ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how socio-technical paradigms embodied in certain development discourses are instrumentalized in civil society initiatives and led to compete with each other on the ground for legitimation by both the public and the state. Regardless of which views – openness, deference, and/or agency – one uses as a lens to interpret the heterogeneity of civil society actors in Cambodia, it is increasingly clear that the government allows certain sectors to develop their own internal politics. The chapter also focuses on the paradigmatic contest between proponents of alternative and mainstream agricultural development. The modernist agriculture system is understood by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as a victim of its own systematization. For the Cambodian state, both modernist and alternative agriculture offer legitimacy in the eyes of the world, productivity increases, and specific tools for enhancing government authority.
