Undoing Cambodia’s Cosmopolitical Fix: Forests, Sweatshops, and Possibilities for Uncommon Alliances

The Cambodian regime depends on large-scale extraction of natural resources. However, the regime also acknowledges that Cambodian territories are potent landscapes protected by extra-human beings. Hence, it must accomplish seemingly contradictory objectives: pleasing the land-protectors while ruining the lands they protect. We characterise this effort as Cambodia’s cosmopolitical fix. To elucidate the cosmopolitical fix and speculate about ways of undoing it, we draw connections between disparate cases. Forest cosmopolitics brings predatory state bodies and international conservationists into contact with Indigenous people and powerful extra-humans. Sweatshop cosmopolitics refers to mass faintings and spirit possession in factories where global commodity chains, toxic conditions, and the trauma of violence intermingle with restless ghosts. We use these cases to explore the potential for uncommon alliances between vulnerable humans and extra-humans to loosen the cosmopolitical fix. By interweaving worlds under threat, such alliances could lead to a more open-ended and less disruptive Cambodian cosmopolitics of the future.