Dependent Communities: Aid and Politics in Cambodia and East Timor

Hughes (U. of Birmingham, UK) examines the development experiences and ongoing internal power struggles of Cambodia and East Timor following international interventions of the 1990s, in a critique of international policies that focus on rebuilding state institutions to accommodate the global market. Based on Hughes' extensive field research conducted between 1995 and 2005, coverage includes the place of nation in the politics of war; post-Cold War constructions of conflict and post-conflict reconstruction; clashing perspectives of interveners and locals; interveners intrusions into Cambodia and East Timor; how peacekeeping operations, in refugee repatriation and transitional justice mechanisms, both violate and attempt to resurrect the importance of territorial boundaries of the state; regimenting power technologies imposed within these boundaries; and local actor responses to these international strategies, including relations between elites and interveners, how elite political actors use politics to legitimize their strategies, and the political disenfranchisement experienced at the village level. Published by the Southeast Asia Program, which is at Cornell U. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)