Alexandra Kent
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 596909 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Alexandra Kent |
| PRENOMES | Alexandra |
| SOBRENOME | Kent |
| ASSINATURA | KENT A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Nordic Institute of Asian Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3291-3413 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 30 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 170 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2000 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Epilogue
This epilogue reflects on the central arguments presented in the articles of this special issue. They stress how the dynamics of translation are crucial in understanding what happens to abstract universals as they travel globally across differences and encounter the realities in Southeast Asia. The authors provide ethnographic insights into the way that past (dis)entanglements between local histories and broader modernities shape local actors' pe…
Surely a little discretion isn’t too difficult’? The discursive construction of discretion in users’ comments on UK newspaper articles about public breastfeeding
OBJECTIVE: This paper explores how discourses of discretion are constructed in online discussions about breastfeeding in public. METHOD AND MEASURES: We analysed 4204 online newspaper comment threads from 15 UK-based publications using Discursive Psychology. We explored how discretion was constructed and mobilised to facilitate discourses of breastfeeding in public. RESULTS: Indiscretion was used to construct dispositional traits of mothers typic…
Emergency or Not? Dealing with Borderline Cases in Emergency Police Calls
We examine occasions when callers phone emergency services yet preface their reason for calling as "not an emergency." Data are phone calls to U.S. (911) and U.K. (999) emergency lines and U.K. (101) nonemergency police lines. Data were transcribed using Jefferson conventions and analyzed using conversation analysis. The "not an emergency" formulation is recurrently used to mark a shaky or borderline fit between the caller's situation and the eme…
Truly inclusive education
Qualitative psychological research frequently focuses on issues of inequality, and as such researchers are committed to inclusion, including in education. However, as students in higher education become more diverse, and the sector becomes increasingly motivated to decolonise curricula and enhance inclusion in the classroom, how can we draw on our expertise and methodologies to create truly inclusive education? The Teaching Qualitative Psychology…
Simas
Covenantal Pluralism
This article explores to what extent the ideals of covenantal pluralism resonate with or deviate from socio-cultural processes in Cambodia. It examines efforts made by various Khmer Buddhist protagonists to recover moral order following the Khmer Rouge era. Conversely, it describes how power continues to be monopolized by certain actors in a way that undermines trust in institutions and in other people generally. Thus it explores the tension betw…
Outsourcing Outreach
This article examines the outreach activities of the ongoing trials in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The ECCC was designed to hold the leaders of Cambodia's notoriously violent Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979) accountable. Outreach programmes have now become part of transitional justice initiatives as means to anchor their work in local and national consciousness in target countries. Using ethnographic data gathered i…
Perceptions about Social Science among NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologists
Imperative Directives
Our analysis proceeds from the question that if grammar alone is insufficient to identify the action of an imperative (e.g., offering, directing, warning, begging, etc.), how can interlocutors come to recognize the specific action being performed by a given imperative? We argue that imperative directives that occur after the directed action could have first been relevantly performed explicitly to direct the actions of the recipient and tacitly tr…
Navigating a River by Its Bends
Book Review: Navigating a River by Its Bends: A Comparison of Cambodian RemigrationBy Gea Wijers Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2013, 197 pp
Conflict continues
This article discusses the ongoing hybrid war crimes tribunal taking place in Cambodia — in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) — in relation to the simultaneous eviction of the Boeung Kak Lake community in the capital, Phnom Penh. Presenting these two phenomena alongside one another highlights the contradiction inherent in the liberal peace model's humanitarian rhetoric of societal reconstruction and its economic imperati…
‘Please, I need help, please!’
This paper describes a summer Research Assistantship Scheme undertaken by three undergraduate students in the School of Psychology at Keele University. The research used a conversation analytic approach to explore interactions during emergency and non-emergency phone calls to a regional police force in the UK. We will briefly introduce the research undertaken and summarise some of the preliminary patterns of results emerging from the analysis. He…
Offering alternatives as a way of issuing directives to children
Research projects
Research projects
Friction and Security at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
A hybrid judicial tribunal was inaugurated in Phnom Penh in 2006 to try those most responsible for the mass crimes perpetrated during the period of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia, 1975–79. Since the inception of the tribunal, there has been regular friction between the international and national sides, some of which has led to considerable animosity. In 2012 the international Co-investigating Judge resigned after only a few months in office, claimi…
Compliance, resistance and incipient compliance when responding to directives
How does a parent get a child to do something? And, indeed, how might the child avoid complying or seem to comply without actually having done so? This article uses conversation analysis to identify the interactionally preferred and dispreferred response to directives (compliance and resistance respectively). It then focuses on one alternative response option that has both verbal and embodied elements. The first part involves an embodied display …
Telling people what to do (and, sometimes, why)
Global change and moral uncertainty
Using Cambodia as a case study, this article takes an anthropological stance to explore how the penetration of global neoliberal values impacts upon understandings of moral order and thereby influences gender-based violence in war-torn societies. It argues that the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment programmes and radical free-market reforms affect not only the politico-economic climate but also moral, social and cosmological ord…
Sheltered by dhamma
This article draws upon recently-gathered anthropological and other data from Cambodia to explore how some Cambodians move beyond the constraints of social differentiation and order to access higher realms of meaning. This enables communion, security and liberation from social patterns of misrecognition. Gender is one of the primary principles of social differentiation and in recent years the relationship between gender, security and development …
Winged faith
A Buddhist Bouncer
Buddhist teachings have much to say about the disciplining of desire. In lived Buddhism, however, there may be considerable contestation over how canonical tenets should be understood and flexibility in the way precept is related to practice. This article uses ethnographic data recently gathered from a rural setting in Cambodia to discuss how religious legitimacy is shaped by the complex fabric of village culture and history and the contemporary …
People of virtue
Much attention has been given to the 'killing fields' of Cambodia, far less to how the country can recover and heal itself after such an experience. Crucial to this process has been the formation of a new moral order in Cambodia and hence the revival of religion in the country. Certainly, the regeneration of the ritual life of a community may offer ways for people to formulate and relate to their collective stories through symbolism that recalls …
Peace, power and pagodas in present-day Cambodia
This article draws upon several ethnographic vignettes taken from fieldwork conducted in Cambodia between 2003-2004 to explore how security and legitimacy are constructed in terms of Khmer culture. I propose that the cultural logic according to which these are formulated rests upon the containment and subordination of power, in its broadest sense, to the Buddhist virtues (sel), the sacred boundary around the temple (sima) and the saffron robe of …
Divinity and Diversity
A timely and relevant study in this age of concern about trans-national ’religious’ networks where powerful use of ethnographic date illuminates an original and striking thesis on the ambiguous nature of the Sai Baba movement. What makes this work outstanding is how the author places her material against the complex ethnic, political and religious situation of Malaysia. The book looks closely at the Malaysian following of the contemporary Indian …
Telling people what to do (and, sometimes, why)
Compliance, resistance and incipient compliance when responding to directives
How does a parent get a child to do something? And, indeed, how might the child avoid complying or seem to comply without actually having done so? This article uses conversation analysis to identify the interactionally preferred and dispreferred response to directives (compliance and resistance respectively). It then focuses on one alternative response option that has both verbal and embodied elements. The first part involves an embodied display …
Reconfiguring Security
The issue of security has recently gained acute relevance for theoreticians and policymakers, but the way in which culture relates to security has yet to be given the attention it deserves. This article argues that all discourses and practices of security – ours as well as those of others – are cultural in nature, are historically positioned, and therefore inescapably plural. The article uses a case study of today's revival of Buddhism in Cambodi…
Offering alternatives as a way of issuing directives to children
Imperative Directives
Our analysis proceeds from the question that if grammar alone is insufficient to identify the action of an imperative (e.g., offering, directing, warning, begging, etc.), how can interlocutors come to recognize the specific action being performed by a given imperative? We argue that imperative directives that occur after the directed action could have first been relevantly performed explicitly to direct the actions of the recipient and tacitly tr…
Divinity, Miracles and Charity in the Sathya Sai Baba Movement of Malaysia
This paper examines how a Hindu revitalisation movement addresses the modernisation in Malaysia. Modernisation entails material development and nation-building, but also the weakening of the authority of religious institutions and the internalisation of faith. The following of the Indian guru, Sathya Sai Baba, is largely urban-based, attracting many Indian business people, scientists and professionals. The paper elaborates theoretical debate on t…
Friction and Security at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
A hybrid judicial tribunal was inaugurated in Phnom Penh in 2006 to try those most responsible for the mass crimes perpetrated during the period of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia, 1975–79. Since the inception of the tribunal, there has been regular friction between the international and national sides, some of which has led to considerable animosity. In 2012 the international Co-investigating Judge resigned after only a few months in office, claimi…
Global change and moral uncertainty
Using Cambodia as a case study, this article takes an anthropological stance to explore how the penetration of global neoliberal values impacts upon understandings of moral order and thereby influences gender-based violence in war-torn societies. It argues that the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment programmes and radical free-market reforms affect not only the politico-economic climate but also moral, social and cosmological ord…
Outsourcing Outreach
This article examines the outreach activities of the ongoing trials in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The ECCC was designed to hold the leaders of Cambodia's notoriously violent Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979) accountable. Outreach programmes have now become part of transitional justice initiatives as means to anchor their work in local and national consciousness in target countries. Using ethnographic data gathered i…
Purchasing power and pagodas
Cambodia is now in the midst of reconstruction after decades of organised violence and socio-cultural disruption. This paper explores how rural Cambodians are trying to recreate order in their local worlds and it questions what impact the recent deluge of consumer values, delivered through a post-socialist political filter, is having on these efforts
Sheltered by dhamma
This article draws upon recently-gathered anthropological and other data from Cambodia to explore how some Cambodians move beyond the constraints of social differentiation and order to access higher realms of meaning. This enables communion, security and liberation from social patterns of misrecognition. Gender is one of the primary principles of social differentiation and in recent years the relationship between gender, security and development …
Simas
A Buddhist Bouncer
Buddhist teachings have much to say about the disciplining of desire. In lived Buddhism, however, there may be considerable contestation over how canonical tenets should be understood and flexibility in the way precept is related to practice. This article uses ethnographic data recently gathered from a rural setting in Cambodia to discuss how religious legitimacy is shaped by the complex fabric of village culture and history and the contemporary …
Conflict continues
This article discusses the ongoing hybrid war crimes tribunal taking place in Cambodia — in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) — in relation to the simultaneous eviction of the Boeung Kak Lake community in the capital, Phnom Penh. Presenting these two phenomena alongside one another highlights the contradiction inherent in the liberal peace model's humanitarian rhetoric of societal reconstruction and its economic imperati…
Creating Divine Unity
This paper examines Chinese participation in a neo-Hindu movement in Malaysia. The data, gathered in Kuala Lumpur 1995-1997, are examined with regard to their ethnic and political implications and in relation to the historical as well as the contemporary social features of Malaysia. The paper explores the way in which the Indian-dominated leadership of the Malaysian Sai Baba organisation attempts to include Chinese worshippers: while aiming to ov…
Transcendence and tolerance
Divinity, Miracles and Charity in the Sathya Sai Baba Movement of Malaysia
This paper examines how a Hindu revitalisation movement addresses the modernisation in Malaysia. Modernisation entails material development and nation-building, but also the weakening of the authority of religious institutions and the internalisation of faith. The following of the Indian guru, Sathya Sai Baba, is largely urban-based, attracting many Indian business people, scientists and professionals. The paper elaborates theoretical debate on t…
Reconfiguring Security
The issue of security has recently gained acute relevance for theoreticians and policymakers, but the way in which culture relates to security has yet to be given the attention it deserves. This article argues that all discourses and practices of security – ours as well as those of others – are cultural in nature, are historically positioned, and therefore inescapably plural. The article uses a case study of today's revival of Buddhism in Cambodi…
Divinity and Diversity
A timely and relevant study in this age of concern about trans-national ’religious’ networks where powerful use of ethnographic date illuminates an original and striking thesis on the ambiguous nature of the Sai Baba movement. What makes this work outstanding is how the author places her material against the complex ethnic, political and religious situation of Malaysia. The book looks closely at the Malaysian following of the contemporary Indian …
Purchasing power and pagodas
Cambodia is now in the midst of reconstruction after decades of organised violence and socio-cultural disruption. This paper explores how rural Cambodians are trying to recreate order in their local worlds and it questions what impact the recent deluge of consumer values, delivered through a post-socialist political filter, is having on these efforts
People of virtue
Much attention has been given to the 'killing fields' of Cambodia, far less to how the country can recover and heal itself after such an experience. Crucial to this process has been the formation of a new moral order in Cambodia and hence the revival of religion in the country. Certainly, the regeneration of the ritual life of a community may offer ways for people to formulate and relate to their collective stories through symbolism that recalls …
Peace, power and pagodas in present-day Cambodia
This article draws upon several ethnographic vignettes taken from fieldwork conducted in Cambodia between 2003-2004 to explore how security and legitimacy are constructed in terms of Khmer culture. I propose that the cultural logic according to which these are formulated rests upon the containment and subordination of power, in its broadest sense, to the Buddhist virtues (sel), the sacred boundary around the temple (sima) and the saffron robe of …
A Buddhist Bouncer
Buddhist teachings have much to say about the disciplining of desire. In lived Buddhism, however, there may be considerable contestation over how canonical tenets should be understood and flexibility in the way precept is related to practice. This article uses ethnographic data recently gathered from a rural setting in Cambodia to discuss how religious legitimacy is shaped by the complex fabric of village culture and history and the contemporary …
Global change and moral uncertainty
Using Cambodia as a case study, this article takes an anthropological stance to explore how the penetration of global neoliberal values impacts upon understandings of moral order and thereby influences gender-based violence in war-torn societies. It argues that the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment programmes and radical free-market reforms affect not only the politico-economic climate but also moral, social and cosmological ord…
Sheltered by dhamma
This article draws upon recently-gathered anthropological and other data from Cambodia to explore how some Cambodians move beyond the constraints of social differentiation and order to access higher realms of meaning. This enables communion, security and liberation from social patterns of misrecognition. Gender is one of the primary principles of social differentiation and in recent years the relationship between gender, security and development …
Winged faith
Compliance, resistance and incipient compliance when responding to directives
How does a parent get a child to do something? And, indeed, how might the child avoid complying or seem to comply without actually having done so? This article uses conversation analysis to identify the interactionally preferred and dispreferred response to directives (compliance and resistance respectively). It then focuses on one alternative response option that has both verbal and embodied elements. The first part involves an embodied display …
Telling people what to do (and, sometimes, why)
Research projects
Friction and Security at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
A hybrid judicial tribunal was inaugurated in Phnom Penh in 2006 to try those most responsible for the mass crimes perpetrated during the period of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia, 1975–79. Since the inception of the tribunal, there has been regular friction between the international and national sides, some of which has led to considerable animosity. In 2012 the international Co-investigating Judge resigned after only a few months in office, claimi…
Research projects
‘Please, I need help, please!’
This paper describes a summer Research Assistantship Scheme undertaken by three undergraduate students in the School of Psychology at Keele University. The research used a conversation analytic approach to explore interactions during emergency and non-emergency phone calls to a regional police force in the UK. We will briefly introduce the research undertaken and summarise some of the preliminary patterns of results emerging from the analysis. He…
Offering alternatives as a way of issuing directives to children
Imperative Directives
Our analysis proceeds from the question that if grammar alone is insufficient to identify the action of an imperative (e.g., offering, directing, warning, begging, etc.), how can interlocutors come to recognize the specific action being performed by a given imperative? We argue that imperative directives that occur after the directed action could have first been relevantly performed explicitly to direct the actions of the recipient and tacitly tr…
Navigating a River by Its Bends
Book Review: Navigating a River by Its Bends: A Comparison of Cambodian RemigrationBy Gea Wijers Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2013, 197 pp
Conflict continues
This article discusses the ongoing hybrid war crimes tribunal taking place in Cambodia — in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) — in relation to the simultaneous eviction of the Boeung Kak Lake community in the capital, Phnom Penh. Presenting these two phenomena alongside one another highlights the contradiction inherent in the liberal peace model's humanitarian rhetoric of societal reconstruction and its economic imperati…
Perceptions about Social Science among NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologists
Outsourcing Outreach
This article examines the outreach activities of the ongoing trials in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The ECCC was designed to hold the leaders of Cambodia's notoriously violent Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979) accountable. Outreach programmes have now become part of transitional justice initiatives as means to anchor their work in local and national consciousness in target countries. Using ethnographic data gathered i…
Truly inclusive education
Qualitative psychological research frequently focuses on issues of inequality, and as such researchers are committed to inclusion, including in education. However, as students in higher education become more diverse, and the sector becomes increasingly motivated to decolonise curricula and enhance inclusion in the classroom, how can we draw on our expertise and methodologies to create truly inclusive education? The Teaching Qualitative Psychology…
Political science (19 obras) · Sociology (18 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Cambodian History and Society (12 obras) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography (11 obras) · Law (10 obras) · Philosophy (10 obras) · Psychology (9 obras) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (9 obras) · Computer Science (8 obras)