Anne R. Hansen

In modern Cambodia, as in other parts of Southeast Asia, Buddhist prophesies about the inevitable decline of the Buddha’s teachings (Dhamma), the end of religion and the appearance of the next buddha have served as powerful and pervasive responses to social turmoil, violence, and changes in sociopolitical order. When Religion Ends: Buddhist Prophetic Temporality in Cold War Southeast examines the importance of these Buddhist ideas of time and history during two critical periods of the Cold War period in Cambodia, arguing for their importance in the decolonizing Theravada world in relation to nation-building, regional Buddhist networks, and anti-communism, and as a way of ordering and interpreting the traumatic violence of the 1970s Khmer Rouge genocide and ensuing civil war.