Violence and Elias's Historical Sociology: The Case of Cambodia

Abstract

Elias' historical sociology method and his civilizing process theory have rarely been applied to study long-term trends in violence in non-western societies. Drawing from colonial archives, historical and contemporary secondary sources, official police data, crime victim surveys and newspaper records, we estimated the trends in homicide victims in Cambodia between 1900 and 2012, and, from a study of historical developments during the same period, examined whether Elias' civilizing process theory explained the long-term variations in violence in this country. His interrelated concepts of sociogenesis and psychogenesis, particularly state formation and monopolization of force, interdependencies, sensitization to violence, as well as dis-civilization periods, accounted for the successive ebbs and flows in the level of homicides in Cambodia.