such as to what extent the
history, culture and background of the local community informs the design, process
and consequences of the evaluation. The methodological dimension includes the
range of philosophical approaches, levels of exclusion and voice, and the
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multicultural validity of the data, with key questions such as whether validity is
defined in culturally appropriate ways.
My argument is that, for ToC to be culturally responsive, there has to be some
grasp of the ‘internal architecture’ of VAW. With that point of departure in mind, I
am taking as a benchmark my previous work in which I describe the cultural
epigenesis of VAW in Cambodia. I depicted eight ‘cultural attractors’, starting with
blighted endowment, or ‘bad building’ (sɑmnaaŋmɨnlʔɑɑ), determined by deeds in
a previous life (kam). Then I discussed the perceived role of vicious character in
early life (kmeeŋkaac or doṣa-carita) that might lead to a person becoming an
abuser, and particular birthmarks on boys which are thought to be portents. Next, I
discussed the powerful local concept of krʊəh, or mishap, especially when a
female’s horoscope predicted a zodiac house on the descent (riesəy), as explaining
vulnerability to violence and its timing. Given the importance of marital harmony, I
then considered astrological incompatibility (kuu kam) as a risk factor and what
people seem to feel can be done about it. I then presented a particularly Buddhist
perception that GBV is fuelled by lust, anger and ignorance, the ‘Triple Poison’.
The usual suspects of alcohol and poverty were considered in the next cultural
attractor, called ‘entering the road to ruin’ (apāyamuk). The two final cultural
attractors I presented have to do with the mental state of a perpetrator, depicted here
as confusion and loss of judgement (mohā), followed by moral blindness (mo baŋ).
In an epigenetic formulation, I showed how the ‘cultural attractors’ make up the
landscape of GBV.
VAW around the world is culturally constructed. Examples of such studies
include the Arab world (Standish 2014), Bangladesh (Fattah and Camellia 2017;
Chowdhury 2014), Bosnia (Muftic
´and Bouffard 2008), China (Tang, Wong, and
Cheung 2002), India and China (Taylor, Xia, and Do 2017), Myanmar (Norsworthy
and Khuankaew 2004), Nepal (Puri, Shah, and Tamang 2010), Nigeria (Oladepo,
Yusuf, and Arulogun 2011), Pakistan (Sadiq 2017), Rwanda (Zraly and Nyiraziny-
oye 2010), Senegal (Bop 2010), Thailand (Ezard 2014; Han and Resurreccion
2008), Turkey (Ozcakir et al. 2008) and Vietnam (Krause et al. 2015). Despite the
undeniable role of culture, a role that is universally acknowledged, seldom does it
find an easy home in the discourse on GBV. Heise (1998), in her seminal work on
understanding the origins of gender-based violence, proposes an ecological
framework that gives equal voice to disciplines such as psychology and sociology
or the feminist emphasis on gender inequalities and power differentials. Heise’s
framework inspires the hope that a culturally responsive approach to GBV can
interweave with the individual ontogenetic, microsystem situational, exosytem and
macrosystem factors. Years later, Fulu and Miedema (2015) updated Heise’s
ecological model by incorporating globalized ideologies, economic development
and integration, religious fundamentalisms, and global cultural exchange as
components of a larger globalization process, to explore the relationships between
global processes and experiences of VAW. My deduction is that working with local
cultural brokers and religious leaders is essential to advance culturally informed
strategies to prevent GBV. Petersen has recently warned that, in post-apartheid
South Africa, ‘feminist theologians and practitioners note that although the rights
discourse is an essential democratic value …it is not in itself an effective
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intervention strategy in contexts where religion (embedded in culture) is a social
determinant of hierarchical gender power-relations’ (Petersen 2017:1).
O’Brien and Macey, in their review of 15 articles to examine GBV interventions,
note that, unfortunately, most interventions have been developed for dominant
culture populations and that there are hardly any culturally specific interventions for
survivors of minority cultural or ethnic groups (O’Brien and Macy 2016). The
exceptions they reported were studies based in Sierra Leone that explored the use of
traditional healers and the need for intervention to include religious references.
What is more, they warn, interventions developed for survivors in the dominant
culture are increasingly used in nondominant cultures. They argue that local
informants are essential not only because they provide inside knowledge about local
traditions regarding GBV, but also because they can identify acceptable intervention
formats and approaches.
Cambodia
I want to suggest how local cultural insights into VAW might be used to work with
tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms, and thereby
achieve a more culturally responsive approach to Theory of Change, an outcomes-
based approach increasingly used in international development, reflecting a need to
re-emphasise the deeper analysis of ‘how to get to our objectives’, and which has
come to shape national action planning (Vogel 2012).
Violence, Culture and Buddhism
This atmosphere of violence might seem surprising in a country where Buddhism is
the national religion, and where, from time to time, Cambodian Buddhism has
connected with radical religious narratives for peace. Monks and female devotees
have been involved in ‘engaged Buddhism’—the contemporary movement of
nonviolent social and political activism found throughout the Buddhist world (King
2005)—applying the insights from dhamma teachings to circumstances of social
injustice and structural violence (Rothberg 1997). Paradoxically, the Khmer Rouge
had its origins in the Buddhist nationalism of the 1940s, and Cambodia was among
the countries where, in the post-colonialist phase, there were efforts to merge
Buddhism with socialist ideals (Ladwig and Shields 2014).
Violence Against Women in Cambodia
The levels of VAW in Cambodia are alarming (Fulu et al. 2015) and often not
reported (UN Women 2014). The regional UN Multi-Country Study on Men and
Violence survey (Fulu et al. 2013b) found that 32.8 per cent of men in Cambodia
reported perpetrating physical and/or sexual violence against an intimate partner in
their lifetime, and one in five men reported raping a woman or girl, one of the
highest recorded rates in the Asia–Pacific region (Fulu et al. 2013a:9). Papua New
Guinea-Bougainville, Indonesia-Papua and Cambodia have the highest rates of gang
rape (bauk in Khmer) in the region. Gang rape in Cambodia is reported to be linked
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with aspects of the culture related to sexual entitlement (Wilkinson, Bearup, and
Soprach 2005) and prompted by viewing gang rape pornography (Farley et al.
2012). Fulu and Miedema (2015) point out that the situation has been made both
worse and better by the effects of globalisation: economic development has meant
that women have flocked to the cities in search of work, a situation that prompts
more GBV; at the same time, the heightened awareness and activism arising from
the global women’s rights discourse has brought GBV to the fore as a social issue of
the highest importance.
This bleak picture has spurred action by the government of Cambodia, which has
signalled its commitment to responding to GBV. Among several UN instruments, in
1999, it ratified the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against
Women (CEDAW) and in 2010 signed its Optional Protocol (Fulu et al. 2015).
Cambodia has a national legal and policy framework to protect women’s rights,
including the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Protection of
Victims of 2005, the 2007 Criminal Procedure Code, the Law on Suppression of
Trafficking in Humans and Sexual Exploitation of 2008 and the National Action
Plan to Prevent Violence Against Women 2013–2017 (Ministry of Women’s Affairs
2014). The EVAW program of the Australian government (Australian Aid 2016)
funded the first National Survey on Women’s Health and Life Experiences in
Cambodia, 2014. The outcome areas were services (counselling and responses to
mental health problems and support and referral for sexual harassment and domestic
violence), prevention (training and community awareness through events and
forums to influence knowledge, attitudes and behaviours in responding to and
understanding the impact of VAW) and justice (legal intervention combining
capacity building activities for local authorities to better understand their legal
obligations in responding to VAW and the provision of legal services for victim of
GBV). The Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) developed and implemented the
second National Action Plan on Violence Against Women 2014–2018. The Referral
Guidelines for Women and Girl Survivors of Gender-Based Violence promote
access to services through a system of case registration, assessment and referral
based on the individual needs and agreement of the survivor, recognizing that
survivors of GBV have multiple needs that cannot be met by any one service
provider.
Collaboration and coordination between key service providers and agencies has
resulted in the development and implementation of a number of practice guidelines
to support service providers in delivering services to the victims of violence and
these guidelines complement the existing legal framework in Cambodia. Data
Management System is a common system of reporting on service provided to better
understand service requirements, service gaps and blockages. The Minimum
Service Standard for Basic Counselling of Women Survivors of Gender-Based
Violence provides guidance to all service providers to ensure a common set of
principles to facilitate privacy, confidentiality and respect for the rights of the
survivor to information and to make decisions about their future. The Clinical
Handbook of Health Care for Women Subjected to Intimate Partner and Sexual
Violence provides guidance for health care providers in health centres and referral
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hospitals to provide first-line support and clinical management for women victims
of sexual violence.
These policy and program advances do not systematically consider culture. Fulu
and Miedema report the need for understanding the effect of ‘subjective experiences
and local meanings of actors in specific cultural settings’ (Fulu and Miedema
2015:2). Cultural context may influence both the risk of gender-based violence and
the cross-cultural differences in the coping styles of people affected by it. There has
been a tendency to depict the cultural issues involved in intimate partner violence as
outcomes of Cambodia’s hegemonic masculinities. The seminal study by Zimmer-
man entitled ‘Plates in a basket will rattle’ (Zimmerman 1994) tends to be quoted as
clinching the view that Cambodian society automatically accepts the power of men
and that violence by men against women is a cultural norm and does not justify
intervention (Hill and Ly 2004). Of the more than 35 articles citing Zimmerman,
only Brickell has focused on the actual meaning of the ‘saying’ adopted by
Zimmerman as the title of her article. Brickell calls it ‘an archetypal trope for the
inevitability of marital disputes’. It could also refer to gendered issues linked to
conjugal failure such as domestic violence (Brickell 2014).
The common wisdom in Cambodia, shared by expatriate experts and the
Cambodian leadership, is that cultural acceptance of violence fuels and perpetuates
it. Ing Kantha Phavi, Minister for Women’s Affairs, said recently that ‘it is …
because of our society and our community’. There is a problem, however, with
blaming Cambodian culture and tradition for GBV. Research highlights the
ingrained gender-based cultural scripts (Gourley and NGO Committee on the Rights
of the Child 2009), which, for men, include the widely assumed ‘hegemonic
masculinity’ (Lilja 2011). ‘Hegemonic masculinity’ is normative because it is the
most honoured and ‘culturally exalted’ way of being a man, and the assumption is
that other men might follow its dictates (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Partners
for Prevention and Miedema (2011) identified the existence of multiple interpre-
tations and experiences of Cambodian masculinities within the lives of the men
interviewed. The many NGOs in Cambodia established for the purpose of ending
GBV seek to modify ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and teach women about their human
rights, but GBV levels remain very high. All relevant government ministries have
signed ‘Core Commitments’ (Royal Government of Cambodia 2014b) to tackle
traditional attitudes identified as barriers to behavioural change in men and women
(CARE 2014). In this, NGOs seek to persuade men to break with tradition, to
‘rupture’ their ‘repetitions’ of violent masculinities that, according to Lilja and Baaz
(2015:2) contribute to acts of violence and at the same time, if targeted, could create
possibilities for resisting intimate partner violence.
Literary texts such as the ‘woman’s code’ (cbap srəy) reinforce domestic abuse
as acceptable (Surtees 2003). Chandler (1984) depicts the cbap as gnomic,
normative poems popular in pre-colonial Cambodian society and which, unlike
chronicles or inscriptions depicted the activity of the entire society rather than that
of just the elites, and which helped people confront the harsh realities of everyday
family life. Brickell (2011) highlights the different cultural discourses that men and
women draw on to explain the persistence of inequality, which she terms a
‘stubborn stain’ on development. The usual suspects—cultural condoning of alcohol
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abuse, sex outside marriage and challenges to traditional male masculinity—have
been well documented (GADC 2010). It has been suggested that men exploit
cultural hegemony in various ways, such as by blaming alcohol, or prioritising the
harmony of the home over the well-being of women. Brickell and Garrett (2015)
used collective storytelling in participatory video workshops to explore the
hegemonic norms, and they found that the primary community perceptions of the
‘cause’ was alcohol.
These studies are springboards for further elucidating the cultural construction of
VAW—how their causes and consequences are perceived, and how, in this tapestry
of violence, the warp of the social-economic-political yarn is interwoven with the
weft of cultural meaning. What is at stake is how these cultural insights are used, or
bypassed, in developing new theories and approaches to change.
As for Theories of Change, the common wisdom, shared by expatriate experts
and the Cambodian leadership, is that cultural acceptance of VAW fuels and
perpetuates it. Apart from citing ‘cultural obstacles to violence prevention, because
these beliefs hamper the fair treatment of victims’ (Royal Government of Cambodia
2009:4), the Second National Action Plan to Prevent Violence Against Women
2014–2018 (NAPGBV) works to change cultural attitudes through primary
prevention and initiatives such as the ‘good men campaign’, which aims to get
men to question the norms of masculinity (UNFPA 2015) in order to develop new
cultural values and norms that are incompatible with violence. As Partners for
Prevention note, ‘gender is essentially a construct of the global North exported to
other parts of the world … The question of how this concept can be transferred in a
short timeframe and used within a cultural and social context with different
circumstances … must be kept at the forefront in any research that deals with
gender’ (Manero and Popovici 2010:10).
The Ministry of Health (MoH) has undertaken efforts to translate the guidance
into practice, in line with WHO guidelines (2016) and international best practice.
WHO (2013) recommends that this training should take cultural competency into
account, but the national clinical handbooks and training curricula do not seem to
address cultural norms beyond seeking to eradicate them. Normative, feminist and
social constructionist Theories of Change do not leave room for the emic
perspectives of violence. Kent, in her work on gender, security and religion in
Cambodia, has warned that ‘what tends to be overlooked from this position,
however, is the way in which culture may simultaneously provide avenues for men
and women to achieve security in concert with the maintenance of a seemingly
androcentric gender order’ (Kent 2011:194).
To provide a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which Cambodians see
the causes and effects of VAW in Cambodia and to expose and analyse the cultural
forces that underpin and shape its landscape, it is important that everyone working
to prevent or mitigate violence in Cambodia be familiar with its local idiom.
The article sets out the epigenesis of VAW. I document the local understanding
by perpetrators and survivors and their families, as well as monks and healers, of the
causes and effects of intimate partner violence, and include the Buddhist and folk
stories they use to describe it. I explore the popular idioms expressed by a range of
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people to depict violence as they know it and delineate the local symptom patterns
of mental and physical distress experienced by survivors and perpetrators.
The article moves through eight ‘cultural attractors’, demonstrating how each
works in propelling a person to violence. I discuss the practical implications for
counselling, prevention and law enforcement, and discuss the possibilities of
applying the cultural epigenesis of GBV for the development of a culturally
responsive ‘Theory of Change’.
Cultural Epigenesis of VAW in Cambodia
The approach and method to the ethnographic research on the cultural epigenesis of
VAW in Cambodia is described in the companion article to this one (Eisenbruch
2018). The study involved 102 perpetrators and survivors of emotional, physical and
sexual VAW and 228 key informants from the Buddhist and healing sectors.
The results revealed eight ‘cultural attractors’, which for simplicity are set out as
eight clusters. The popular cultural perceptions of VAW, in Khmer ʔɑmpəə həŋsaa
ləə strəy), are deeply embedded for both men and women in Cambodia.
VAW has form and structure. Its epigenesis is pulled into shape by the guy ropes
and pegs that connect the cultural attractors and direct the course of the rivulets in
the epigenetic landscape, one ‘cultural attractor’ after another. The rivulets could be
considered to be the course of individual people’s lives, and they are also larger, the
patterns of social and cultural practices. It starts with blighted endowment and
continues as seeds of character, emerging as astrological forces. It erupts like poison
and develops once the perpetrator enters the road to ruin, a powerful central
‘cultural attractor’. It sets the stage for the act of violence as the perpetrator’s mind
becomes confused and seals his fate with the onset of moral blindness and an
absence of shame and blame.
Blighted endowment—The popular Cambodian Buddhist view is that those who
die a tragic death, especially those whose final moments are violent, will have
difficulties making the transition and having a positive rebirth (Holt 2012).
Committing violence from beyond the grave is a powerful driver for ‘identifying
with the aggressor’ by turning the passive experience of being hurt into the act of
hurting others. The millenarian ‘Buddha Predictions’, the Buddh Damnāy(de
Bernon 1994), forecast endemic violence in Cambodia (Hansen and Ledgerwood
2005). People draw on these predictions as a way of steeling themselves against
unbridled violence, including that against women, and their ideas are given
expression in the designs known as yantra, such as the ‘Three Vast Plains of War,
Famine and Disease’ which were drawn by monks to help dispirited survivors
(Eisenbruch et al. 2013). Rather than simply befalling individuals, violence can
affect large numbers of people or even the nation as a whole.
Character—Character, or caʔret is rooted in a person’s predestiny in the previous
life (karma), coloured by its genetically shaped breeding stock (puuc), and further
shaped by the way a child has been reared in a particular family milieu (pʊəŋ,
literally, ‘its pedigree’). Contrary to formal Buddhist doctrine, character is also
believed to be shaped by the position of the planets and the stars and the child’s year
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of birth. A further example of a harbinger of violence thought to be imprinted on the
child is the mole. In Buddhist societies, a mole, far from being trivial, was regarded
as predictive of the child’s nature in adult life, often a grave portent of character and
a marker of violence (Jungwiwattanaporn 2006; Flint 2011).
Astrological misfortune—Krʊəhis a concept deeply embedded in the Khmer
psyche. It had to do with having been seized by a particular constellation of the nine
heavenly bodies and known as nup krʊəh. The demon seizes its hold upon the sun or
moon—or upon a human ‘seized’ for better or worse by their astrological destiny.
Reynolds (2016) describes the sciences of prognostication in Buddhism, such as
astrology, and the interpretation of birthmarks, as ‘deployed to help people face up
to unpredictability in life’. The results show how people seek to curb astrologically
shaped violence in the context of a combination of civil human rights law
(ʔaanaacak) and Buddhist doctrine (puttʰeaʔcak).
Astrological incompatibility—Inauspicious unions, however, are kuu kam—
prone to misfortune and violence in the course of the marriage. An abuser can
project the blame on his wife. The best match, to a bride classified as completely
virtuous (srəy krup leakkʰaʔnaʔ), would not lead to violence. The alternative would
be a woman whose character was not completely virtuous (srəykʰaat leakkʰaʔnaʔ),
who would damage the groom’s good fortune (kʰaat liep) and make him go down
the road to ruin (apāyamuk) or, as some said, to defeat and destruction (paʔraa cey).
As for the character of the husband, he could bolster his character through becoming
a monk for a short time, learn Buddhist morals and qualify as a ‘scholar’ (pandita).
When he left the monkhood, he would be called a completely virtuous man (proh
krup leakkʰaʔnaʔ) and suitable to be an exemplary husband. The harmonious
marriage would be one in which the husband was proh krup leakkʰaʔnaʔand the
wife a srəy krup leakkʰaʔnaʔ.
Triple poison—It is clear from Buddhist teaching how craving spills into anger
and how each is a forerunner of violence. Mohā, ignorance and delusion, is the third
poison and, in Buddhist teachings, the abuser’s mind becomes deluded through
ignorance (avijjā), causing perversions that take what is painful (dukkha)as
pleasurable (Dhammasami et al. 2012). Beating a wife would not trouble the
perpetrator in a state of mohā. Abusers are oblivious to the reciprocal relationships
with their wives as victims.
The road to ruin—Entering the road to ruin (apāyamuk) is a powerful peg—
possibly the central one—in the epigenesis of violence. Indulgence in ‘alcohol,
women, and gambling’—paths likely to be taken by impoverished, unemployed and
desperate men and women—invites self-destruction (Kitsripisarn et al. 2013).
Buddhism has various taxonomies of apāyamuk, a popular one being ‘The Six Bad
Habits’: being lazy, gambling, watching bad entertainment, going out late at night,
consorting with people of ill-repute and addiction (Radich 2007). Of these, liquor
features as the fifth of the Five Precepts to be observed by all Buddhists.
Government rhetoric on the perceived causes of domestic violence tends to focus on
alcohol and poverty. A raft of national-level surveys has tried to establish the basis
of VAW in Cambodia (Banta et al. 2012). Alcohol use is linked to coercive sex and
domestic violence. In her work on gendered experiences of drunkenness and
violence in Cambodia, Brickell makes plain the complexity in cause-and-effect
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between alcohol and abuse; she explores the ‘vocabularies of motives’ used to
differentiate alcohol use and violence and sees the underlying inequality between
men and women, rather than the alcohol itself, as causing gender-based violence
(Brickell 2008). An abuser on the road to ruin wrecks the life of his intimate partner.
Moral blindness—Mo baŋmeans complete darkness, thoughts mixed and
muddled, the man not knowing right from wrong, the ‘empty mind’ (mohā)
becoming shut off (baŋ) from awareness (Chuon Nath 1967). An important aspect
of moral blindness is the way in which, with time, people develop a shifting pattern
of ‘social memory, violence, trauma and morality’ (Kent 2015). Moral blindness
leads to feelings of impunity (nitoandeaʔpʰiep), a word that finds its root in ancient
usage, meaning ‘the position of no penalty’, literally, ‘no rod’. Cambodians use the
Khmer word ‘touh’, which is embedded in Indian mythology and Buddhism, and
means a ‘pastiche of fault, blame and punishment’ (Headley, Chim, and Soeum
1997). Hiri ottappa is a compelling Buddhist explanation for the insouciance of a
morally blind person (De Silva 1976). Hiri is a healthy sense of shame which deters
a person from committing violence. Ottappa is the fear of blame or moral dread that
deters a person from committing violence through fear of recrimination. While a
person is morally blind, he is incapable of noticing hiri ottappa.
Implications
To speak of GBV in Cambodia, it is essential as a starting point to be clear what
Cambodians and westerners mean by the term ‘gender’, which the Ministry of
Women’s Affairs (2014) defines to be the socially constructed attributes and
opportunities associated with being male or female. Here is a challenge, for in
Khmer the difference between male and female is expressed by the Khmer pʰeit,but
there is no word for ‘gender’, and contemporary NGOs have had to adopt the
loanword ‘zenda’ from the donor language English. As Aveling (2012) showed,
‘gender’ is viewed as a foreign word associated with international NGOSs; the
concept remains relatively novel, with some elements being rejected as inapplicable
to Khmer society and others hybridized with traditional knowledge.
There are practical implications for counselling, prevention and law enforcement.
Counselling
●Exploit the perpetrator’s sense that his misfortune arose from having violated a
moral ‘code of conduct’. Train counsellors to appreciate that the perpetrator may
feel more comfortable in projecting and ‘locating’ the source of his violence
outside himself and that he may therefore seek traditional interventions (e.g.
substitution rituals) to repair those external sources of violence. Urge him to
cease his absence of guilt and remorse and take personal responsibility for his
violence.
●Encourage survivor (and perpetrator) to use their own language to give vent to
their feelings towards one another (e.g. of suspicion or jealousy) using local
idioms as much as possible, so that they can understand their partner’s
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experience. Exploit the local Cambodian expressions, encouraging survivor (and
perpetrator) to use their own metaphorical language of expression of fiery
destructive feelings of anger, to help each to understand their partner’s
experience.
●Highlight the beliefs of husband and wife, for example, to reinforce their
conviction that their adherence to the spiritual codes of conduct of their ancestral
spirits must include non-violence, lest those spirits attack them in revenge.
Empower husband and wife to combine the best of Western therapy and local
practices (?aakum psɑm ?aayu?) to resolve mutual tension and anger (sɑmrɑh
samruəl) by methods they feel might diffuse their anger (rumsaay kɑmhǝŋ) rather
than bottle it up and vent it on their partner.
Prevention
●Identify the man’s expressions of his sense of impunity, and his reactions to any
perceived threats to his masculinity arising from his wife’s getting work. Use the
perpetrator’s choice of verbal expressions/idioms that reflect deep-seated male
and female attitudes to masculinity and the roles of husband and wife.
●Be alert to danger signs of impending murderous revenge (e.g. ‘head and tail
chopped off’) and intervene to prevent violence. Encourage survivor (and
perpetrator) to notice the early warning signs of smouldering repressed anger (e.g.
muəmav) for example, resentment of changed masculinity in the face of his
wife’s getting work, and to take action before it spills out of control into full-
blown verbal or physical violence.
●Adapt Western principles of confidentiality to use Buddhist or local notions of
‘shame’ to motivate the perpetrator (and survivor) to reveal violence within the
family and accept counselling without loss of face. Research alternatives to
instructing and leading people (nae noam) and explore whether a perpetrator who
feels more immunised against misfortune can become more accepting of
education about human rights and his responsibilities to abide by the rule of law.
Law Enforcement
●Train local authorities and encourage monks to use the perpetrator’s way of
thinking about his apāyamukha to puncture his sense of impunity, to accept the
human rights of the survivor and his liability to law enforcement. Educate people
to stop using a ‘cultural defence’ of the perpetrator, because in Buddhism as in
international law, they must intervene when a man has criminally attacked his
wife.
●Use ideas that may appeal to traditional rural families, for example, the survival
of women of virtue who have endured untold violence (e.g. links with popular
media such as the Maranamata movie). Adapt popular Vessantara Jataka legends
to deter would-be perpetrators from acting on their jealousy.
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Theory of Change
International development, particularly in the field of GBV, increasingly draws on
Theory of Change. It is both a tool and a methodology to map the logical sequence
of an initiative from inputs to outputs and a deeper, reflective process and dialogue
amongst colleagues and stakeholders that reflects the philosophies and worldviews
of change held by people (Vogel 2012). Models of change can and should include
the granularity provided by detailed cultural studies such as the one provided by this
article. To the best of my knowledge, this article is the first applied research in
Southeast Asia that harnesses local culture with a view to primary prevention of
GBV and to injecting cultural responsiveness into Theory of Change. Theory of
Change prescribes a metamorphosis in ‘values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviours and
practices about violence’ (Action Aid and Moosa 2012) as a necessary enabler. The
Cambodian government’s Second National Action Plan to Prevent Violence Against
Women (Royal Government of Cambodia 2014a) implicitly aims to change cultural
attitudes on GBV through initiatives which aim to get men to question norms about
masculinity in order to develop new cultural values and norms that are incompatible
with violence.
Theory of Change is driving the campaigns to arrest VAW and girls. It is built on
norm, feminist and social constructionist theory, which ‘argues that partner violence
is in part a function of social norms, as well as structures that grant men the right to
control female behaviour and limit women’s power in both public and private life’
(Heise 2011). Brickell (2014) strongly articulates a tension between the interna-
tional human rights priority on protecting women from abuse and the Cambodian
priority on maintaining harmony.
One flaw in contemporary approaches is that where local culture and tradition are
seen as hindering change, they are taken as explanations for the gap between formal
legislation of international standards and continuing VAW and girls (Brickell,
Baureaksmey, and Poch 2014). This is a strange cycle that may keep the work on
primary prevention of GBV focused on the wrong target. Prevention of GBV, in any
country, has to deal with local tradition and culture, which is dynamic and changing.
The challenge is to change the ‘tradition’ of harming women, not to frame it as the
barrier to doing so, and to convince the people, one needs to develop a common
understanding and create rapport.
We need to be mindful of the dynamics that both propel and inhibit real change.
Why is the international community so intent on eradicating the ‘stubborn stains’ of
the hegemonic masculinity of men and the passivity of women? Why is there such
alacrity among Cambodian gatekeepers to accept the received wisdom embedded in
contemporary Theory of Change? And why, in spite of the valiant efforts of
government, multilateral agencies and local organisations flowing from the First and
Second National Action Plan to Prevent Violence (NAPGBV), do many ordinary
men and women remain resistant to change? Not only is this a failure of primary
prevention of GBV, it is a waste of money and leads to a demonisation and
systematic corrosion of the local fabric of Cambodian culture. Perhaps one reason is
that the contemporary Theory of Change is not culturally responsive to the reality in
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Cambodia. The NAPGBVs requires a Theory of Change built on what makes sense
to ordinary men and women, and it may be more practical, as I said before, to make
culture and tradition a part of the solution, rather than the core of the problem.
The findings in this article could help make sense of this tension, with
implications for a culturally responsive Theory of Change. In mapping the cultural
landscape of GBV, the findings tell us that the epigenesis of GBV is pushed and
pulled into various shapes by the eight ‘cultural attractors’, one after another. 1)
Karma: National Action Plans view Cambodian culture as preventing men and
women from changing their behaviour because they are doomed from actions in
their previous life. The findings suggest this to be untrue, and competent monks
could use karmic theory to show an abuser that he is accountable for his actions and
a survivor that she is not to blame. 2) Character: The National Action Plans are
silent on the question of the character of abusers or survivors in GBV. The findings
suggest that people regard the character of abusers or survivors as critical to the
later development of violence. Boys and girls may carry physical stigmata from
early life, for example, that lead to perpetration of intimate partner violence or even
child sexual abuse and incest later in life. 3) Astrology: The National Action Plans
are silent on the role of astrology. The findings show that those affected by GBV are
mindful of krʊəh—the Khmer concept of astrological mishap—as a signifier
explaining the risk and vulnerability of a girl or a woman to GBV. Monks can
intervene to promote reconciliation. 4) Marital incompatibility: The National
Action Plans recognise that certain marriages are violence-prone and they
encourage divorce when there seems to be no other solution. There is a tension
between Theory of Change’s priority to arrest GBV and society’s impetus to
maintain ‘harmony’. The findings on kuu kam, the astrologically determined
mismatch between husband and wife, shed light on this tension and suggest that
monks could intervene to free troubled couples to move on harmoniously together.
Monks could carry out primary prevention by warning that astrology should not be
misappropriated as a justification for GBV and that men and women must accept
agency for their actions in GBV. 5) Emotional drivers: The National Action Plans
acknowledge that there are criminal abusers and that they are treated accordingly by
the state, but there is no grasp of the cultural drivers at work. Our findings show the
role of Cambodian notions of lust, anger and ignorance, the Buddhist ‘Triple
Poison’, an emotional–cognitive complex that fuels sexual and physical violence
against women and girls. A related cluster, envy–jealousy, fuels gender-based acid
attacks, in particular when a spouse thinks that their partner has been unfaithful, or
sorcery, when a man or woman spurned by a hoped-for married lover hires a black
magician to cast a spell and wreck the couple’s marriage, often by inducing marital
violence. Monks could carry out primary prevention of GBV by promulgating
warnings about the Triple Poison and its consequences for GBV. 6) Social ruin:
The National Action Plans pay much attention to structural factors such as alcohol
abuse and changes in hegemonic masculinity as drivers for GBV, but the local
cultural context tends to be overlooked. The findings suggest that alcohol and
hegemonic masculinity, and other drivers such as pornography or substance abuse,
are better understood through the Cambodian Buddhist view of ‘the road to ruin’
(apa¯yamuk). Monks could help to prevent GBV by highlighting the perils of
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apāyamuk and dissuading would-be perpetrators. 7) The mental state of a
perpetrator committing GBV: The National Action Plans are silent on the mens
rea of the offender. The findings suggest the importance of the perpetrator’s loss of
judgement (moha¯) and failure to grasp the consequences for himself and his family.
8) Moral blindness and accountability: The National Action Plans strive to
educate people to be ‘good men’ and ‘women with agency’, but there is no pathway
to overcome the inherent cultural resistance to change. The findings suggest how
‘moral blindness’(mo baŋ)seems central to feelings of impunity when it comes to
GBV. Recognising that Cambodian ‘culture’ has moved fast in response to
neoliberalism, and that the tapestry of spirituality is moving with it, monks and
female devotees can use local cultural notions to help bring an end to the culture of
impunity and prevent GBV.
In Theory of Change, the Outcomes Pathway is the change logic, the sequence of
outcomes needed in a logical relationship, with early outcomes needed before
subsequent ones. The eight ‘cultural attractors’ constitute a potential blueprint that
could be translated to harness and enhance all components of the Outcomes Pathway
—the change logic in which early, intermediate and late outcomes are in place in
sequence—and advance a culturally responsive Theory of Change. Taking the second
step (barriers) of the Outcomes Pathway, for example, the first four ‘cultural attractors’
identify why, despite many rights-based efforts, people perpetuate the dominant social
norms that support violence. The ‘cultural attractors’ explain the barriers that prevent
rights-based programs from overcoming the lack of autonomy of those vulnerable to
violence. As for the third step (interventions) in the Outcomes Pathway, agencies
could harness the knowledge gained by the present study to teach people about human
rights, for example, in a way they understand; change social norms without tearing
apart the society’s cultural fabric; build institutional capacity by bringing appropri-
ately selected cultural experts such as monks into training; and provide better services
by informing prevention, counselling and law enforcement.
Understanding how people view childhood markers of violence (carita), or the
nature of moral blindness (mo baŋ), for example, could help the agencies to
understand the barriers to the lack of guilt and remorse and overcoming the feeling
of impunity. The first four identify why, despite many rights-based efforts, the
people continue to perpetuate the dominant social norms that support violence. The
‘cultural attractors’ also reveal the barriers that rights-based programs encounter in
trying to overcome the lack of autonomy of those vulnerable to violence.
The rights-based approaches could be better informed by the styles of the
Cambodian Buddhist interventions, such as substitution rituals in which the
suffering of a survivor is transferred to an effigy, or in which ritual reparations are
made not only to the wronged person but also to their guardian spirits and the
cosmic deities in a kind of local cultural nod to the western law of torts. Monks also
carry out preventative work by educating communities on non-violence using the
simple formulas and precepts of morality in the dhamma and expressing the ideas
through easily grasped suttas, a particularly Cambodian rendition of obligations
between people, and between people and the supernatural worlds. We see these
teachings at work in real cases of violence in which the monks disabuse the culprit
of their sense of entitlement and impunity.
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The Buddhist monks and female devotees focused on in this study do not
necessarily hold views which take a victim-centred approach. There is pressure from
the government for cases involving GBV and domestic violence to be dealt with and
‘disposed of’ at a local level through Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) rather
than the ‘judicial solution’ (Ministry of Women’s Affairs 2014). According to
Article 26 of the DV Law 2005: ‘For the offenses that are the mental/psychological
or economically affected acts of violence and minor misdemeanours or petty
offenses, reconciliation or mediation may be possible with an agreement from both
parties. The family members may choose any option by asking the… Buddhist
monk… to act as an arbitrator to solve the problem in order to preserve the harmony
within the household in accordance with the nation’s good custom and tradition.’
Thought needs to be given to whether customary modes of reconciliation (sɑmroh
sɑmruəl) need to be reworked rather than abolished. Monks could do more than
smooth the waters; they could catalyse change by promoting Buddhist dhamma with
a human rights face. We need to draw inspiration from the seminal work by scholars
such as Sally Engle Merry on these matters, when she wrote that ‘Describing some
forms of gender violence as “harmful” traditional practices locates them in an
unchanging culture implicitly assumed as backward and needing the “civilizing
processes” of modernity (Engle Merry 2011:26). Noting the danger that global
feminism at times can echo these older missionary ideals, Merry notes that, on the
other hand, it can ‘reform and transform gender hierarchies’. In this paper, I argue
that this transformation can be achieved within the culture and in such a way that the
fabric of the community is not torn further while the rights of women are
championed.
Conclusion
There is a need for interventions to work with tradition and culture rather than only
highlight it in problematic terms. Rather than foisting ‘foreign’ ideas on people,
change has to harness rather than eradicate the traditional currents of violence that
flow in the cultural stream. There is an argument for the value of epigenetic
landscapes as an analytical tool.
Understanding the cultural epigenesis of GBV in Cambodia leads to six
outcomes. (1) An evidence base for cultural determinants of GBV: The cultural
epigenesis maps the spiritual, cultural and psychic idioms of GBV and changes our
understanding of it. Local and Buddhist concepts that, to the NGO sector, might
seem old-fashioned or opaque are turned into more easily grasped practical
messages that can be taken up by all stakeholders. (2) A cultural blueprint for
sustainable development: The cultural epigenesis of GBV is a blueprint that opens
new possibilities for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender
Equality) by 2030 in a range of cultural settings and evaluated over time in
longitudinal, downstream measures. (3) Culture as the solution rather than the
problem: By discovering how culture can be part of the solution, rather than the core
of the problem, the cultural epigenesis places culture and GBV in a relationship that
not only makes better sense, but opens possibilities for using cultural capital to the
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best effect in the primary prevention of GBV. This is no small matter in a country
such as Cambodia with its potential of an estimated 100,000 monks immersed in the
teachings of non-violence. (4) Effective translation: The cultural epigenesis
responds to the tacit tension between ‘universal rights-based’ and ‘culturally tuned’
approaches to prevention of GBV. It charts a ‘Middle Way’ to the best of both
paradigms and highlights common ground between the cultural and international
rights approaches to preventing GBV. Translating Buddhist concepts of violence
into effective materials, such as curriculum resources and standards for agencies to
mitigate violence without trespassing on ‘codes of good habits’, contributes to
prevention of GBV. (5) Enrichment of the national capacity for primary prevention
of GBV: The cultural epigenesis adds to the evidence needed for the Technical
Working Groups on GBV and in clinical handbooks being developed by agencies
such as UNFPA/Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UNICEF/Ministry of Health,
focusing respectively on GBV against women and girls. International development
agencies advocate that training materials should be tailored to the specific socio-
cultural context (Bell and Butcher 2015), but they seldom are, and the cultural
epigenesis responds to this call. (6) A culturally responsive Theory of Change: The
cultural epigenesis offers a new way of looking at Theory of Change. It changes the
relationship of all stakeholders, bringing cultural experts such as monks into all
activities and bringing a culturally coherent language to prevention, counselling and
law enforcement, enabling police, counsellors, educators, mental health profes-
sionals and human rights organisations to act as agents for primary prevention. It is
hoped that this Theory of Change will influence national capacity during the next
decade to harness local culture for primary prevention.
Acknowledgements Samath Chou contributed to the fieldwork and collected data. Phally Chhun took
part in analysing data and contributed Khmer linguistic expertise. Willem van de Put forged links with the
NGO community and participated in workshops. Thel Thong reviewed the Buddhist data. Kall Kann, of
Room to Read (RTR) facilitated meeting informants in Siem Reap and Gender and Development for
Cambodia (GADC) in Kampong Cham. Theary Chan, of RACHA, supported the project. David Chandler
provided unending wisdom. The editorial assistance of Jane Arms is warmly appreciated. I thank the
editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. I would like to thank the many women
and men who so willingly contributed their stories. All errors, mistakes and omissions are my own.
Funding The work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant
DP5060662 and Linkage Project grant LP110200049, the POSCO Foundation and a Berghof Foundation
Grant for Innovation in Conflict Transformation GIC150139.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of interest Author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance
with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964
Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
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distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author
(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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