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Abstract
Cambodia’s urban environments have changed rapidly over the last decades, and perhaps especially over the last few years. After the 2018 election, democracy was widely perceived as eroding. This change created a new context for real-estate investment, which appeared more stable than ever. As investments exploded, the already fast-paced construction business accelerated. Combining an STS focus on distributed agency with an anthropological interest in practices of worlding, this paper analyzes urban transformations in Phnom Penh (and Sihanoukville) as effects of assemblage. Setting in motion new material itineraries, patterned flows of people and things, the construction boom has been felt across the urban spectrum. Modularizing and segmenting cities and filtering populations, these itineraries have also catalyzed changing perspectives on life in the cities, on local and regional relations with “the Chinese,” and on what the future has in store for Cambodia. Interspersing street-level observations and ethnographic materials with media reports and political commentary, I show tuk-tuk drivers, journalists, businessmen, politicians and academic scholars to be simultaneously engaged in assembling the city. Their vastly different projects and practices generate different urban scales – economic, cultural, political, and ethnic – which co-exist, layer, or overlap – incongruently. The resulting image is kaleidoscopic: Phnom Penh kaleidoscope.
Notes
1 These distinctions are slippery, however, in the context of construction and investment. Since few people have access to much definite information about the opaque flows that affect them, almost everything has a dimension of hearsay and gossip.
2 This is no surprise given the shared inspiration from Gilles Deleuze (see Jensen Citation2019a). Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social (Latour Citation2005) was published a few years prior to Worlding Cities (Roy and Ong Citation2011) and is cited in the introduction (Ong Citation2011: 12). Conversely, the editors of the ANT-inspired Urban Cosmopolitics (Farías and Blok Citation2016: 12) acknowledge sharing “similar topological questions and concerns” with Worlding Cities.
3 As analyzed by Brown (Citation2019), China Miéville’s (Citation2009) novel The City and the City is in part a magnificent exploration of the possible “diplomatic” implications of more than one city being located in the “same” location.
4 A kaleidoscope, if you recall, is a tube that allows you to look inside. As it is rotated, one sees continuously changing patterns of color and light. On the interior, there is no fixed scale.
5 Compared with the varied orientations of Asian cities to one another discussed in Roy and Ong (Citation2011), much of the following concerns mainland Chinese investments in Cambodia. This is not because the Chinese influence is altogether hegemonic or completely determining. Certainly, many project activities relating to many Asian countries are going on. It is contingently the case, however, that the Chinese presence has been rather overwhelming for several years. Visible on the streets, spontaneously commented upon by a wide variety of people, appearing regularly in the news, etc. With a view to exhibiting the entwinement and mutual modification of people’s perspectives and the material itineraries of construction, the paper thus aims to textually recapitulate how “the Chinese” (as perspectival effects, see note 9 for further discussion) presently overshadow much else that is going on in the urban kaleidoscope.
6 The kaleidoscopic entry point entails that all of the following descriptions, even those that may seem “omniscient” in tone, are inherently perspectival and situated. They describe something as really “like this” from that particular perspective and location within the field.
7 I arrived in Phnom Penh in 2012, and have lived there ever since. Originally, I did fieldwork on issues relating to infrastructure (Jensen Citation2017a, Citation2019b) and knowledge practices in development (Jensen Citation2019c, Citation2019d, Citation2020) but over time my interests drifted and expanded. As the building boom intensified in 2018, I began to focus specifically on the material itineraries of construction and their co-emergence with new perspectives on various things urban. The data for this article can be described as a “methods assemblage” (Law Citation2004) comprised of numerous “materials,” formally and informally collected, observed, heard, and smelled, across many urban contexts over the last eight years.
8 Foreigners are formally allowed to own so-called “strata-titled” properties like condos, but not land. This can be circumvented by partnering with Cambodian companies in a 49/51% ownership structure that facilitates de facto control via various contractual provisions. Other possibilities include making leasehold agreements for 15 to 50 years, or acquiring Cambodian citizenship through payment.
9 Rather than indexing a dubious notion of race, “the Chinese” as evoked here – and in line with the kaleidoscopic emphasis on the mutual shaping of material itineraries and varied perspectives – designates a set of historically emerging and still changing qualities adopted by some people and ascribed to some by others. As I indicate further on, these qualities change quite radically over time and depending on context. This demands emphasis because many of my informants, as we will see, are quick to use “the Chinese” as a disparaging denomination whenever a problem with construction occurs. Though sometimes troubling in substance, these depictions are testimony to ways in which the material itineraries of construction shape new perspectives and thus reshuffle the kaleidoscope. Obviously, addition of the perspectives of Chinese entrepreneurs, construction engineers, or workers would have calibrated the description differently. They are missing, not on account of irrelevance (to the contrary they would be highly relevant) but rather due to practical difficulties – real estate buyers not interested in making themselves known and the famous opacity of the construction business – as well as due to my own language deficiencies. Opacity, however, also helps to drive the proliferation of perspectives. It operates as a motor for the imagination, an engine of change that, at this moment, facilitates Khmer talk about “the Chinese” as a generic and abstract category.
10 E.g. Paul Millar. 13 November 2018. “Seeing red: ‘Cambodia doesn’t have anti-China nationalism – yet’,” Southeast Asia Globe. Accessed 15 April 2019. http://sea-globe.com/anti-chinese-sentiment-in-cambodia and extended discussion further in the paper. See Delaplace (Citation2012) for a discussion of Mongolian perspectives on Chinese “parasitism.”
11 Illustrative of other significant Asian itineraries and reference points in Cambodia (in line with Roy and Ong Citation2011), the other English newspaper Phnom Penh Post was sold in 2018 to a Malaysian businessman with close ties to the government.
12 The prime minister referred to the newspaper as the country’s “chief thief,” and threatened the owner with prison. See Aun Chhengpor. 6 September 2016. “Shutdown of prominent Cambodia news paper fuels fears of government crackdown ahead of elections,” VoaCambodia. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.voacambodia.com/a/fearless-newspaper-closure-marks-declaration-of-post-truth-era-in-cambodia/4017429.html.
13 Ben Pavior. 7 April 2017. “Surveillance state,” The Cambodia Daily. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.cambodiadaily.com/features/surveillance-state-127681. Around this time, a random check revealed that my own Facebook profile had accumulated dozens of Cambodian “followers” unconnected to anyone I knew.
14 Ibid.
15 Neou Vannarin. 11 July 2018. “Two years after assassination, Cambodians remember slain political analyst Kem Ley,” VoaCambodia. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.voacambodia.com/a/two-years-after-assassination-cambodians-remember-slain-political-analyst/4478299.html.
16 Ben Sokhean, Mech Dara and Ananth Baliga. 17 November 2017. “‘Death of democracy,’ CNRP dissolved by Supreme Court ruling,” The Phnom Penh Post. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national-post-depth-politics/death-democracy-cnrp-dissolved-supreme-court-ruling.
17 May Kunmakara. 12 September 2018. “‘Your contracts are safe,’ Hun Sen tells Chinese firms,” Khmer Times. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.khmertimeskh.com/532867/your-contracts-are-safe-hun-sen-tells-chinese-firms.
18 Bruno Maçães. 7 December 2018. “A Preview of Your Chinese Future,” Foreign Policy. Accessed 12 April 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/07/a-preview-of-your-chinese-future.
19 Initiated in 2013, the belt and road initiative is a massive, bewildering Chinese infrastructure development project, which aims to improve land and sea connections in South-east Asia, between East-Asia and Europe, and extends well into Africa.
20 China Global Television Network, 14 May 2019. “Xi calls for building of China-Cambodia community of shared future. CGTV. Accessed 16 May 2019. https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414e34596a4e34457a6333566d54/index.html.
21 Philip Heijmans. 11 September 2018. “Chinese money is driving one of Asia’s fastest property booms,” Bloomberg. Accessed 12 April 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-10/chinese-money-is-driving-a-property-boom-in-cambodia.
22 Kris Janssens. n.d. “The Cambodian port city on China’s 21st Century silk road that’s becoming the New Macau,” Inter Press Service. Accessed 12 April 2019. http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/09/cambodian-port-city-chinas-21st-century-silk-road-thats-becoming-new-macau.
23 Sun Narin, Aun Chhengpor and Sokummono Khan. 15 March 2019. “Cambodia to Journalists: Let Us Now Praise Sihanoukville,” VoaCambodia. Accessed 22 April 2019. https://www.voacambodia.com/a/cambodia-to-journalists-let-us-now-praise-sihanoukville/4829091.html.
24 Asian Correspondent. N.d. “China invading Cambodia? That’s a ‘crazy’ argument, says Hun Sen.” Accessed 12 April 2019. https://asiancorrespondent.com/2018/10/china-invading-cambodia-thats-a-crazy-argument-says-hun-sen.
25 Nostalgia infuses the Bloomberg piece and other commentaries, as they favorably compare Western forms of urban planning, rationality and esthetics with newer forms of Asian or Chinese construction. However, rather than interpreting the (widespread) depiction of speculative construction as destroying cityscapes as a manifestation of colonial hierarchies and racist stereotypes, the argument advanced here is that such stereotypes – including perspectives on “the Chinese” – are emergent consequences of the material itineraries currently put in place, and with which practically everyone have daily experience. One reviewer has suggested that the emphasis on “the Chinese” obscures the underlying capitalist logic of these new itineraries and economic situations, with the implication that anti-Chinese sentiment is really a proxy for dissatisfaction with foreign, capitalist interference. But the fact that I have never heard any locals speak of such a proxy suggests that this perspective is just as external as the Western preference for colonial French architecture. From the perspective of critical social science, it is certainly possible, and possibly important, to conceptualize the situation as indexing underlying capitalist causes. But this is to add another (social science) perspective to the kaleidoscope.
26 See footnote 9 for details about my treatment of “the Chinese.”
27 See also discussion in David Hutt. 1 September 2016. “How China Came to Dominate Cambodia,” The Diplomat. Accessed 22 April 2019. https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/how-china-came-to-dominate-cambodia.
28 Oknha, which roughly translates as “nobleman,” is the highest civilian title in Cambodia. Since the 1990s, large donations of money to the government have been required to be eligible for the title. The term is often used as equivalent to “tycoon.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Casper Bruun Jensen
Casper Bruun Jensen is an anthropologist of science and technology currently residing in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is the author of Ontologies for Developing Things (2010) and Monitoring Movements in Development Aid (with Brit Ross Winthereik) (2013) and the editor of Deleuzian Intersections: Science, Technology, Anthropology with Kjetil Rödje (2009) and Infrastructures and Social Complexity (with Penny Harvey and Atsuro Morita) (2016). His work focuses on climate, environments, infrastructures, and speculative and practical ontologies.