One of the problems with ‘development’ is the assumption that Western models are beyond question, when often the West itself is the problem. What exactly is the problem? Remember the fact is that I choose to be here (as do many) rather than staying in a ‘richer’ country where I have the right of abode. There are different reasons for this and some of them are not relevant to what I am writing now, for example, I experience less institutional racism here, money goes further and so I don’t need to be a wage slave, the weather is better and my health improves, plus I feel safer on a day to day basis (and likely am so). But other things are relevant, for example, the community I’ve come to feel a part of.

It isn’t the first time I felt this way in Cambodia. When I first got here and worked for three years in the NGO school, obviously, I felt part of a team of expatriate teachers, but also local staff and students. It’s hard to explain. Some of it was specific to the unique way the NGO was run, that fostered feelings of positivity and community, but it’s also part of the Khmer culture, which is essentially collectivist in nature.

Slum dwellers are often happier than ‘rich’ Westerners

Collectivist societies place needs of the group above those of the individual and the emphasis is on interconnectedness, cooperation and social harmony. Peoples’ group identity is above those of the individual and communication tends to be direct to avoid conflict between individuals. In a way I could compare this with the some places in Europe, which is well known for very indirect and polite conversation and a ‘chirpiness’, although the social theory to explain this is that it’s such an aggressive society (acceptable to show anger) that extreme forms of politeness have evolved to avoid being constantly snapped and shouted at, which is my main memory of my youth.

In the ten years I’ve been here, I can recall anger being shown to me twice, as opposed to weekly in Europe. That suits my personality because I am ultra-sensitive.

The point I’m making is that, the people I know living in what we would call a slum (and if you judge that word as negative then it is a reflection on yourself) have a much better society, and in some ways are happier, than both middle-class Khmers and Westerners. This is recognized in the scientific research on this subject.

The benefits of Cambodia’s collectivist society

One study found that collectivist societies place less emphasis on material goods and more on connections (Diener et al, 2010), and although one of the same researchers in another study found that income correlates to subjective well-being (SWB, a scientific term for happiness) but only with the very poorest of the poor. But apart from this extreme, the correlation may actually be negative, i.e. increasing income decreases happiness (?especially in collectivist societies). This was the finding of Brockman et al (2009), looking at the economic rise of China, and that SWB decreased as incomes rise and the authors suggest the reason is that comparison replaces solidarity.

Affluence causes isolation, ‘poverty’ creates community?

This is my own anecdotal observation, in Phnom Pehn, and also in life. One example is the big lake that used to be in the north of the city. The very first time I traveled through Phnom Pehn they were just filling it in, so I never got to see it, although they made a film about the controversy which we showed in the cinema I later worked at (it was actually banned at the time).

So it was a lake with people, homes and businesses living around, it was also the backpacker area at the time and I could tell from the film made about it, there was a community. It was sold for development of a new city centre and everyone was forcibly evicted, and the strength of the protests indicated to me the strength of the community that was uprooted. These forced evictions for ‘development’ are fairly common. What is being uprooted are the connections, network and community that makes up Khmer society, and after everyone was moved off there was a lot of controversy because the area was fenced off but then nothing really happened for a long time.

Now it’s over ten years later, and there’s been quite a bit of building there, although there are still large areas partitioned off and these huge reeds growing behind the corrugated iron, that lets you know once it was a waterland, and it’s kind of heart-breaking in a way because I try and imagine what it was like. Remember, Phnom Pehn is a city that doesn’t even have a public park. To have had a huge lake, an expanse of water and fresh air in inconceivable.

So nowadays, they built mainly gated communities and a bar complex with cinema (the latter being the only reason I go there). Once I had to go to the gated community because I was looking for some parcel company that was supposed to be headquartered there. The place reminded me of the zombie film where the survivors are walking around the mall before the zombies emerge, looking for signs of life in the eerie silence.

That is overly dramatic, but there is some research about these gated communities, about the effect they have on people. A zombie film is an extreme metaphor of something that is real. Their effect is to… gate a ‘community’, but really it gates individuals off with no community, and puts them together with other people who are, generally, like them. The same race, culture, social class, and then everything is self-contained. People can eat out, do laundry, go to work, have a common space to relax, all with people who are the same as them. Never in their life will they deal with a darker skinned person, sit near somebody far poorer than them, be around people from another culture or have a social encounter with a good person with a radically different experience of life and outlook on it.

I can’t speak about all the people who live there, although the area does not have any sense of being a residential area at all. As I said, the only reason I go there is the cinema. There is a supermarket with communal tables to eat food. There are a sizable proportion of people who refuse to sit beside a foreigner, or even close. When I sit down, they get up and either move or take their half eaten food away. Sometimes a couple will be sitting together and one of them has a stronger aversion than the other and so, right next to me, they will rearrange themselves. Once, in the full cinema opposite, a person assigned to the seat next to me saw me, and chose to forfeit the ticket and left immediately. Yes, I am normal, clean and clean shaven, respectfully dressed, no tattoos, my own teeth, male with dark skin and a walking stick (obviously terrifying… to people only used to their surroundings being a mirror of themselves).

Everything is the wrong way around. People from ‘developed’ countries look at people from ‘undeveloped’ countries and ‘help’ them become affluent, which tends to mean consumerist and living more individually away from others, having more ‘space’ and ‘privacy’, income and savings. But people in the West, with a western lifestyle don’t seem so particularly happy. What does it mean to be ‘developed’? When China ‘developed’ and became less happy according to the research, what was lost? What do ‘undeveloped’ societies have that ‘developed’ ones do not? The mentioned Biwas and Diener study (2001) found money only is helpful to the most desperately poor (for essential needs), and beyond that happiness is centred around relationships of family, friends and spirituality. The relationships between poor people living in cramped conditions is very strong, everything, food, money, childcare etc is shared. I’ve see this everyday. That sounds wrong because I keep on saying ‘poor’ and there are negative connotations to it, but poor of what? They’re not poor of relationships and spirituality, community spirit etc. In fact, much richer than most western people. Perhaps minimalist is a better term. In ‘reducing poverty’ there is a point of diminishing returns, which is much lower than most people realise, where affluence causes not just comparison as the China study showed, but isolation as most middle class residences are built without communal spaces and an emphasis on privacy (Western style).

One study by Fallavie (2003) interviewed people living in… ‘physical minimalism’ to find out what was positive in their life and contributed to SWB and found the factors were:

• being with family
• time to relax
• independence
• involvement with community
• no pressure of job
• like being involved in community programs

The path could be from material poverty to creating minimalism for ourselves rather than affluence for others

Of course, I don’t want to make the impression that I’m saying poverty is positive, because there is a problem when basic needs are not being met, but when they are, then there shouldn’t be the unthinking assumption that path of creating an unsatisfied, consumerist, isolated Western-style lifestyle is automatic. It’s much better to flip that entire model. For unhappy, affluent people with a Western lifestyle to approach collectivist societies with an attitude of embracing a minimalist lifestyle themselves, sharing wealth with equals to eradicate cases where basic needs are not being met, and join and/or create communities to become developed themselves as burnt-out consumerists. What would the affluenct be giving up? And what they would be gaining are equal relationships. Markus and Kitayaa (1991) found a correlation between friendships in collectivist societies and SWB and Myers and Dinar (1995) found that friendships can replace lost family connections in collectivist societies and so lead the the same SWB outcomes.

What are some practical ideas to create a minimalist, intentional community in Phnom Pehn?

Luco (2021) found that they ID system of Cambodia lead directly to homelessness in Phnom Pehn, and people (who have ID) tend to leave it in the province when coming to Phnom Pehn as the situation isn’t considered permanent, but without ID it’s hard to access services or help and the study specifically called for the establishment to a homeless shelter where no ID is required. The same study also interviewed local Phnom Pehn residents to gauge attitudes towards the homeless and found these to be largely negative, that they are lazy and thieves, although this attitude was directed largely at males, attitudes towards females and the obviously disabled were more compassionate.

It makes me think how one solution could be a hostel which is also a social enterprise, some profit-making business that can be largely run by minimally-trained staff. I don’t know what right now, but something residents can be involved in, not only for income but also because involvement in community projects is a part of SWB. But the same business could be open to paying guests. It’s a hostel run centred on the concept of community, housing the homeless with no ID required, with community projects and also paying guests who subsidize the homeless whose basic needs were not being met, but living together as equals as a spiritual, minimalist lifestyle based around community projects and friendships with people very different to you is fun and when you think of the stupid S*&^ tourists spend money on, some burnt out office slug from the west can come for two weeks and live a different life based on minimalism, friendship, intentionality, open spirituality then I can see that working. Maybe they’ll go back changed, choosing simplicity, connections, different meanings in life.

It reminds me of the times I spent living in a Zen monastery in the West, with pretty much no possessions or luxury, just work, meditation and community and once I got into it those visits were some of the happiest times of my life. It would only need a few core staff, and then people could work and stay for short periods, paying guest for as long as they are happy and the homeless as long as they need.

It would also go someway to changing local perspectives towards homelessness because the social enterprise would mean people are productive, and that paying guests choose to stay there means really, it is a minimalist choice. If it worked well, there wouldn’t be so much difference (or perhaps better to say that there would be many similarities) to Buddhist monastic communities. There doesn’t even need to be one central social enterprise. Individual business ideas can be funded by direct donations online and run from the same premises, their evolving stories posted on the website and social media for publicity, education and funding, and there would be no limit to what we could achieve. It can be very different to what exists now because really then it is about breaking down identities, between homeless and housed, local and foreigner, rich and minimalist.

Remember that ‘homelessness’ is a modern concept in Cambodia. Previously, someone without shelter could simply use bushcraft to make a simple, functional abode. The Buddha himself chose homelessness and taught his followers to live as ‘vagrants’ with essentially a minimalist lifestyle. I’m not sure when this was lost and possibly the rapid ‘Western-style development’ is a reaction to erasing the memory of their previous, forced and bloody social experiment of the Khmer Rougue (espousing another Western idea of communism). But rather than replacing that disaster with a ‘development’ meaning rich, lonely people coming as outsiders, converting peoples religion and creating isolated lives for people to live, human beings can come together and embrace the essentially Khmer collectivist society and minimalism as a superior lifestyle.

We thought we were the saviours and what we needed was to be saved.

References

Diener, E, Ng, W., Harter, J. and Arora R. (2010) Wealth and Happiness across the world. Material prosperity predicts life elevation, whereas psychological prosperity predicts positive feeling. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(1) 52-61

Biwas-Diener, R and Diener, (2001). Making the best of a bad situation. Satisfaction in the slums of Calcutta. Social Indicators Research 55(3) 329-352

Brockman H., Delhey, J., Welzel, C., Yuan, H. (2009). The China Puzzle, falling happiness in a rising economy. Journal of happiness Studies 10 (4) 387-485

Luco, Fabienne (2021) Street Sleepers People in Need. Czech Republic. An Anthropological Approach of Homeless Workers living in the city of Phnom Pehn. Available from: https://cambodia.peopleinneed.net/media/publications/1872/file/street-sleepers.pdf (accessed May 2024)

Fallavie, Pierre, (2003) Urban slum report. The case of Phnom Pehn Cambodia. Book. UN_HABITAT Global Report on Human Settlements. 2003. Phnom Pehn.

Markus, H., and Kitayama, S. (1991) Culture and the self. Implications for the cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review (98) P.224-253

Myers, D., and Diener, E. (1995) Who is Happy? Psychological Science, 6 10-19