In their new book, Professor Roderic Broadhurst and his colleagues write about the history of violence in Cambodia, evaluating the extent to which Norbert Elias’s theories, published as The Civilizing Process in 1939, can be applied in a non-western context. They assess whether violence in Cambodia has decreased and whether this can be attributed to Elias’s civilising process, identifying a series of universal factors that have historically reduced violence. They draw on a range of sources, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, covering periods of colonisation, anti-colonial wars, interdependence, civil war, the revolutionary terror of the 1970s and post-conflict development.

About the Author

Professor Roderic Broadhurst is Foundation Professor of Criminology at the Australian National University and a graduate of the University of Western Australia and Cambridge. He is an Associate Fellow of the Australian Institute of Criminology and has previously worked at the University of Western Australia, the University of Hong Kong and the Queensland University of Technology). His forty-year career as a practitioner, teacher and researcher has included work in prisons, public health, and death investigation. He currently leads the ANU Cybercrime Observatory. Recent books include Business and the Risk of Crime in China (2011) and Policing in Context (2009).

Panel members: Robert Van Krieken (Sydney), Tyrell Haberkorn (ANU)