ABSTRACT

This chapter is a study of symbolic violence in civil war perpetration and argues against a purely economic perspective in trying to understand low-level perpetrators’ participation. It argues that individuals join rebel groups in Cambodia and perceive the fulfilment of their fighting roles as normal due to their positions within society so that pre-conflict social roles are reproduced in armed conflict. The concept of symbolic violence directed towards people from lower-status groups helps us understand how individual perpetrators come to see themselves as “ordinary men doing ordinary things during extraordinary times.”