Literature Review

Looking at the available literatures relevant to this topic, at the international level, it is clear that there is short of integrated approaches in research concerning with development focusing on involved actors of development were fragmented⁴⁴ and can be divided into four categories respectively listed here according to available degree from it richness to rareness. Category one, those were focused on people or peasants or the local institution alone and as country’s case (on the recipient’s side and at country level- very macro level while the target of development are those local poor people), Japan- Beardsley (1980), South India and Sri Lanka -Chambers (1980), Thailand- Tanabe (1994), Pakistan- Mohsin (1999) and Taiwan- Lam (2001). Category two, the documents focus on recipient government with special highlight on especially the bureaucracy of development policy and management department of the recipient government as the concerned issues (Coward 1980, Sampath et al. 1990, Uphoff et al. 1991, Cernea 1991, Abernethy et al.

1998). Category three, the study about the involvement of NGOs in on development and according to the author, the water user groups are NGOs in Vietnam (Sinh 2002) and farmers’ organizations promoted by World Bank are the NGOs involved in irrigation development in Pakistan (Latif et.al. 2003). Category four, are the documents about donor or loan agencies with the main issue of how to efficiently allocate the fund, aid or managing a large scale development project (Carruthers 1983, Small 1990, Uphoff 1990, Klein et al.

2005). There is another additional category, with a combination approach that explores, either donor and recipient government attitude toward or objectives on development (Chambers 1988, Vincent 1994), the donor and recipient views on development assistance in general (McCawley 1998), the guideline produced by World Bank (Plusquellec 1994, World Bank 1998) and by the Netherlands Development Assistance (NEDA 1998), and the relationship between governments, state’s agencies and farmers in the governance and management of large-scale agricultural development (Johnson et al. 2003).

As previously mentioned, the institution and social organization (the key terms, I borrowed from Coward 1995) more or less has some relationships with another key term “social capital”. Then a short literature review was also made aiming to find out the meaning and usage of social capital term. According to my preliminary documents research, social capital is used in different meanings: (i) social capital as a soft part of social network (social network here refers to the human group) social fabric (Halpern 2005), the intangible levels of trust that keep societies together, healthy, crime-free and livable (Putnam 1995- bowling alone); “Social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society's social interactions. Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion is critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable. Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society – it is the glue that holds them together” (World Bank), (ii)

44 As rural development involve with four actors: donor or loan agencies, recipient government, NGOs, and peasants, so any attempt to explore the performance of development should cover all four actors. But as literature review, researchers or scholar were fragmentally selected their focus of studies on one or two actors for their analysis and approaches, e.g. peasant, or recipient government.

Social capital as a human group (people join in a group) based on ethnicity (Brettell 2005)⁴⁵; (iii) social capital is a synergy which shape or complement to strengthen and define the solution between two institutions such as in Evans (1996) “state and society synergy”.

It is also found that a research tendency uses a key term “social capital” which serves as a factor of effectiveness of community and regional and governance and economic development in Italy (Puttnam 1993) and the factors of effectiveness of regional government of United States (Puttnam 1995a & b).

However, the unlimited of social capital meaning gives a great wide analysis opportunity to the scholar and also leads to have a barrier for scholars make further identification and analysis the ideal elements which constitute a society. Here are some distinguished research on social capital:

At Cambodian level, document for grassroots level community in Cambodia is scant⁴⁶. Most of the available literatures were more or less are focusing on peasant and rural society of Cambodia (Delvert 1960, Ebihara 1968, Ovesen et al. 1996, Krishnamurthy 1999); on purely agricultural development with rice cultivation as their main topic of discussion (Mak 1997, Nesbitt 1997, Cox et al. 2000); on social structure for development of Cambodian society (Ledgerwood 1995, Vijghen et al. 1996, Sri 1997a &b, Kazuki 1999, Kyoko 2002); and the other group was strongly on archaeological discovery (as I mentioned early, Groslier 1979, van Liere 1980, Dumarcay, 1994 & 1997).

Then, my literature review was not stopped, I went further to broaden my literature’s enquiry, as I want to know whether anyone deals with a Cambodian development or aid assistance with approaching to find the matching concept of development among the IDA’s actors, I have found that a group of scholars (Nachmias 1999, Rita 2000, Gollogly 2002) were dealing with this subject, but they appeared to judge that there are only two actors involved in Cambodian development, international community and local authority (according to authors, they are the donor and the recipient government) so the participation of local community and the NGOs were overlooked. The other group’s authors (Godfrey et al. 2002) provide a great study on technical assistance and capacity building in Cambodia using an empirical research on three actors, donor, Cambodian governments (government institutions) and NGOs. However, their approach was missing out one main actor- that is the local people or grassroots level community or peasant and deals only with the assistance on capacity building. Conway (1999) came up with another approach in his Ph.D dissertation by exploring the international aid to Cambodia at national and provincial levels through the study of activities of one NGO. Chong (2002) has written about the model of aid in a failed state using UNTAC in Cambodia as a case, both of them are leaving the other three actors out of their frame of analysis. A group of Japanese experts on Cambodia with the support from JICA has made a very fresh study on Cambodia and covering almost all subjects counting from politics to history, but the grassroots community issue was not included (see JICA 2002).

45 Bretttell researched on social capital emerged inside the Indian ethnic immigrant into US which composed of Indian with different religious Hindu. They come together to set up “Pan-ethnicity institutions [or organization]” and “Pan-ethnicity can yield competitive advantage because it fosters a unified voice and creates effective community capital” (Brettell 2005: 876).

46 I am not alone who stated this, I found a confirmation in a thick volume of newly printed (2001) “Cambodia” which provides a selection of journal essays on Cambodia and divided into 5 parts but “…important issues related to urbanization and agricultural development are not included, simply because no journal essays on these subjects exist” Peou (2001: xii).

Stephen C. Smith, an economist and director of George Washington University's Research Program on Poverty, Development and Globalization, recently produced a straightforward and accessible book on the causes of poverty, and some successful programs for reducing it. (Smith 2005), Smith writes that pockets of intense poverty can persist even within growing economies because of self-reinforcing "traps" such as illiteracy, overpopulation and a lack of working capital. Smith reports on a number of successful programs that have helped desperately poor communities overcome those traps. He emphasizes micro-projects that rely on the commitment, ingenuity and hard work of poor people themselves. The book is part of a growing literature that questions the top-down approach taken by the United Nations, World Bank and regional development banks to alleviate poverty through major infrastructure projects, deregulation and reform of national economic institutions. Smith advocates a bottom-up approach that focuses on community efforts and relies on the generosity and involvement of individuals and “non-government organizations”. Here he suggested using NGOs channel, however it is not efficient enough, and it needs to be channel directly to the community which this is the focus of this thesis

Reviewing was also made in the irrigation development studies and found two types of documents;

one is the work of Mr. Than (1980) that was a good one with a review and an inventory list of Cambodian traditional irrigation tools. Second type is the studies with the support of international communities- World Bank, FAO and UNDP, which call to evaluate and to make inventory on the government capacity and existed physical irrigation systems of the country (Sir William Halcrow & Partners 1994, FAO 1994, Himel 1995). ADB Cambodian office, had hired a consultant firm to review the farmer water user communities, but it is found that the focus is on the formal community leaving those traditional and/or people self organization types out of the scope (Macdonald & partner 2001). In late 2003 a new trend was appeared, it was the popular of water issues studies as saw a conference on research on Asia water for agriculture was held in Cambodia. However, most of the scholars raised the issues of shortage of water for rice and solving that by proposing a improving of rice germplasm, field level (Nesbitt et.al. 2003, Fukai et.al. 2003, Bui 2003) as this conference held at a rice research institute and sponsored by IRRI (International Rice Research Institute). Beside this I did a research for MA thesis about Cambodian culture and society in a village with an attempt to explore the present situation of Cambodian rural society as a starting point to seek the sustainable agricultural development (Chay 2003a) and from that thesis, two papers were developed and published, one is about the irrigation systems using in a village with titling “traditional water usage” (Chay et. al. 2003) and the other is aimed to explore the traditional cooperation organization and it role in agricultural activities (Chay 2003b).

Newly collected lists of my literature which deal with the community and society or village level in Cambodia are Rechardson (2001)- an inventory of NGOs in Cambodia in which the NGOs were classified into four groups: (i) community-based organization; (ii) Membership groups/Associations; (iii) Cambodian NGOs; (iv) networks. Addition to Richardson, Kusakabe et al. (2002) has made a broader research covering not only NGOs but including as well the association, and religious associations. Seven classifications were made up by Kusakabe; those are (i) mutual helps associations; (ii) resource management association; (iii) Occupation associations; (iv) Advocacy associations; (v) Business

associations; (vi) Ethnic associations; (vii) religious and recreational associations. An outstanding attempt by a working group on social organization to make a review on all French literature on Cambodian society to find out the meaning of community in Cambodia, has ended with an unsure conclusion that “we have not started with a definition of community in this article, but the importance of bitterly understanding this notion is self-evident” (Brown 1999: 20).

Regarding the previous research on Cambodian Society and International Development Assistance toward development policy making could be divided into two groups which are supported each others. The two protagonist schools of understanding about Cambodian society: one is the group who supports the understanding that Cambodian society is “lack of community cohesion and is shattered by the civil war”

and the other school argues the other way round. For those whose stance in the first group has been dominant and nowadays this argument has effectively been used in Cambodian development practices, resulting in the creation of artificial grassroots-level community such as VDCs (Village Development Committees), PBCs (Planning and budgeting Committees) and others.

The second school of thought is the minority. It is the minority because as long as I know, there are only three anthropologists and one sociologist who are standing in this position. A sociologist made his empirical assessment in a Kandal- southern part of Cambodia. He found that Cambodian villagers were entangled in a variety of networks, through which they can acquire several kinds of scarce resources (Giuseppe2000: 57), and he rejected the idea of the first school. Among three anthropologists, Ebihara studied Cambodian society with special attention to kinship systems since 1950s and 1960s with occasional visits in the 1990s, who did not elaborate further how to make use of Cambodian kinship into the contemporary (international) development assistance of Cambodia (Ebihara 1968, 1993, and Ebihara et. al.

1994). The second person is Ebihara’s successor- Ledgerwood – who continues the quest of her previous generation. She kept her focus on Cambodian kinship (1995). The only one of her research documentation relates to the development of Cambodia, i.e. “Rural Development in Cambodia: the view from the village”

(Ledgerwood 1998). She nonetheless described that Cambodian society, before and after the war had not been or is lack of community cohesion or has not been shattered. Rather, she goes on to suggest how to make use of this social system for development. The only anthropologist, who has explored further, as far as I know, is Collins William. His research was published in 1998 (Collins 1998): it covered the experimentation of rural development during 1995-1998 made by two large projects, the CARERE⁴⁷ (Cambodia Area Rehabilitation and Regeneration) supported by UNDP and UNOPS (United Nation Office for Project Support) covered five provinces and Rural Development project supported by GTZ⁴⁸ covered two provinces. The former created VDCs (as I described in the previous part) and the latter based on traditional systems – wat (monastery or pagoda) to be acted as grassroots-level community. After examining other provinces (besides GTZ’s target provinces) especially the CARERE’s target provinces,

47 it was this project “CARERE” that led to create SEILA program. At the beginning the project covered only 5 provinces of Cambodia (among 24 provinces) for experiment, of which I was a staff.

48 GTZ project covered only two provinces: Kampong Thom and Kampot in the south. It is still there, covering the same provinces.

Collins suggested that development in Cambodia should be based on the community which GTZ used and found⁴⁹ because according to his research he confirmed that:

What is relevant to us in this German effort is their documentation of the extremely lively and diverse Civil Society activity that they found in the villages of Kampong Thom [a province in the central of Cambodia]. There is no reason to think that this province is unique in its preservation of traditional Cambodian social and cultural organizations, associations and activities. And indeed, our own research in Siem Reap and Battambang confirms that the same internally supported civic activities found by GTZ can be found elsewhere in Cambodia. Contrary to the agonized lament so often heard in Phnom Penh, that Pol Pot’s regime [Khmer Rouge] of three years eight months and twenty days had destroyed Cambodian culture, indigenous Civil Society in, in fact, alive and flourishing in the countryside (Collins 1998: 10).

But nowadays no one follows his suggestion even the GTZ themselves. GTZ still now has rural development projects in the two provinces where their team suggested and confirmed by Collins that GTZ has become subordinate to and follows the majority school. VDCs were also created in their areas. Why?

Two reasons: the intention of GTZ to use traditional systems was interrupted by the slowdown of German funding due to the internal political conflicts,⁵⁰ and the other may be, as Collins pointed out about the creation of VDCs, that “sociological terms, we recognize this policies experiment as an attempt to move away from traditional patterns of authority and particularistic loyalties and connections towards a legal-rational pattern for authority and a bureaucratic model for relationships typical of complex Western organization” (Collins 1998: 7).

Before getting started, next section will briefly discuss about major development theorist (academically⁵¹).