# Encountering Universals in Cambodia and Indonesia-Translations Across Historical Multiplicity

Catherine Scheer, Sina Emde

► To cite this version:

Catherine Scheer, Sina Emde. Encountering Universals in Cambodia and Indonesia-Translations Across Historical Multiplicity. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2025, 26 (2), pp.73-85. 10.1080/14442213.2025.2478993. hal-05250998

HAL Id: hal-05250998

https://hal.science/hal-05250998v1

Submitted on 12 Sep 2025

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

# Encountering Universals in Cambodia and Indonesia—Translations Across Historical Multiplicity

Catherine Scheer & Sina Emde

**To cite this article:** Catherine Scheer & Sina Emde (2025) Encountering Universals in Cambodia and Indonesia—Translations Across Historical Multiplicity, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 26:2, 73-85, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2025.2478993

**To link to this article:** https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2025.2478993

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

Published online: 14 Apr 2025.

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

Submit your article to this journal

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

Article views: 425

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

View related articles

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /></figure>

View Crossmark data

CrossMark
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /></figure>

# Encountering Universals in Cambodia and Indonesia—Translations Across Historical Multiplicity

Catherine Scheer and Sina Emde*

Universals are abstract aspirations that claim to transform the status quo to a better future. They are particulars born in specific cultural, socio-political, and economic settings that aim to generalise across difference as they travel globally. While the contemporary grand schemes under scrutiny in this special issue circulate in Cambodia and Indonesia as part of economic neo-liberalism, rights-based liberalism, or environmental crisis management, they encounter other universals that predate the current era of development. It is thus necessary to carefully consider the influence of previous models to grasp how universals are translated across the region today. Based on the assumption that the universal is multiple, we argue that it is important to focus on these dimensions of its multiplicity and historicity in order to study how processes of (dis)engagement unfold. To grapple this complexity, this special issue brings forth novel forms of translation that will enrich the dynamic reflections on this concept.

Keywords: Grand Schemes; Travelling Models; Global Encounters; Longue Durée; (In)Commensurability; Southeast Asia

Universal: existing everywhere or involving everyone

Cambridge Dictionary

This special issue on the non/engagement with assumed universals in Cambodia and Indonesia arises from a panel that we organised at the EUROSEAS conference in 2019. It also reflects longstanding conversations between colleagues who have been part of the anthropology department at Heidelberg University at one time or another between 2011 and 2020. We worked on themes that may seem disparate

<footnote>*Catherine Scheer, Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient / Centre Asie du Sud-Est, France. Email: catherine.scheer@efeo.net; Sina Emde, Leipzig University, Germany. Email: sina.emde@uni-leipzig.de.</footnote>
at first sight: transitional justice (Emde); Christian missionisation, indigeneity and
development (Scheer); sustainability/fisheries (Schneider); and infrastructure/
climate change (Ley). We were nevertheless connected regionally, with two
authors working in Indonesia and both guest editors in Cambodia. Discussing our
work at different occasions, including the panel at EUROSEAS, we realised that all
our interlocutors and research contexts were marked by longue durée encounters
with what we, inspired by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2005), called universals.

Universals are commonly defined a-priori as given, existing everywhere and invol-
ving everyone, as in the Cambridge Dictionary definition cited above. However,
Tsing alerts us to the processual nature of universals as part of global connections
and journeys. She sees universals as abstracts that generalise and move knowledge
across difference (Tsing 2005, 7). As such, the universal should be seen as a site of
negotiation rather than a fixed notion. Making universals depends on the travel of
ideas, concepts, and objects from one point to another and the ability to be picked
up in different contexts. Thus, far from being pre-existing, universals are particular
to specific cultural, socio-political, and economic settings that then circulate globally,
aspiring to generalisation and commonality (Tsing 2005, 9). The generalisation of
universals is not the affirmation of a pre-existing law but an ongoing, incomplete
process in which translation plays a key role (Butler 2000a; Diagne 2013; Tsing
2005). Rather than understanding translation as an effort to faithfully replicate a pre-
sumed original, as implied in Euro-American common sense, we see it as an open-
ended process, in which both the particular and the universal may be altered, and
which might involve dynamics of negotiation, misunderstanding, contradiction,
and (in)commensurability.

In this special issue, we focus on sites of encounter as ethnographic entry points
(Dippel and Thomas 2024) for our investigations of how universals are translated
in different localities in Cambodia and Indonesia: villagers in Cambodia engaging
with legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity in the context of the
ECCC, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Emde and Keo);
fishers in the Indonesian archipelago facing new environmental policies aimed at
'sustainability' and 'environmentally friendly' fisheries (Schneider); and coastal city
residents in Indonesia being introduced to polder technologies to reduce flooding
risks (Ley). In all these ethnographic studies, people encounter ideas, concepts,
and objects as parts of universal norms, standards, and models, such as international
law, development, environment, and technology. Our interlocutors' non/engage-
ments do not only reject, adapt, or change these seemingly universal normative
ideas, schemes, and objects, but alert us to questions of temporality and historicity
in processes of translation.

While the contemporary universal schemes under scrutiny in this special issue cir-
culate in Cambodia and Indonesia as part of global flows of economic neo-liberalism,
rights-based liberalisms, or environmental crisis adaptation, they encounter contexts
in which people already have histories of translating older universals that predate the
neo-liberal era of development and/or do not follow North-South trajectories, such
as Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity or emancipatory philosophies and ideologies that brought an end to colonialism. They also enter fields that have already been altered by previous histories of encounters with metanarratives and models of development and modernisation (Tsing 2000).¹

Global travels of knowledge, schemes, and technoscience have been addressed in a variety of fields, of which the natural and life sciences are especially interesting as they claim intrinsic universal validity. Yet, climate research shows that secular scientific climate change models are often accompanied by specific climate and disaster adaptation technologies. It reveals how religious and ontological subjectivities profoundly influence the ways in which these seemingly universal practices, ideas, and technologies are locally received (Klepp and Chavez-Rodriguez 2018; Wit, Pascht, and Haug 2018; Wit and Haines 2021; Rudiak-Gould 2011). Recent scholarship in the field of medical anthropology specifically asks how claims of universality in the global field of science are negotiated in different locales (Bečka et al. 2024; Mol 2003). It sees a transformation from a colonial universalisation of Europe as the site of origin of the global expansion of modernity, history, and science to a fragmented and particularised universality in the post-colony where universals and universality are newly negotiated at sites of ontological and epistemological struggles (Bečka et al. 2024).

While all these works give prominence to the particular and the local to study how encounters with universals are negotiated, they see these particularities and local contexts as a given, while at the same time acknowledging how the localities and universals themselves are changed through people's encounters with the global concepts, ideas, and technologies under scrutiny. We take an extra step when we ask about the historical constitution of the local, by which we mean the impact of people's prior experiences with implementations of (multiple) universals in contexts such as development programmes, religion, science, and technology.

From a longue durée perspective, we see these prior experiences aligned to the grand universal narratives of colonialism, and universal concepts of development and modernity in the post-WWII period, which spread globally (mostly on a North-South trajectory). Several authors have highlighted that colonialism was intrinsically linked to absolute notions of European universality, including a concept of humanity that excluded the colonised as less than human, and ideologies of race justifying exploitation and colonial violence (Butler 2000a; Balibar 2020; Diagne 2013; Mignolo 2009). Colonialism's universals were Western particulars, e.g. ideas of reason and science, also bringing with them epistemic violence (Diagne 2013; Mignolo 2009). In many parts of Southeast Asia, the end of colonialism was marked by the emergence of communism and capitalism, both claiming to be universal ideologies for a better future for all mankind. Hence, today there is rarely only one universal at play, neither is a universal always singularly defined (Balibar 2020; Butler 2000b; Diagne 2013). As there are multiple universals (more than one concept) and a universal multiple (one concept multiply defined), we wish to focus on the influence of multiplicity and historicity, which is, we suggest, seminal to how processes of translation and (dis)engagement unfold.
To examine how people in Cambodia and Indonesia engage or subvert new uni-
versals entering their lives, we look at their shape/s upon entry: legal norms and dis-
cursive ideas (e.g. Levitt and Merry 2009), political concepts and models (e.g.
Behrends, Park, and Rottenburg 2014), or (technological) tool kits (e.g. Rottenburg
2009). We specifically ask about the impact of people's histories and previous experi-
ences with other universalist programmes, policies, projects, or schemes for the ways
in which these encounters unfold.

Following Universals Across Cambodia and Indonesia

While this special issue's focus on Cambodia and Indonesia was determined by the contributors' ethnographic research sites, we consider both countries to be highly interesting places to reflect upon and compare the dynamics set into motion by the multiplicity of universals over time. As part of the Southeast Asian, a region that has been historically traversed by networks connecting it to India and China, as well as to the Arab and European spheres (e.g. Reid 2000, 2015), Cambodia and Indonesia have long been crossroads. From the early- to mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, both countries were under colonial government—French and Dutch respectively—which came with various universals packaged as 'mission civilisatrice' (Forest 1980) or as 'ethische Politiek' (Cribb 1993). Since independence, and after a short and unsuccessful attempt at non-alignment, these two countries have been at opposing ends of the Cold War political spectrum and their populations subjected to various authoritarian political and development agendas, socialist in Cambodia and capitalist in Indonesia. After the end of the Cold War, both countries have been part of neoliberal globalisation agendas and processes of democratisation that have recently been contested or even countered by a new authoritarian turn.

As Thongchai Winichakul (2003, 13) emphasises, historians of Southeast Asia realised that Indianisation, Sinisation, and Westernisation did not work around ‘local genius’ [...] selectively adopting and adapting’ elements and translating them to be locally intelligible. A rich and dynamic body of scholarship tackles specific recent universal missions and the ways in which they were taken up, translated, or rejected in Cambodia and Indonesia, and more broadly across Southeast Asia. This includes ethnographic inquiries into the travelling models of democratisation and civil society (e.g. Berenshot, Nordholt, and Bakker 2017; Formoso 2016; Norén-Nilsson, Savirani, and Uhlin 2023; Salemink 2006). Social scientists studied ways of appropriating development broadly defined (Rigg 2003); as well as programmes specifically aimed at ‘ethnic minorities’ (e.g. McCaskill and Kampe 1997; Bourdier 2009; Li 2000), or related to religious agendas (e.g. Bolotta, Fountain, and Feener 2020; Fountain, Bush, and Feener 2015; Scheer, Fountain, and Feener 2018). The last two decades have seen a burgeoning literature on fields as diverse as struggles pertaining to aid and emergency relief, post-disaster management and ways of dealing with collective death (e.g. Daly and Feener 2016; Fountain and
McLaughlin 2016; Guillou and Vignato 2013; Guillou 2013), as well as on peacebuilding and transitional justice (e.g. Hinton 2018; Kent, Wallis, and Cronin 2019; Bidulph and Kent 2023). The activist fields of anti-human trafficking endeavours (e.g. Lainez 2009; Molland 2012), LGBT rights (e.g. Boellstorff 2007; Chua 2019; Luther und Ung Loh 2019), and gender equity and human rights defence (e.g. Hilsdon et al. 2000; Wieringa 2007) have been another important focus of research into travelling models, discourses, and concepts.² The pressing concerns of the global environmental crises, which are at the centre of dynamic research (Dove, Doolittle, and Sajise 2005; Dove, Sajise, and Doolittle 2011; Greenough and Tsing 2003; Milne and Mahanty 2015), engendered a small but growing body of literature on travelling ideas and models of climate change at the crossroads of anthropology, environmental humanities, and science and technology studies in the region (e.g. Jensen 2017; 2019; Ley 2021; Marquardt, Delina, and Smits 2022; Weger 2019).

Most of this research, however, looks at single thematic fields rather than at the interaction of multiple universal missions that we witnessed in the course of our research. Many of our interlocutors had histories of interactions with different grand schemes and claimed universals that influenced how they engaged with actors and ideas of global interventions in the present. At one moment in time, they might have had to deal with multiple, often competing or even contradictory, universals, which could be part of global dreams and aspirations such as environmental activism or human rights, but also of schemes and policies promoted by extractive industries disguised as development, neoliberal governance, and capitalist market ideologies (Li 2000; Tsing 2005; Rigg 2015; Vignato 2017). People have been moving within the gaps engendered by this multiplicity. Some of these gaps are related to local socio-political and economic shifts: from socialist to (sometimes implicitly) capitalist systems, or from authoritarian to declaredly democratic governments (and back) (Emde and Keo, this issue). Others emerge from paradigm shifts occurring within international aid programmes: from ethnic minorities’ development to the defence of indigenous peoples’ rights, from development to sustainable development (Schneider, this issue).

Thus, we propose to open the scope beyond specific ‘causes’ to address multiple universals and universal multiples that people in Cambodia and Indonesia have been encountering. Through the assembling of a range of purportedly universal propositions—genocide, sustainable fisheries, polder technologies—this special issue aims to explore how inhabitants of these countries handle these globally travelling models, articulating some bits and pieces, while erasing others, engaging certain parts with ease, or rejecting whole interventions with vigour. By focusing on ways of dealing with such diverse and sometimes diverging ideational models, and their potential inherent issues, we do not aim to sideline other, notably more sensible or practical, factors that affect how people do or do not engage with universals. We do, however, want to take seriously the power that the multiplicity of grand schemes has on how people position and narrate themselves in the public sphere, and on how they conceive of themselves as moral subjects. Through fine-grained
ethnographies, we wish to shed light on the impact that people's histories and experi-
ences have not only on their willingness or resistance to engage but also on the forms
and tactics of their (dis)engagements (Dippel and Thomas 2024). What moves people
as historical, political, and socio-cultural contingencies unfold, and how are their
engagements perceived? Which universals come into being, how do they arrive at
a certain locale, and what or who decides if someone engages or disengages them?
To inquire into these ‘successes and failures of universal claims’ (Tsing 2005, 7),
we explore how people’s experiences and subjectivities affect the dynamics of
translation.

Translation and (in)commensurability

Within the toolbox of concepts used to analyse how universal ideas, projects, and
schemes are made sense of and implemented, we decided to follow Tsing (2005)
and use ‘translation’ (see also Butler 2000a; Diagne 2013; Xie 2014). We do not
define translation as a faithful replication of an ‘original’, nor as mission impossible,
but as a ‘whole family of semiotic processes’, as generative interdiscursive practices
‘producing new objects, practices, person-types, and knowledge’ (Gal 2015, 225).³
While we intentionally opted for a broad definition, we briefly discuss other potential
candidate concepts, their appeal, as well as their perceived limitations, and explore
how these limitations can be addressed or transcended through the concept of
‘translation’.

There is brokerage, which anthropologists started to mobilise in the context of
decolonisation to study actors of social change, and which they revived in the era
of neoliberalisation (Lindquist 2015), particularly within critical anthropology of
development (Bierschenk, Chauveau, and de Sardan 2000, 2002). While the
broker-concept tends to presuppose clearly distinguished fields or scales in-
between that the broker is negotiating or strategising, in the contributions of this
special issue ‘there is no middle from which to speak, only multiple interdiscursive
uptakes’ (Gal 2015, 232). It is interesting to note that David Lewis and David
Mosse, in their 2006 book on ‘the ethnography of aid and agencies’, tried to
remedy the limits of the notion of brokerage by connecting it to the one of trans-
lation. Relying on Bruno Latour (1996), they define ‘translation’ as referring to the
‘mutual enrolment and the interlocking of interests that produces project realities’
in the realm of development (Lewis and Mosse 2006, 13), calling into existence a
field rather than presupposing its existence. ⁴ Bruno Latour (1986), but also Michel
Callon (1980), were pioneers in the conceptualisation of translation within science
and technology studies. They used this term to insist on the struggle to enrol and
co-opt different approaches and understandings under one common denominator,
‘creating order in political acts of composition’ (Latour 2000 quoted by Lewis and
Mosse 2006, 14). Far from constituting a simple diffusion, for them translation
involves the re-formulation and transformation of norms, policies, and practices.
Back in the field of critical anthropology of development, Andrea Behrends,
Sung-Joon Park, and Richard Rottenburg (2014) pick up Latourian ‘translation’ to emphasise that an invisible process, or black boxing (Latour 1999) of reformulation, displacement, and modification is required to make the transfer of a project (whether technical, scientific, or developmental) appear successful.

The concept of friction that Tsing introduced, precisely to deal with what happens to universals when they touch ground, throws attention on a specific spot: ‘the unexpected ... aspects of global interaction’ and ‘the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’ (Tsing 2005, 3–4). The anthropologist thereby aims to add complexity to debates that would tend to either see universals as successfully universalising, or as encountering an impeding resistance. Tsing considers the inequality that might define an encounter, as well as the possibility that this very encounter ‘lead[s] to new arrangements of culture and power’ (2005, 5). She sees friction as both making ‘global connections powerful and effective’ and as ‘getting in the way of smooth operation of global power’ (Tsing 2005, 6). While we consider that Tsing’s attention to power and to complexity is crucial and nourishes our approach of how people engage with universals, we prefer translation to friction, as we wish to emphasise our interest in semiotic and communicative processes.

In this sense, a last prominent concept that has nurtured our reflections is the one of vernacularisation as introduced by Sally Engle Merry (2006a; 2006b) in her study of how people make sense locally of transnational ideas, such as human rights approaches to violence against women. Merry uses the broad concept of translation and takes interest in the place of the translator described, similarly to the broker, as ‘both powerful and vulnerable’ (2006b, 40), as s/he has the ‘ability to look both ways’ (2006b, 42) but also risks being distrusted as potentially double-dealing. However, Merry also focuses on how translation is done downwards, from the global to the local, calling vernacularisation the process of adapting ‘ideas from transnational sources [...] to local institutions and meanings’ (Merry 2006b, 39) and describing it as falling along a continuum that moves from replication on one end, to hybridisation on the other.⁵

This theoretical framework to analyse how translation takes shape is doubtlessly nuanced (Goodale 2007, 13) and stimulating. Yet, the conception of translating ‘down’ towards people on the ground as vernacularising and opposed to what happens when moving ‘up’, towards global actors, such as foreign NGO heads or funding agencies, presupposes a middle from which to speak—which we question. In addition to situations in which the up and down are not easily distinguishable, we find the notion of ‘replication’ dissonant with the term of ‘vernacularisation’, and ‘hybridisation’ too blurry to describe specific ways of hinging and adjusting. For a more precise description of types of connection, it might be interesting to turn to recent conceptual efforts, such as Marie Juul Petersen’s (2018) distinction between ‘bridging’—an attempt to align local norms with diverging mainstream ones (similar to Latourian ‘translation’), ‘thinning’—adopting voluntarily vague terms in order to prevent conflict, and ‘co-existence’ of parallel discourses (see also Fejerskov 2018; Bolotta, Scheer, and Feener 2019; Wit, Pascht, and Haug 2018).
Notwithstanding the critique of Merry's terminological choices, her thorough attention to the detailed workings—to the role of structure and ideas—is extremely insightful for any reflection about what happens when universals 'are translated into local webs of meaning' (Merry 2006b, 49; see also Levitt and Merry 2009). Another important aspect of Merry's approach is her consideration of the power relations that inform translation (see also Diagne 2013), notably referring to Talal Asad's statement that 'the languages of Third World societies [...] are “weaker” in relation to Western languages (and today, especially to English), [...] more likely to submit to forcible transformation in the translation process than the other way round' (Asad 1986, 157–158).

Dominant languages, but also dominant narrative genres, concepts, or doctrines, often based on Western examples, tend to set the standard in a translative interaction (Gal 2015, 234–235). Such oriented commensuration echoes Tsing's contention that to enable universals to travel, they need to be generalised, which means that commonalities have to be found among particularities (e.g. apple and orange are fruit; a rose and a tulip are flowers). Global hegemonies shape which knowledge systems can generalise, which models and tool kits are able to become working universals, and which ontologies and epistemologies are marginalised and suppressed in the process.

What we take away from these different approaches for our own work is a critical and reflective approach to studying translation as semiotic and communicative processes and to reveal their complexities and particularities. While we consider it crucial to be alert to the ways in which power asymmetries shape the translation process, we do not want to a priori narrow down 'translation' to a 'foreignising' (or 'Westernising') tendency over a 'localising' one. We rather wish to stay with the trouble of unexpectedness.

## The Contributions Ahead

The main common ground that all three contributions share is their engagement with universals through time—harking back to previous regimes and systemic changes. They assess how the success or failures of translations and their (in)commensurabilities relate to people's prior histories of navigating grand schemes at work in sequence or simultaneously. Lukas Ley delves back into the colonial era, and the histories of technology and materiality, to understand how his Indonesian interlocutors in Semarang made sense of the polder technology promoted by Dutch engineers as flooding adaptation models. Sina Emde and Keo Duong explore the dynamics of translation and reception of the term 'genocide' in NGO outreach programmes of the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia and point to the importance of earlier (socialist) post-conflict vernacular translations of the term for the ways these processes are unfolding. Katharina Schneider reflects upon Indonesian fishermen's reluctance towards 'environmentally friendly fishing' by paying attention to how it conflicted with the New Order regime's way of promoting fishers' contribution to the nation's development.
Taken together, the articles in this special issue engage with the flourishing body of literature on how people make sense of multifarious grand schemes and their technological props and contribute to it by exploring how multiple universals—past and new ones—and universal multiples are articulated. This collection plays with existing conceptualisations and histories of the local, as well as with the notion of translation. Whether turned into complementary translation, or thought through as counter-translation, contributors give a twist to an already multifaceted analytical tool, thereby refining ways to reflect upon the bumpy travels of universals.

**Disclosure Statement**

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

**Acknowledgements**

We thank Diana Glazebrook for her very thoughtful feedback and editing, and the TAPJA editors as well as the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. All remaining errors are our own.

**Notes**

[1] In concert with Behrends, Park, and Rottenburg (2014, 1f.), we see models as 'an analytical representation of particular aspects of reality created as an apparatus or protocol for interventions in order to shape this reality'. In the field of development, modernisation and globalisation models often include 'material technologies to put them into practice and to transfer them as blueprints to new sites'.

[2] This selective literature largely focuses on edited volumes and special issues, as they tend to address different contexts within the region. Further, these collective writings constitute precious starting points to explore monographs.

[3] In addition to being an object of study, translation has also been a method to describe and critically reflect upon the anthropologist's work (e.g. Gal 2015; Hanks 2014; Merry 2006; Morita and Mohacsi 2013). Even if in this special issue we focus on how others translate, we keep these reflections and admonitions about our own practice of translation in mind.

[4] Within international relations, this approach of translation has been picked up by Czarniawska and Sevon (1996).

[5] Further, she specifies that 'indigenization is the symbolic dimension of vernacularization' (Merry 2006b, 39).

**References**

Asad, Talal. 1986. "The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology." In *Writing Culture*, edited by James Clifford, and George E. Marcus, 141–164. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Balibar, Etienne. 2020. *On Universals: Constructing and Deconstructing Community*. New York: Fordham University Press.

Bečka, Hynek, S. Bhan, D. Kumpf, C. Lang, H. Nieber, J. Vorhölter, and H. Werner. 2024. "Universality in Pieces? Mobilizations of Science in a Fractured World; Introduction." *Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology* 149 (1): 1–12.
Behrends, Andrea, Sung-Joon Park, and Richard Rottenburg. 2014. "Travelling Models: Introducing an Analytical Concept to Globalisation Studies." In *Travelling Models in African Conflict Management*, edited by Andrea Behrends, Sung-Joon Park, and Richard Rottenburg, 1-40. Leiden: Brill.

Berenshot, Ward, Henk Schulte Nordholt, and Laurens Bakker. 2017. *Citizenship and Democratization in Postcolonial Southeast Asia*. Leiden: Brill.

Biddulph, Robin, and Alexandra Kent. 2023. *Cambodia's Trials: Contrasting Visions of Truth, Transitional Justice and National Recovery*. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.

Bierschenk, Thomas, Jean-Pierre Chauveau, and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan. 2000. *Courtiers en Développement: Les Villages Africains en Quête de Projets*. Paris: Karthala.

Bierschenk, Thomas, Jean-Pierre Chauveau, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, and Ankou Kossi. 2002. *Local Development Brokers in Africa. The Rise of a New Social Category*, Working Papers 13. Mainz: Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.

Boellstorff, Tom. 2007. *A Coincidence of Desires*. Durham: Duke University Press.

Bolotta, Giuseppe, Philip Fountain, and R. Michael Feener. 2020. *Political Theologies and Development in Asia. Transcendence, Sacrifice, and Aspiration*. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bolotta, Giuseppe, Catherine Scheer, and R. Michael Feener. 2019. "Translating Religion and Development: Emerging Perspectives from Critical Ethnographies of Faith-Based Organizations." *Progress in Development Studies* 19 (4): 243-263.

Bourdier, Frédéric. 2009. *Development and Dominion. Indigenous Peoples of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos*. Bangkok: White Lotus.

Butler, Judith. 2000a. "Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism." In *Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left*, edited by J. Butler, E. Laclau, and S. Žižek, 11-43. London: Verso.

Butler, Judith. 2000b. "Competing Universalities." In *Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Contemporary Dialogues on the Left*, edited by J. Butler, E. Laclau, and S. Žižek, 136-181. London: Verso.

Callon, Michel. 1980. "Struggles to Define What is Problematic and What is Not: The Socio-Logic of Translation." In *The Social Process of Scientific Investigation: Sociology of the Sciences*, edited by C. K. Knorr, R. Krohn, and R. Whitley, 197-219. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

Chua, Lynette J. 2019. *The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilization and Human Rights as a Way of Life*. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Cribb, Robert. 1993. "Development Policy in the Early 20th Century." In *Development and Social Welfare: Indonesia's Experiences Under the New Order*, edited by Jan-Paul Dirkse, Frans Husken, and Mario Rutten, 225-245. Leiden: KITLV Press.

Czarniawska, Barbara, and Guje Sevon. 1996. *Translating Organizational Change*. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Daly, Patrick, and R. Michael Feener. 2016. *Rebuilding Asia Following Natural Disasters: Approaches to Reconstruction in the Asia-Pacific Region*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Diagne, Souleymane Bachir. 2013. "On the Postcolonial and the Universal?" *Rue Descartes* n° 78 (2): 7-18.

Dippel, Anne, and R. Thomas. 2024. "Afterword: The Sites of Universalities: Ethnographic Engagements with/of Sciences." *Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology* 149:1. https://doi.org/10.60827/zfe/jsca.v149i1.1800

Dove, Michael R., Amity A. Doolittle, and Percy E. Sajise. 2005. *Conserving Nature in Culture: Case Studies from Southeast Asia*. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Dove, Michael R., Percy E. Sajise, and Amity A. Doolittle. 2011. *Beyond the Sacred Forest: Complicating Conservation in Southeast Asia*. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fejerskov, Adam Moe. 2018. "Development as Resistance and Translation: Remaking Norms and Ideas of the Gates Foundation." *Progress in Development Studies* 18 (2): 126-143.

Forest, Alain. 1980. *Le Cambodge et la colonisation française: histoire d'une colonisation sans heurts (1897-1920)*. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Formoso, Bernard. 2016. *Sociétés Civiles D'Asie du Sud-Est Continentale. Entre Pilotage D'Etat et Initiatives Citoyennes*. Lyon: ENS Editions.

Fountain, Philip, Robin Bush, and R. Michael Feener. 2015. *Religion and the Politics of Development*. New York: Palgrave.

Fountain, Philip, and Levi McLaughlin. 2016. "Salvage and Salvation." *Asian Ethnology* 75 (1): 1-28.

Gal, Susan. 2015. "Politics of Translation." *Annual Review of Anthropology* 44: 225-40.

Goodale, Mark. 2007. "Introduction: Locating Rights, Envisioning Law Between the Global and the Local." In *The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local*, edited by Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry, 1-38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Greenough, Paul, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. 2003. *Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia*. Durham: Duke University Press.

Guillou, Anne Yvonne. 2013. "Western Aid Workers in Cambodian Hospitals. Ethical, Professional and Social Divergences." *South East Asia Research* 21 (3): 403-418.

Guillou, Anne Yvonne, and Silvia Vignato. 2013. "Life After Collective Death in South East Asia: Part 2—Helping and Being Helped." *South East Asia Research* 21 (3): 371-379.

Hanks, William F. 2014. "The Space of Translation." *HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory* 4 (2): 17-39.

Hilsdon, Anne Marie, Martha MacIntyre, Vera Mackie, and Maila Stivens. 2000. *Human Rights and Gender Politics: Perspectives in the Asia Pacific Region*. London and New York: Routledge.

Hinton, Alexander. 2018. *The Justice Facade: Trials of Transition in Cambodia*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jensen, Caspar Bruun. 2017. "Pipe Dreams: Sewage Infrastructure and Activity Trails in Phnom Penh." *Ethnos* 82 (4): 627-647.

Jensen, Caspar Bruun. 2019. "Sparks and Fizzles: Divergent Performances and Patterns of Cambodian Development Projects." *East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal* 13 (4): 537-556.

Juul Petersen, Marie. 2018. "Translating Global Gender Norms in Islamic Relief Worldwide." *Progress in Development Studies* 18 (3): 189-207.

Kent, Lia, Joanne Wallis, and Claire Cronin. 2019. *Civil Society and Transitional Justice in Asia and the Pacific*. Canberra: ANU Press.

Klepp, Silja, and Libertad Chavez-Rodriguez. 2018. *A Critical Approach to Climate Change Adaptation: Discourses, Policies and Practices*. New York: Routledge.

Lainez, Nicolas. 2009. "La Victime Mise en Scène: Représenter le Trafic à des Fins D'exploitation Sexuelle?" *Migrations Société* 126 (6): 127-141.

Latour, Bruno. 1986. "The Powers of Association." In *Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge*, edited by John Law, and Michel Callon, 264-280. New York: Routledge.

Latour, Bruno. 1996. *Aramis, or the Love of Technology*, Trans. by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1999. *Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Levitt, Peggy, and Sally Engle Merry. 2009. "Vernacularization on the Ground: Local Uses of Global Women's Rights in Peru, China." *India and the United States. Global Networks* 9 (4): 441-461.

Lewis, David, and David Mosse. 2006. *Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies*. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Ley, Lukas. 2021. *Building on Borrowed Time: Rising Seas and Failing Infrastructure in Semarang*. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Li, Tania Murray. 2000. "Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot." *Comparative Studies in Society and History* 42 (1): 149–179.

Lindquist, Johan. 2015. "Brokers and Brokerage, Anthropology of." In *International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences*, edited by James D. Wright, 871–874. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Luther, J. Daniel, and Jennifer Ung Loh. 2019. 'Queer' Asia: Decolonising and Reimagining Sexuality and Gender. London: Zed Books.

Marquardt, Jens, Lauren Delina, and Mattijs Smits. 2022. *Governing Climate Change in Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives*. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

McCaskill, Don, and Ken Kampe. 1997. *Development or Domestication? Indigenous Peoples of Southeast Asia*. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.

Merry, Sally Engle. 2006a. *Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law Into Local Justice*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Merry, Sally Engle. 2006b. "Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle." *American Anthropologist* 108 (1): 38–51.

Milne, Sarah, and Sango Mahanty. 2015. *Conservation and Development in Cambodia: Exploring Frontiers of Change in Nature, State and Society*. New York: Routledge.

Mol, Annemarie. 2003. *The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice*. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mollard, Sverre. 2012. *The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade Along the Mekong*. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

Morita, Atsuro, and Gergely Mohacsi. 2013. "Translations on the Move: A Review Article." *NatureCulture* 2:6–22.

Norén-Nilsson, Astrid, Amalinda Savirani, and Anders Uhlin. 2023. *Civil Society Elites: Field Studies from Cambodia and Indonesia*. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.

Reid, Anthony. 2000. *Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia*. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.

Rigg, Jonathan. 2003. *Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape of Modernization and Development*. London and New York: Routledge.

Rigg, Jonathan. 2015. *Challenging Southeast Asian Development*. London and New York: Routledge.

Rottenburg, Richard. 2009. *Far-fetched Facts: A Parable of Development Aid*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rudiak-Gould, Peter. 2011. "Climate Change and Anthropology: The Importance of Reception Studies." *Anthropology Today* 27 (2): 9–12.

Salemink, Oscar. 2006. "Translating, Interpreting, and Practicing Civil Society in Vietnam: A Tale of Calculated Misunderstandings." In *Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies*, edited by David Lewis, and David Mosse, 101–216. Bloomfield: Kumarian Press.

Scheer, Catherine, Philip Fountain, and R. Michael Feener. 2018. *The Mission of Development: Religion and Techno-Politics in Asia*. Leiden: Brill.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2000. "The Global Situation." *Cultural Anthropology* 15 (3): 327–360.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005. *Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection*. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Vignato, Silvia. 2017. *Dreams of Prosperity: Inequality and Integration in Southeast Asia*. Bangkok: Silkworm Books.

Weger, Jacob. 2019. "The Vietnamization of Delta Management: The Mekong Delta Plan and Politics of Translation in Vietnam." *Environmental Science & Policy* 100:183–188.
Wieringa, Saskia. 2007. *Women's Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia*. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Winichakul, Thongchai. 2003. "Writing at the Interstices: Southeast Asian Historians and Postnational Histories in Southeast Asia." In *New Terrains in Southeast Asian History*, edited by Ahmad Abu Talib, and Ee Tan Liok, 3–29. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Wit, Sara de, and Sophie Haines. 2021. “Climate Change Reception Studies in Anthropology.” *WIREs Climate Change* 13 (1): e742. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.

Wit, Sara de, Arno Pascht, and Michaela Haug. 2018. “Translating Climate Change: Anthropology and the Travelling Idea of Climate Change.” *Sociologus* 68 (1): 2–21.

Xie, Shaobo. 2014. “Translation and the Politics of the Universal.” *Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies* 1 (1): 2–11.