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Expressions of Cambodia

Little more than a decade ago, Cambodia witnessed a series of rapid transitions, from civil war to peace, from a socialist-style authoritarianism to
multi-party democracy, and from geographic isolation to a free-market
economy. Requiring the United Nations to undertake its biggest ever peacetime operation, the elections of 1993 triggered an influx of foreign aid
unparalleled in Southeast Asia. Intense international interest since then
has been accompanied by a re-emerging field of scholarship that has principally sought explanations for genocide and war, or attempted to map
more recent economic and political developments. The social and cultural
implications of a society that has undergone such profound change has
received little scholarly examination until now.
Drawing upon multidisciplinary theoretical perspectives and up-to-date
empirical research, Expressions of Cambodia reveals the tensions and contradictions involved in post-conflict nation building and socio-cultural
recovery. Together a team of international contributors take scholarship on
the country in new directions, focusing on the politics of tradition and
modernity, tourism, the performance of identity, post-conflict nation building, and the on-going renewal of ties between diaspora and home. Timely
and much needed, the book brings Cambodia back into dialogue with its
neighbors and as such, makes a valuable contribution to the growing field
of cultural studies in Asia. Written in an accessible style, Expressions of
Cambodia will be of particular interest to those working in the fields of
Asian studies, tourism, diaspora, and postcolonial and cultural studies.
Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier is a writer and lives in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Tim Winter worked on this book as part of his Postdoctoral Fellowship
at the Asia Research Institute, Singapore. He is now based at the University
of Sydney.

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Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series

1 Land Tenure, Conservation and

Development in Southeast Asia
Peter Eaton
2 The Politics of Indonesia
Malaysia Relations
One kin, two nations
Joseph Chinyong Liow
3 Governance and Civil Society
in Myanmar
Education, health and environment
Helen James
4 Regionalism in Post-Suharto
Indonesia
Edited by Maribeth Erb,
Priyambudi Sulistiyanto
and Carole Faucher
5 Living with Transition in Laos
Market integration in Southeast
Asia
Jonathan Rigg
6 Christianity, Islam and
Nationalism in Indonesia
Charles E. Farhadian

7 Violent Conflicts in Indonesia

Analysis, representation,
resolution
Edited by Charles A. Coppel
8 Revolution, Reform and
Regionalism in Southeast Asia
Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam
Ronald Bruce St John
9 The Politics of Tyranny in
Singapore and Burma
Aristotle and the rhetoric of
benevolent despotism
Stephen McCarthy
10 Ageing in Singapore
Service needs and the state
Peggy Teo, Kalyani Mehta,
Leng Leng Thang and
Angelique Chan
11 Security and Sustainable
Development in Myanmar
Helen James
12 Expressions of Cambodia
The politics of tradition,
identity, and change
Edited by Leakthina Chau-Pech
Ollier and Tim Winter

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Expressions of Cambodia
The politics of tradition,
identity, and change

Edited by
Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier
and Tim Winter

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First published 2006

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2006 Editorial selection, Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier
and Tim Winter, the contributors
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Expressions of Cambodia: the politics of tradition, identity, and
change/edited by Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier and Tim Winter.
p. cm. (Routledge contemporary Southeast Asia series; 12)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Cambodia Politics and government 1979
2. Cambodia Civilization. 3. Cambodia Social conditions.
4. Cambodia Economic conditions. 5. Social change
Cambodia. I. Ollier, Leakthina Chau-Pech, 1965
II. Winter, Tim, 1971 III. Title. IV. Series.
DS554.8.E87 2006
959.6dc22
2006010009
ISBN10: 0415385547 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0203966891 (ebk)
ISBN13: 9780415385541 (hbk)
ISBN13: 9780203966891 (ebk)

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To Ingrid Muan, whose voice is sadly missed . . .

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Contents

List of figures
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1

Introduction: Cambodia and the politics of tradition,

identity, and change

ix
x
xiii
xv

TIM WINTER AND LEAKTHINA CHAU-PECH OLLIER

PART ONE

Re-scripting Angkor
2

Subscripts: reading Cambodian pasts, presents, and

futures through graffiti

21
23

PENNY EDWARDS

When ancient glory meets modern tragedy: Angkor and

the Khmer Rouge in contemporary tourism

37

TIM WINTER

The fascination for Angkor Wat and the ideology of

the visible

54

PANIVONG NORINDR

PART TWO

Identity and the liminal space

5

Sitting between two chairs: Cambodias dual citizenship

debate
KATHRYN POETHIG

71
73

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6 Refractions of home: exile, memory, and diasporic

longing

86

KHATHARYA UM

7 Rapping (in) the homeland: of gangs, Angka, and the

Cambodian diasporic identity

101

LEAKTHINA CHAU-PECH OLLIER

PART THREE

Performing tradition
8 Weaving into Cambodia: negotiated ethnicity in the
(post)colonial silk industry

117
119

HEIDI DAHLES AND JOHN TER HORST

9 A burned-out theater: the state of Cambodias performing

arts

133

ROBERT TURNBULL

10 The (re-)emergence of Cambodian women writers at

home and abroad

150

KLAIRUNG AMRATISHA

PART FOUR

Engaging modernity

165

11 Entrepreneurialism and charisma: two modes of doing

business in post-Pol Pot Cambodian Buddhism

167

IAN HARRIS

12 Touring memories of the Khmer Rouge

181

TIMOTHY DYLAN WOOD

13 Khmer women and global factories

193

ANNUSKA DERKS

Bibliography
Index

205
223

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Figures

2.1
2.2
2.3
3.1
3.2
9.1
9.2

Burmese inscription at Angkor Wat

Khmer Rouge graffiti at Angkor Wat
Leaf inscriptions at the Royal Palace, Phnom Penh
Postcard available in Phnom Penh
T-shirts on sale in Phnom Penh market
The Suramarit Theater in the late 1960s
The Suramarit Theater in 2003

29
31
33
45
46
137
138

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Notes on contributors

Klairung Amratisha received a doctorate in Cambodian literature from

the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She
is currently teaching Cambodian language and literature and Thai literature at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Heidi Dahles is professor of organizational anthropology at the Department
of Culture, Organization and Management of the Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam. She obtained her PhD in social sciences at Radboud
University Nijmegen in 1990. She is the author of Tourism, Heritage
and National Culture in Java: Dilemmas of a Local Community (2001)
and the editor (with Otto van den Muijzenberg) of Brokers of Capital
and Knowledge. Changing Power Relations in Asia (2003). Her research
interest is in organizational networks and processes of identity formation in transnational spaces in East and Southeast Asia.
Annuska Derks is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social
Anthropology, University of Berne, Switzerland. She completed her
PhD thesis, entitled Khmer Women on the Move: Migration and Urban
Experiences in Cambodia (2005), at the Radboud University Nijmegen,
the Netherlands. She has conducted research and published on ethnic
groups, gender, migration, trafficking and sex work in Cambodia, and
is currently undertaking research into contemporary forms of bonded
labor in Southeast Asia.
Penny Edwards is currently affiliated with the Center for Khmer Studies,
Phnom Penh. Her main research interests are nationalism, identity, and
heritage in colonial and postcolonial Cambodia and Burma. Her publications include Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation (2006), and two
edited volumes on Chinese diaspora in Australia and Southeast Asia.
Ian Harris was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Lancaster.
He was Senior Scholar at the Becket Institute, St. Hughs College,
University of Oxford (200105) and is currently Professor of Buddhist
Studies in the Division of Religion and Philosophy, University College
of St Martin, Lancaster. The author of The Continuity of Madhyamaka

Notes on contributors xi
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and Yogacara in Early Indian Mahayana Buddhism (1991) and editor

of Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth Century Asia (1999), he is also
co-founder of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies. Responsible
for a research project on Buddhism and Cambodian Communism at the
Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), Phnom Penh, his most
recent book is Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice (2005).
John ter Horst is a PhD candidate at the faculty of Culture Organization
and Management at the Free University of Amsterdam. Working on
a research project entitled Khmer Diaspora Ties and Processes of
Ethnicization in Cross-Border Silk Trade in the Greater Mekong
Region, his main themes of interest are identity politics, minority
groups, the production of culture, and how people organize their livelihoods in relation to an often problematic past. He has conducted
fieldwork in Holland, the Philippines, and more recently in Cambodia.
Panivong Norindr received his doctorate in Romance Languages and
Literatures from Princeton University, New Jersey. He is the author of
Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture,
Film, and Literature (1996), and is currently completing a book entitled
(Post)Colonial Screens. He teaches French and Comparative Literature
at the University of Southern California, and begins his tenure as Chair
of the Department of French and Italian in late 2006.
Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier received her PhD in French literature from
the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research has focused on
twentieth-century postcolonial literature, Asian women writers of the
diaspora, particularly from Southeast Asia, and cultural studies. She is
the co-editor of a volume entitled Of Vietnam: Identities in Dialogue
(2001) and now lives in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Kathryn Poethig is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at California
State University, Monterey Bay. Her main areas of research are transnational religion, citizenship, and conflict in Southeast Asia, particularly
Cambodia and the Philippines. In Cambodia, she has published on the
citizenship debates during Cambodias transition to democracy in relation to diaspora Cambodians returning in the early 1990s. She has
consulted for the World Bank and published widely on the development
of Cambodias peace regime, primarily focusing on the Dhammayietra,
a Buddhist peace walk, most recently in history, Buddhism, and new
religious movements in Cambodia. She is currently investigating
womens inter-religious alliances for peace in the Philippines.
Robert Turnbull studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and
San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He arrived in Cambodia shortly
after the military coup of July 1997, since then he has contributed articles
on Asian culture, and Cambodia in particular, to the New York Times,

xii Notes on contributors

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the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune and TIME. He

also writes on Western classical music and opera, publishing The Opera
Gazetteer in 1995.
Khatharya Um is a political scientist and professor of Asian American
Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her PhD
in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and
was the Chancellors Distinguished Post-Doctoral Fellow at Berkeley
(19902). She is the first Cambodian American woman to join the
ladder-ranked faculty of the University of California. Professor Ums
research and teaching interests include foreign policy, international
security, and international migration, with a special emphasis on refugee
and diaspora studies, and Asian American histories, contemporary
issues, and politics. She has written and published extensively on politics and developments in Southeast Asia, on conflict and post-conflict
development, and on Southeast Asian diaspora. Professor Um has
received many awards for her leadership and advocacy work.
Tim Winter received his PhD from the University of Manchester. Having
published a number of articles and chapters on tourism in Cambodia, he
is in the final stages of preparing a book on Angkor that examines a
decade of heritage and tourism within a framework of globalization, postconflict reconstruction, and postcolonial relations. After two years spent
as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore, he
is now based at the University of Sydney. Tim Winters current research
projects and publications focus on tourism Of Asian Origin.
Timothy Dylan Wood is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Rice
University in Houston, Texas. His dissertation research is on Cambodian
efforts at historical representation dealing specifically with the Khmer
Rouge period. His first visit to Cambodia was in 1998, and he has
maintained a long-term residence in the country. He has conducted
extensive research on the historical-tourist area of Anlong Veng as well
as Cambodian history, culture, and politics in general. His other research
interests include continental philosophy, with a particular focus on
contemporary critical theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and Gilles
Deleuze.

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to our contributors for agreeing to add their voices to ours, for their enthusiastic support
of the volume since its inception, and for their thought-provoking work.
Though we are scattered across three different continents, Cambodia
brought us together within the space of this project and elsewhere when
our paths happened to have crossed.
Ingrid Muan was one of the first scholars to whom we brought this
book project. Her knowledge of and dedication to Cambodia, its people,
culture, and language, was an inspiration to both of us. Her generosity in
sharing her knowledge and insights, providing direction, names, contacts
and critiques, helped us shape this book, and her voice, even after she
was gone, continued to resonate in our heads and kept us on our toes.
Her untimely death on January 29, 2005 was a big loss for Cambodian
Studies and for the whole community of scholars, students, researchers
and artists in Cambodia. To Ingrid we dedicate this book.
David Chandler and Penny Edwards have taken time from their busy
schedules to read drafts of the introduction, posed the important questions,
provided guidance and insightful comments. Michel Rethy Antelme has
generously and patiently lent his expertise to help us with many linguistic
difficulties. Many individuals have contributed to enhance our understanding of Cambodia. Among them we wish to acknowledge Fabienne
Luco, John Shapiro, Boreth Ly and Toni Shapiro-Phim for many enlightening conversations, and Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro and Sopheap Pich for
being amazing sources of inspiration. We are very much indebted to them.
Extra special thanks are owed to Laavanya Kathiravelu, for her dedication to the project. Generously giving over her weekends during our
moments of panic, her editorial efforts ensured the book was delivered
on time and free of all our errors and inconsistencies. Now an expert on
Cambodia, we wish her all the best with her PhD studies. We also wish
to thank Stephanie Rogers, our editor, for her belief in this project and
the whole editorial team at Routledge for their invaluable support.
Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier would like to acknowledge the support of
the Henry Luce Foundation for a fellowship at the Center for Khmer

xiv Acknowledgments
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Studies in Siem Reap and the Asia Research Institute, Singapore for a
visiting affiliate. Tim Winter would like to thank the British Academy for
his postdoctoral funding. He would also like to acknowledge the support
of the Asia Research Institute, Singapore for the opportunity to work on
this book over the course of a two-year fellowship. We also wish to thank
the wonderful and supportive staff from the Center for Khmer Studies,
Siem Reap and the Asia Research Institute, Singapore.
As always, no work would ever be possible without the love and friendship of those closest to us. They have lent us their shoulders, their ears,
and their eyes to read multiple versions of several articles and even the
entire manuscript: Jerry Gorman, Winnie Wong, Amanda Summerscales,
Fabienne Luco, Toby Anderson, Jacob Ramsay, and Christiane Lalonde,
thank you!

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Abbreviations

ABCP
AEKE
AKW
APSARA
BFD
CLA
CMAC
CPP
CPR
DC-Cam
DK
EFEO
FUNCINPEC
GDP
GTZ
IKTT
IMF
KAA
KAF
KI
MOT
NGO
NPRD
PDR
PPP
PRC
PRK
RUFA
RUPP
SOC

Asian Buddhists Conference for Peace

Association des Ecrivains Khmers lEtranger
Association of Khmer Writers
Authority for Protection and Management of Angkor
and the Region of Siem Reap
Buddhism for Development
Cambodian Living Arts
Cambodian Mine Action Center
Cambodian Peoples Party
Center for Peace and Reconciliation
Documentation Center of Cambodia
Democratic Kampuchea
Ecole Franaise dExtrme-Orient
Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indpendant,
Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopratif
Gross Domestic Product
Gesellschaft fr Technische Zusammenarbeit
Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles
International Monetary Fund
Khmer Arts Academy
Konrad Adenauer Foundation
Khmer Intelligence [www.khmerintelligence.org]
Ministry of Tourism
non-governmental organization
National Program to Rehabilitate and Develop
Cambodia
Lao Peoples Democratic Republic
Phnom Penh Post
Peoples Republic of China
Peoples Republic of Kampuchea
Royal University of Fine Arts
Royal University of Phnom Penh
State of Cambodia

xvi Abbreviations
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UN
UNDP
UNESCO
UNTAC

United Nations
United Nations Development Programme
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia

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Introduction
Cambodia and the politics of
tradition, identity, and change
Tim Winter and Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier

What do we want? We want peace, independence, freedom, and democracy.

We want to preserve our culture. We want development, self-sufficiency,
good life, and a bright future for ourselves, particularly for our children, to
enjoy the same peace, independence, freedom, democracy, and well-being
that are cherished by citizens of the developed world.
Sam-Ang Sam
It is true that our arts and classical dance are part of the grandeur of
Kampuchea . . . but if noble Japan and other wealthy powers, friends of the
Cambodian people, would like to help our people, of whom 90 percent are
poverty stricken peasants, dramatically short of rice to feed themselves, these
friends from wealthy countries could give absolute priority to the rehabilitation of our agriculture.
Norodom Sihanouk
[Khmer] architecture, at its peak, left us temples, in particular Angkor Wat,
and because of our ancestors ingenuity, it serves as a symbol of everlasting
Khmer art. The saying goes: The Khmer will never perish because they
built Angkor Wat, and Angkor Wat is their soul. The Ministry of Culture
and Fine Arts and other institutions relative to the conservation and protection of works of art have to use these marvels as resources of our tourism
industry.
Norodom Ranariddh1

Cambodia stands encapsulated within two dominant, and somewhat contradictory, narratives. On the one hand, it is commonly suggested that an
era of civil war and genocide inflicted irrevocable damage and that Pol
Pots attempt to return to year zero annihilated, even erased, the countrys culture, whereas for others, Cambodian culture is being successfully
restored, rejuvenated and, perhaps, even enjoying a renaissance. For those
with an unshakeable investment in Cambodian culture, such as our three
speakers above, the coexistence of these two narratives has paired feelings
of hope with despair, optimism with anguish.

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Tim Winter and Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier

Taken from the first International Conference on Khmer Studies held at

the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) in 1996, these quotes offered
some insights into the needs and wishes of the Cambodian people, and
highlighted pressing issues confronting a nation still recovering from years
of civil war and the devastating regime of the Khmer Rouge. As with other
post-conflict, developing countries, economic progress was high on the
agenda, but equally important for some was the rehabilitation of a national
identity and culture based on the ideals of peace, independence [and] freedom. Held three years after the first internationally validated multi-party
election in Cambodian history, the conference rightly captured all the
hope, concern, and differences in opinion in terms of the priorities to be
set inherent in a nascent democracy. However, after spending in excess
of two billion dollars on the 1993 elections, an unprecedented amount for
a peacetime operation, the United Nations (UN) would see their efforts at
establishing a compromise dual government unravel in 1997 with Hun Sen
of the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) staging a coup de force to oust
his co-prime minister, Norodom Ranariddh of the Royalist FUNCINPEC
Party (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indpendant, Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopratif). Hun Sens seizure of control over the military forces,
police, and civil administration signaled Cambodias return to a more familiar model of Strongman authoritarian politics.2
And yet Cambodia had changed. After decades of turmoil and isolation the country opened itself to the world as never before. As the above
quotes illustrate, despite posing an array of challenges and threats, globalization and international capitalism were seen as important catalysts for
a program of national reconstruction. Like many others, Cambodians wish
for the same peace, independence, freedom, democracy, and well-being
that [they believe] are cherished by citizens of the developed world (Sam
1998). And why shouldnt they? Not surprisingly, and as we shall see
throughout this book, a fragile optimism for the future would seek strength
by gazing back towards more prosperous pasts, whether it be the cultural
glories associated with long-lost imperial power or the deeply felt nostalgia
for the way life used to be in the years before the 1970s, before the
war and the destruction wrought by the Khmer Rouge.
Published a decade after the RUPP conference, this book revisits and
builds on many of its themes. In examining contemporary Cambodia
beginning in the earlier 1990s with the UNTAC (United Nations
Transitional Authority in Cambodia) period as the Cambodians themselves refer to itthe book departs from the idea that Cambodian culture
is a rooted body that grows, lives [and] dies but rather views it in terms
of sites of displacement, interference, and interaction (Clifford 1997:
25). In so doing, we address the tensions and contradictions stemming
from the exigencies of progress, economic development, politics, and the
preservation of a national identity and culture to reveal how tradition is
about change, which, as Sarup reminds us, all too often passes unacknowledged (1996: 5).

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The twelve essays gathered in Expressions of Cambodia: the politics of

tradition, identity, and change offer an examination of contemporary Cambodian culture at home and abroad from a theoretical and multidisciplinary
perspective by established and young scholars from Cambodia, Southeast
Asia, Europe and the United States. Divided into four thematic sections, the
essays represent the first sustained exploration of the relationship between
cultural productions and practices, the changing urban landscape, and the
construction of identity and nation building while addressing the politics of
development and conservation, tradition and modernity within the global
economy and transmigratory movements of the twenty-first century.
In so doing, the volume responds to Clammers call for an analysis of
contemporary Asian societies that move[s] the study of culture from the
periphery, and its position as explanation-of-last-resort back to its rightful
place in the centre of social analysis . . . in a way that places social change
in a sounder relationship to cultural developments (2002: 26). The essays
contained here adopt a broad range of analytical vantage pointsincluding
postcolonial theory, tourism/heritage studies and gender studies among
othersto look closely at various forms of socio-cultural fluxdiscursive,
artistic, performative, and quotidianwhich continuously weave in and out
of the historical and political discourses to make up the fabric of society.
Expressions of Cambodia sets out to illuminate the ways in which Cambodian society continues to invent itself, defines and redefines its identities,
extends itself inward and outward, navigates between past, present, future
and back, gestures toward a beyond, a becoming, and negates closure.

Strolling through the Cultural Village

As with many publications, the inspiration for this project came from a
somewhat unlikely source. On the final evening of a conference ambitiously titled New Trends in Khmer Studies, held at the Center for Khmer
Studies in Siem Reap in early 2004, the dinner conversation turned to the
Cambodian Cultural Village, a new tourist attraction that had recently
opened in the town. For those who had paid the ten-dollar entrance fee,
the Village delivered a unique and fascinating experience, but one that
seemed best captured by the terms Disneyesque, surreal, and tacky.
With a number of effervescent and vivid descriptions in hand, we decided
that a visit the following afternoon would provide the ideal antidote to two
long days of academic papers.
Nestled in between a sprawl of luxury hotels along the short stretch of
road that connects the town with its airport, the Cambodian Cultural Village
is instantly recognizable. A watch tower, four-storey-tall artificial mountains, and an even taller water wheel clearly signal its purpose as a theme
park. For those who cannot afford the time or the money to visit other
parts of the country, the Cultural Village offers its visitors the luxury to

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Tim Winter and Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier

travel in time and space to discover the history and the cultures of Cambodia
in just a few hours and with all the comfort a modern and immaculately
clean theme park can provide. Its purpose is to edutain. Its imperative is
the staging of a nation (Edensor 2002: 85). Showcasing reproductions of
several ethnic villages in Cambodiaamong them, the Cham village, the
Chinese Village, the Phnong Village, just to name a fewit also includes
a traditional Cambodian millionaire house and a Khmer Association
Overseas village comprising a typical Californian house with a church
next door. Miniature replicas of major historical buildings and structures
feature, among others, such landmarks as the Royal Palace, the National
Museum, and the Central Market in Phnom Penh, the former capital of
Cambodia Ou Dong, and the reclining Buddha from Mount Kulen in the
province of Siem Reap. Performances ranging from traditional Khmer
wedding ceremonies to the folkloric coconut shell dance or a variety of
ball and water team games, in which visitors are encouraged to participate, entertain with their mixture of the ceremonial and the burlesque.
The wax museum brings guests on a walk through Cambodian history
with figures of important Cambodian personalities, kings and queens,
ministers, and Buddhist patriarchs mixed together with mythical and
symbolic figures such as the apsara dancer, Princess Liu-Yeh, an important
character in one of the versions of the countrys myth of origin, a movie
star of the 1960s, and a happiness family (sic) represented by a father,
a mother, and their three children in their modern living room; and, lastly,
as one is about to leave the museum, a figure of an UNTAC election
officer shown exiting a bar in an amorous embrace with a taxi girl
provides a surprising end to the tour. When asked if they have had
complaints from the UN, an English-speaking guide responded that they
did, but he justified it thus: we dont see this as bad. We want to show
that UNTAC came here to bring peace, bring elections, worked hard
through the day, and then enjoyed themselves at night. We wanted to
show their enjoyment.3
While it does not strive to be anything other than a theme park for
family entertainment, the Cultural Village in fact provides a progressive
and inclusive representation of Cambodian culture, one that is plural, transnational, popular, and forward-looking. Its commemorative approach to
history, albeit selective, is free-flowing and seamless. In the words of
Gillis (1994: 6), the Villages narratives on popular memory dance and
leap through time in a joyous celebration of Cambodian history and
cultural achievements, free of the angst often felt in other discursive realms,
namely the loss of culture and identity, and the distinction between myth
and reality. It makes no effort to single out the glory of the Khmer Empire
or the temples of Angkor, placing such histories alongside other events
and achievements created along a continuum of history that speaks little
of tragedy or burden (Chandler 1993b, 1998). And yet, while entire
Cambodian families travel to the Village from around the country, it

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remains snubbed by the intellectual elite and most Western visitors who
decry it as a disneyfied caricature of the country.
Sitting down over a drink afterwards, it seemed easy to criticize the
Cultural Village for its superficiality, its lack of authenticity, or its apparent irreverence. But to judge or dismiss it merely because it challenged,
perhaps even offended, our mental and aesthetic maps of what Cambodia
is, or should be, would be a denial of its validity and its integrity as part
of contemporary Cambodian society. It was clear that the Cultural Village
posed a series of important questions that warranted greater attention: questions that, we concluded, should be essential points of focus for a scholarly
enterprise attempting to understand the New Trends in Cambodian society.
Scanning the shelves of any academic librarys collection of books written in English on Cambodia reveals two dominant, and antithetical, focal
points of interest: the ancient glories of Angkorean splendor and the horrors of the modern Khmer Rouge regime.4 A reading of Edwards (2006)
account of an emergent Cambodge under a French protectorate offers some
insight into why countless pages have been dedicated to Angkor over the
course of the twentieth century. Her analysis depicts Angkors pivotal role
in fashioning visions of a noble Khmer and an emergent Cambodian
nationalism. Through their transformation of Angkors monuments into a
socio-political totem of an ethnically and culturally unifying historiography, scholars from the Ecole Franaise dExtrme-Orient (EFEO), such as
George Coeds and Henri Marchal, would foreground stone as the key for
unlocking the secrets of the past.5 By the time a localized independence
movement began to flourish in the 1930s, Angkor had already solidified
as the idealized apogee of a largely monolithic, mono-cultural nationalism.
As Panivong Norindr illustrates in his chapter here, the fascination for
Angkor back in the Mtropole would also accelerate its path towards global
fame.
Together, these accounts form part of a growing interest in this era of
colonialism spanning from 1863 to 1954. In recent years, authors such as
Cooper (2001), Muller (2006), Norindr (1996), Robson and Yee (2005),
Tully (2002), and Wright (1991) have all pursued a critical postcolonial
studies perspective to examine the relationship between politics and culture
across Indochina in this period within a variety of contexts, including
cinema, literature, grand expositions, art, education, and urban planning. In
detailing such themes these authors have added further texture to the now
seminal and wide-ranging works on Cambodian history written by Chandler
(1991, 1996a, 1996b) and Vickery (1998). Books by Harris (2005a) and
Marston and Guthrie (2004) on religion, Stewart and May (2004) on literature, Ayres (2003) on education, Jacobsen (2006) and Lilja (2006) on
gender, and Phim and Thompson (1999) on dance, as well as a number of
publications produced by the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom
Penh,6 have also enabled a more holistic understanding of Cambodias social
and vernacular past to emerge.

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Tim Winter and Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier

Given the countrys recent turmoil, it is little surprise to find that the
majority of scholarship focusing on the decades after independence has
been dedicated to an episode lasting a few short, but devastating, years.
Understandably, numerous scholars have attempted to comprehend the
complex reasons, factors, and motives that caused a small political elite
to turn a country in upon itself and pursue one of the most brutal social
experiments ever inflicted upon a nation and its population (e.g. Chandler
1993a, 2000; Kiernan 2004; Kissi 2003; Ponchaud 1978; Short 2004;
Vickery 1999). The broader geo-political dynamics that invariably shape
university-based and journalistic research also meant Cambodia received
considerable interest from commentators based in the US, Australia,
France, and the UK attempting to ascertain and disentangle complicities
for a region that became the coalface of a cold war conflict (e.g. Evans
and Rowley 1990; Grant et al. 1971; Haas 1991; Shawcross 1993).
Party politics, along with macro-economic and political transitions, have
also been recurring themes within studies examining Cambodias recovery
from the 1980s onwards. Authors such as Brown and Timberman (1998),
Curtis (1998), Gottesman (2003), Hughes, C. (2003), Ledgerwood (2002),
Ong (2003), Peou (2000), and Roberts (2001), to name just a few, have
all attempted to document a series of transitions: from civil war to peace;
from a socialist-style authoritarianism to multi-party democracy; from
geographic isolation to a free-market economy; and from refugees to diaspora. Significantly less attention, however, has been paid to the sociocultural transformations that have accompanied these transitions. One
early and notable attempt is the 1994 volume by Ebihara et al. entitled
Cambodian Culture since 1975: homeland and exile. While the contributions by Ayres, Harris, Lilja, Marston and Guthrie, and Stewart and May
highlighted above have valuably updated many of the themes explored by
Ebihara et al., we believe the rapid and profound changes that have
occurred since the early 1990s demand further analysis and new viewpoints of reflection. Accordingly, Expressions of Cambodia sets out with
a number of goals.
The first is to open up new spaces of analysis, identify fresh topics of
study, and offer rich theoretical perspectives that treat phenomena such
as the Cambodian Cultural Village as important and worthy points of
enquiry. Accordingly, we began this volume by asking what expressions
the Village makes about relationships between tradition and modernity,
diaspora and home, memory and identity, and the citizen and the state.
Concerned that existing accounts on Cambodian economic, political and
social relations too often presume objectivity and a stability of meaning,
the book pursues Reynoldss (2006) call for a cultural studies perspective
that opens up, questions, and destabilizes these links. Familiar topics such
as Angkor and the Khmer Rouge are thus re-examined from new perspectives, ones that challenge the distinction between history and historiography
in order to explore their interplay in the contemporary moment.

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The second goal is to bring together under a single thematic umbrella

some of the latest, most up-to-date, research from scholars working on the
country. While recognizing Spivaks (Harasym 1990) or Trinh T. Minhhas (1989) assertions that any representation claiming to speak about a
subject, simultaneously, and inevitably, risks speaking for that subject, our
more modest aim here has been to bring together a series of voices that
offer certain insights into, and problematize, contemporary Cambodia. The
twelve chapters that follow are not intended to be definitive. Instead, they
are presented as openings and, it is hoped, as signposts for further enquiry.
Finally, the book aims to bring Cambodia back into dialogue with its
neighbors and, in so doing, contribute to the growing field of Asian cultural
studies. Expressions of Cambodia parallels a number of other recent works
on Southeast Asia, including: Skidmore (2005) on Burma; Reynolds (2006),
Tanabe and Keyes (2002), and Van Esterik (2000) on Thailand; Pholsena
(2006) and Rigg (2005) on Laos; Kahn (1998) on Malaysia and Singapore;
Zurbuchen (2005) on Indonesia; and Tai (2001) and Winston and Ollier
(2001) on Vietnam. It also fills an important void in Southeast Asia studies by addressing many of the issues examined in a number of thematically
constructed volumes that examine the region as a whole but, for various
reasons, consistently ignore Cambodia (see, for example, Shigetomi 2002;
Wang 2005; Wee 2002; Yao 2001). The remaining sections of this introduction identify the key themes of the book and provide the reader with an
overview of each chapter.

A traditional modernity?
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as
though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.
This is how one perceives the angel of history. His face is towards
the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in
front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and
make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from
Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the
angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him
into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris
before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. 7
Taken from Walter Benjamins musings on the rise of a European modernity, this 1940 description of Paul Klees painting Angel of History strikingly
captures the dynamics of early 1990s Cambodia. The storm of progress, a
rush towards modernity, would find its energy and its momentum by staring
back at the countrys past, a past that would be contemplated for both its
wreckage and its immutable grandeur. As the decade began, profound and

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Tim Winter and Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier

rapid changes were desperately required. The country needed to move from
a centrally planned economic system to a market oriented one . . . from a
war economy to a peace economy, and from a poor and under-developed
economy to a more prosperous and developed one (Tith 1998: 102). With
85 percent of the population living in rural communities, agriculture
accounted for more than 50 percent of the countrys GDP (Quintyn and
Zamarczy 1998). Export manufacturing industries were virtually nonexistent and the limited economic growth at that time was principally fuelled
by the UNs effects on the service and construction industries, the vast
majority of which centered on Phnom Penh (Ledgerwood 1998; Shawcross
1994). Nonetheless, the prospect of macro-economic stabilitysomething
Cambodia had been denied for over two and a half decadesprovided the
country with the opportunity to make far-reaching, and desperately needed,
reforms in the context of one of the lowest levels of per capita income in
the world (Ministry of Planning 2003: 5).
After nearly two decades of isolation, the future was about regional reintegration and embracing the multitude of cultural and economic flows
that process would bring. Accordingly, the country would liberalize its
markets and politically realign itself towards a Western international donor
audience (Hughes, C. 2003). In lieu of an effective state, a broader civil
society was installed, comprised of bilateral donors, multilateral banks,
and numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In addition to the
2.2 billion US dollars provided by the international community for the
United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), a further
2.3 billion US dollars was pledged for the period of 199295 alone.8 No
fewer than 40,000 personnel would descend on the country to ensure the
elections passed off in a peaceful and transparent manner. In a few short
months, satellite dishes, Toyota Landcruisers, and advertisements for
imported electronic goods would appear in Phnom Penh. International
standard hotels would open, offering Australian wines, steaks, and French
cheeses. The opening up of the country would also foster a new form of
migration: A number of those who had fled the country in the early 1970s
returned to resurrect political or business interests.
While this influx of foreign aid would cause the value of real estate in
the capital to rocket, hospitals, universities, schools, airports, water, and
power supplies across the country all desperately needed reconstructing,
a task made considerably worse by the isolation from Phnom Penh of
many provinces. One of the most pernicious legacies of the conflict, both
in terms of its cost to lives and its effects on agricultural production, was
the silent threat posed by millions upon millions of landmines. In December
1993, only 19,000 of an estimated 10 million mines scattered across the
countryside had been cleared (Shawcross 1994: 80).9
A year after the 1993 UNTAC elections, the first full-scale national modernization program was launched. The National Program to Rehabilitate
and Develop Cambodia (NPRD) outlined six specific aims, which together

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encompassed the areas of law, education, healthcare, economic stability,

rural development, and the sustainable use of natural resources. The arrival
of new equipment would allow schools, hospitals, and universities to reopen and modernize their facilities. The opening of commercial banks
would also be an important step towards rebuilding trust in an economy
characterized by rampant inflation and spiraling corruption.
Major reforms came with the implementation of an International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank three-year structural adjustment
program. Within this program, the garment industry was identified as one
of the key vehicles for development. While this industry has received significant attention from developmental economists since then, their accounts
have presented a largely de-humanized, positivist picture. Crucially, they
fail to interpret the interplay between the world market and cultural identity, between local and global processes, between consumption and cultural
strategies (Friedman 1994: 103). The chapter by Annuska Derks here fills
that void by focusing on one young woman named Srey,10 who leaves her
village in the province to work in a Phnom Penh factory. Srey is presented
as an example of women across the country who have to negotiate many
conflicting positions and new life spaces. Part lured, part seduced by the
modern life in the capital city, they attempt to simultaneously uphold the
model of a dutiful daughter in their rural communities. Too easily portrayed
by the media as victims of the global market, exploited and underpaid,
Derks argues that this is indeed an oversimplification, for these women have
their own aspirations towards modernity of which they have already been
given a taste back in their villages through other returning factory workers
and television programs. Along with the other two chapters contained in the
section Engaging modernity, her account offers us important insights into
how particular social groups within Cambodia negotiate and interpret transitions between the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern.
Given the immense political and socioeconomic challenges facing the
country, it was understandable that rehabilitation and development were
defined in such physical and structural terms. Within this paradigm, however, significantly less attention was given to the more nebulous, and perhaps seemingly less urgent, need for the rehabilitation of the countrys
cultural and intellectual life. Beginning with Pol Pots brutal attempts to
erase much of Cambodias past, recent decades had left a deep-seated anxiety over what actually constituted Cambodian culture or identity. Long
associations between ethnicity, conflict, and aggressive nationalisms within
the Southeast Asian region also meant the destruction inflicted upon the
countrys cultural landscape would be politically infused as a number of
chapters here reveal. Indeed, to understand these early moments of transition is to understand the circularity and continuity of history. When the
country emerged from 90 years of French Protectorate rule and became a
sovereign nation, the same tone of hope and uncertainties, the same desires
and wishes for development and modernization to provide a better life for

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Tim Winter and Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier

the people of Cambodia, could be felt. Under the leadership of King

Norodom Sihanouk this defining period in Cambodian history, known as
the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (Peoples Socialist Community), is one that
the countrys elders recall with fondness and use, for better or worse, as a
measuring stick by which to compare all ensuing regimes.
A common theme to both eras has been the symbolic values ascribed to
Angkor. Associated with ideas of ethnic superiority, historical power, and
artistic prowess, Angkor has been a recurring presence on banknotes, flags,
postage stamps, and numerous post-independence buildingscited as an
unambiguous source of civic and social pride. With Cambodia situated at
the heart of a highly connected region Angkor serves as a powerful resource
for the state to assert difference at the national level. It represents an undeniable purity in the face of porous boundaries, cultural mobility, and flux.
As Muan (2001) also suggests, the temples would become the focal point
of a 1990s post-conflict Restoration Culture led by international organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). The chapter by Robert Turnbull here explores
some of the wider implications of such cultural policies that have overwhelmingly focused on the restoration of architectural antiquities. Turnbull
critically examines the current state of the countrys performance arts by
situating them within decades of governmental and non-governmental
policy making. In so doing, his paper reveals the local and external sociopolitical mechanisms that converge to define the parameters of what should
be valued, and thus sponsored, within a national program of cultural revival.
Within this same sectiontitled Performing TraditionHeidi Dahles
and John ter Horst offer us a number of analytic parallels through a study
of the silk industry. Their account focuses on this industry to understand
how networks of trade and localized forms of development arise around
the concept of the traditional, a term that, as we shall see later in this
introduction, they extensively problematize.
Finally here, we have Ian Harriss paper, which charts the revival of
Cambodias Buddhist communities. His analysis centers on the complex
interplay between two competing discourses: one that strives for a more
socially engaged, development-oriented form of Buddhism; and the
other, which seeks to maintain more traditional values. Harris argues
that a number of traditionalists have been critical of modernist practices
that [are] incompatible with long-established currents of Cambodian spiritual praxis. Seen together, these chapters illuminate some of the ways
in which the tensions, contradictions, and negotiations expressed in Klees
Angel of History are played out in a country such as Cambodia.

The expediency of culture

In examining contemporary Cambodia this book departs from a realist epistemology that understands culture solely as a bounded sphere of rituals,

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11

rites, traditions, and symbols. As our title suggests, we see tradition, identity, and change as processes that are, implicitly or explicitly, bound up in
social networks of power, political cultures, and an array of institutional
relations. In this respect, some of the themes we have sought to explore in
this collection draw inspiration from the field of Latin American cultural
studies, which, through the work of Ydice, Canclini, Escobar and Alvarez
among others, has examined how and why a multitude of social actors
adopt culture as a resource to serve certain purposes or goals. Over the
years these authors have brought notions of citizenship, civil society, development, the state, and globalization into the fold of cultural studies and,
perhaps more importantly, foregrounded culture within debates over such
issues for a variety of countries in the region. In justifying this approach,
Ydice argues that the embedding of culture within the economic and sociopolitical spheres of growth and development has set in motion a particular
performative force, whereby the cultural has a social imperative to perform (2003: 12). A number of the chapters contained here pursue such
analytical themes to reveal what is being accomplished socially, politically
and discursively (Domnguez 1992: 21) through culture.
As we have already seen, the 1990s was a time characterized by a series
of major transformations. With scholarship on this period primarily focusing on key political transitions, few attempts have been made to interpret
a near overnight shift from virtual isolation to networks of cultural globalization (Featherstone 1990). The arrival of billions of dollars of financial
assistance would transform this small, largely rural, nation into one of
the worlds most aid-dependent countries of the late twentieth century.
Far more than merely a monetary intervention, reconstruction would
involve a process of NGOization, which, as Alvarez et al. (1998) and
Canclini (2001) point out, draws upon culture as a resource for achieving
its developmental goals. In other words, culture becomes subsumed within,
and co-opted by, an industry oriented around the geo-political criteria of
economic progress or sustainability.
To see such a situation merely in terms of exploitation would, however,
inadequately recognize the other part of an ongoing dynamic of expediency. Far from being passive victims of developmental economics, the
countrys arbiters of culture would frequently embrace foundationspeak
as a vital engine of cultural production (Ydice 2003: 347). Harriss
chapter, for example, traces the rise of a Buddhist entrepreneurialism
that seeks the support of either local politicians or foreign NGOs and
foundations. He demonstrates how a complex network of relationships
thriving on reciprocity and mutual benefit provides monks with both political power and financial gain, which some of them in turn use to help the
most destitute in the community. Harriss account vividly illustrates how
rampant capitalism and a fluid political environment are challenging and
transforming both modernist and traditional forms of Buddhism across the
country today.

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The use of a cultural vocabulary by civil society is also taken up by

Dahles and ter Horst in their analysis of the silk industry. An infrastructure of international foundations and expertise is critically examined to
illustrate how a socially and economically expedient discourse of revival
has become prevalent within the industry in recent years. In mapping
out how this discourse invokes a language of traditional or authentic
Khmer, they argue that an ethno-citizenship of Chinese lineage stretching
back several centuries is being eclipsed and concealed. As noted earlier,
the purview of a revival language is also taken up by Turnbull in his
analysis of the art scene. On closing his chapter he concludes that performing artists serve no immediate political or financial purposes for the
state today. Its divestment of responsibility for sustaining Cambodias
living cultures onto a series of foreign NGOs, who energetically take
up the task, reveals the presence of certain nostalgias and idealized representations of history, both within and beyond the country. In trying to
account for this complex process, Turnbull discusses how property speculation in Phnom Penh, tourism, performances abroad, and foreign pop
music all impact upon a community of artists struggling to recover their
craft and resources. Likewise, Klairung Amratishas article on Cambodian
women writers at home and abroad offers insights into how the different
governments formed after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime and international NGOs have sponsored literature to meet their respective political
or social agendas.
A recurrent theme within these five chapters is an understanding of how
a cultural economy has emerged in Cambodia today through an engagement with neo-liberal capitalism. One industry that has epitomized this
new phase of economic growth has been tourism, a sector dominated by
the temple complex of Angkor. Its listing as a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in 1992 marked the beginning of a pattern of growth perhaps unparalleled in any other country in modern times. From a mere 9,000 in 1993,
ticket sales to the site climbed to around 750,000 a mere decade later: a
staggering increase of 8,000 percent (Ministry of Tourism 2003). By
contrast, the number of visitors to the northeast of the country increased
by only a few thousand in that same period. Indeed, government efforts
to develop a nationwide tourism industry have been greatly hampered by
a grossly inadequate infrastructure, with roads, sea ports, airlines, travel
agents, and marketing expertise all desperately requiring upgrading. The
chapter by Tim Winter acknowledges these factors but turns to consider
how the development of a more geographically dispersed industry has
been hampered by an international travel and tourism industry that consistently frames the country as a dangerous destination with little more to
offer than jungle-ruined temples. His account examines how the Khmer
Rouge and Angkor intersect as they become encapsulated within a cultural
economy of guidebooks, tourist cafes, and television documentaries that
all rely upon narratives of apprehension and awe, intrigue and excitement.

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Timothy Dylan Woods chapter also discusses Khmer Rouge tourism

narratives, but in the context of their production at Anlong Veng, the site
of Pol Pots cremation. His ethnographically rich study illustrates how the
Ministry of Tourism is constructing an account that both stabilizes and
domesticates history in order to politically contain the towns former
outlaws. This provides the basis for an argument that a project of historical invention and the anticipated revenue from international tourism are
enabling the prime minister and his hierarchy to maintain their irongrasp over a former enemy.
Examining Angkor and Anlong Veng reveals how the Cambodian
government has re-oriented itself towards the infra- and supra-national
consumption values associated with tourism in order to meet its own ideological interests. While Woods analysis points towards a struggle over
cultural politics at the domestic level, the branding of the country on
the international stage around a glorious Angkorean culture speaks of a
desire for difference in relation to the touristic offerings of neighboring
Vietnam, Thailand, or Malaysia. As Ydice reminds us, in such cases
where consumption culture exceeds the territorial boundaries of the
nation-state . . . the state is not weakened but, rather, that it has been
reconverted to accommodate new forms of organization and capital accumulation (2003: 167). In drawing the analyses offered by Dahles and ter
Horst, Harris, Turnbull, Winter, Amratisha, and Wood together, we can
see how the contours of Cambodias cultural revival are being molded
by a socio-political matrix comprised of networks of international aid,
localized and transnational capitalism, and an internally embattled state.

Liminality and margins

Moving from the performance of culture and identity in Cambodia to focus
more specifically on transnational and gendered subjectivities, let us now
return to the opening quote by Sam-Ang Sam, a Cambodian American
ethnomusicologist who has resettled in Cambodia after spending many
years studying and teaching in the US. In many ways, the question posed
what do we want?triggers memories of the 1960s and 1970s when
civil rights marches and anti-war demonstrations in the West were caught
on camera and widely televised: What do we want? Peace. When do we
want it? Now, and so on. In another way, one cannot help but recall one
of Freuds seminal questions: What do women want? That these references are taken from a Western context is by no means an innocent gesture.
One look at the present Cambodian constitution drafted in 1993 reveals
that some of its language is borrowed from the West, and there is no
doubt that many Cambodians returning from abroad have helped shape
its language. While retaining the characteristic Cambodian grandiloquence,
the constitution is strongly flavored by modern Western democratic ideals:

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We, the people of Cambodia
Accustomed to having been an outstanding civilization, a prosperous,
large, flourishing and glorious nation, with high prestige radiating like
a diamond,
Having declined grievously during the past two decades, having gone
through suffering and destruction, and having been weakened terribly,
Having awakened and resolutely rallied and determined to unite for
the consolidation of national unity, the preservation and defense of
Cambodias territory and precious sovereignty and the fine Angkor
civilization, and the restoration of Cambodia into an Island of Peace
based on a multi-party liberal democratic regime guaranteeing human
rights, abiding by law, and having high responsibility for the nations
future destiny of moving toward perpetual progress, development,
prosperity, and glory,
With this resolute will
We inscribe the following as the Constitution of the Kingdom of
Cambodia . . .11

If the presence of the UN and numerous foreign NGOs has been a

subject of ongoing debate, the contributions of the Cambodian diaspora
and Cambodian returnees in shifting the cultural, economic, and political
scenes in Cambodia has been largely overlooked. As mentioned earlier,
a segment of the population before, during and after the Khmer Rouge
regime went to France, Australia, Canada, and the US as students, immigrants, and, more overwhelmingly, as refugees. Cambodia extends itself
well beyond the geographical borders of the country, and the Cambodian
diaspora in Long Beach, Paris, or Sydney has done its share of politics
from afar, and like many other diasporas, has maintained a time-lagged
Cambodian culture abroad, a culture that is better preserved in many
respects than in the homeland, thus frozen in time and divorced from the
realities of both homeland and adopted home. Those who have returned
and resettled in Cambodia brought with them a paradoxical baggage of
Western education and way of life along with a fixed idea of what
Cambodian culture should be and an over-determined identification as,
and a need to be perceived as, Khmer.12 As we know, identity is defined
in the encounter with the other and is rooted in alterity, and as the chapters contained in the section Identity and the liminal space show, these
relations are mediated by notions of diaspora, exile, and return, and in the
encounter with the self turned into other.
In Refractions of home: exile, memory, and diasporic longing,
Khatharya Um examines the tenuous and ambivalent relationship maintained by the Cambodian diaspora towards both ancestral home and adopted

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land. Beginning with a look at first-generation Cambodia refugees in the

US and the liminality of their position in their daily-life struggle to survive
in a foreign land and the impetus to keep the Cambodian culture alive,
she moves on to the younger generation who have returned to the homeland only to find that the reality is far removed from the imagined. For
others forced to return because of an agreement signed between the
American and Cambodian governments to repatriate non-citizens who have
committed crimes and misdemeanors in America, home ironically
becomes a place of banishment rather than belonging. Like Ums chapter,
Leakthina Chau-Pech Olliers chapter focuses on the Cambodian diaspora
in the US. However, her attention turns more specifically to Cambodian
American youth and their participation in hip hop culture. Through an indepth analysis of Prach Lys rap music, she explores the Cambodian
diasporas attempt to define and to inscribe itself in America, and in the
process forces us to re-evaluate the complex issues of identity politics in
America as well as the academic discourses on Asian America. Looking at
the connection between the diaspora and the homeland, she then considers
the implications of the introduction of hip hop for the youth of Cambodia.
Returning to a more classical form of cultural production, Klairung
Amratishas study of womens writing in the Cambodian language at home
and abroad adds yet another dimension to the liminality of identity
addressed by Um and Ollier, and sheds new light on gendered subjectivity. Tracing the development of womens novels from the 1980s to the
present, Amratisha reflects on the similarities and differences in their
works: for example woman as keeper of tradition, still closely adhering
to and promoting traditional values as found in the antiquated Cambodian
codes of conduct for women written in the post-Angkorean era, and
agent of social change decrying social injustices and ills in Cambodian
society. Like Derks women factory workers, women writers also have to
negotiate between tradition and modernity. Interestingly, women writers
in Cambodia are more apt to tackle more contemporary issues than their
counterparts abroad, whose writings still cling to the suffering inflicted
by the Khmer Rouge.
If elsewhere refugees are often perceived as victims of the legacy of
war, political and ethnic conflicts that marked the twentieth century, and
symbolize modern-day trauma, dislocation and statelessness, at home the
discourse on the refugee plight takes on another tune altogether. For those
who did not or could not flee the country, the refugee status is seen as a
privilege rather than a burden. In the political arena, the same discourse
has been used to signify a betrayal and abandonment of the country.
Looking at the debate surrounding the status of government officials holding dual citizenship during the 1990s elections in Cambodia, Kathryn
Poethigs chapter raises important questions about multiple allegiances,
transnational politics, and hybrid identities. The case against officials holding dual citizenship was used particularly by Hun Sens CPP party against

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their opponents, the FUNCINPEC party led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh,

himself a dual French and Cambodian citizen, to argue their moral superiority as Khmer Angkor or stationary Khmers, though Hun Sen himself, a
former Khmer Rouge, left Cambodia to seek refuge in Vietnam after the
events of 1975 only to return with the Vietnamese troops in 1979. Within
this debate, most Cambodians of the diaspora seemed to agree with Hun
Sen and called for government officials to give up their second passports,
while those with dual citizenships in office insisted more on the importance of patriotism over nationality and the fact that their dual status allowed
them to speak the truth and bring positive changes to Cambodia.
The analysis of Anlong Veng offered by Wood also raises interesting
questions about the changing boundaries and margins of the Cambodian
political sphere, this time from the perspective of an emergent Khmer
Rouge tourism industry. Since the 1980s the Khmer Rouge have gradually
moved to the margins of Cambodian politics, a process that would also see
an ideology that foregrounded an extreme form of ethni-nationalism
(Smith 2000) retreat to the geographical frontiers of the country. While
margins are defined by their proximity to boundaries, the Khmer Rouge
funded their stronghold through a trade in gems and lumber that deliberately crossed and subverted both legal and geographic borders. Wood
explores how international tourism is providing a catalyst for a new dialogue between this remote community in the northwest of the country
and Hun Sens government in Phnom Penh. The chapter thus reveals how,
in the aftermath of Pol Pots death, the prospect of an influx of capital is
creating new forms of political relations.

Spaces of culture
With their focus on diaspora, returnees, and border towns, a number of
the chapters here raise important questions about our understanding of
Cambodian geographies. In this final section of the introduction we push
this spatial theme further by considering how Expressions of Cambodia
explores a number of places and sites of cultural production that have,
hitherto, largely been ignored. Over approximately the last 100 years, a
series of values, beliefs, and normative wisdoms have solidified to define
the parameters of what constitutes Cambodia and its culture as a field of
scholarly enquiry. A defining feature of this process has been the reification and subsequent reliance upon certain knowledge of how culture
is, and has been, spatially enunciated and iterated. We suggest that such
understandings have served to simultaneously erase and reify, conceal and
celebrate, different elements of the country, its culture and its cultural
history. Pop culture, electronic virtual spaces, and other forms of print
and visual media are just a few of the areas that demand our greater attention if we are to better understand Cambodia as a multitude of identities,
citizenships, and vernacular cultures.

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To return to Angkor, modern scholarship has relied upon a limited number of intellectual keys for unlocking its history. With decades of study
built around reading shifting architectural styles or the interpretation of
bas-relief carvings and stele inscriptions, architectural historians and epigraphers have been revered as the ultimate gatekeepers to past glories.
Although the translation of Sanskrit and Khmer texts has provided us with
invaluable accounts about regal wealth and power, and about deities, population sizes, and agricultural outputs, the study of Angkor has been one
that has consistently cast aside more vernacular and social histories in favor
of a high culture. The chapter by Penny Edwards here calls into question the validity of such distinctions and priorities. Edwards draws our
attention to a number of recent inscriptions in order to de-familiarize
Angkor as a place bereft of life, bereft of modern cultural productions.
Against the backdrop of these non-official yet historically meaningful
inscriptions, she goes on to look at contemporary graffiti written elsewhere in Cambodia contesting the perception that Cambodian culture is
largely oral. Far from being mere acts of vandalism, these graffiti are reflections of Cambodian cultural practices connected with religious beliefs and
the spiritual realms, and in significant ways they are indicators of the trends
of different periods in Cambodian history. Her account thus opens up an
intellectual space for further readings of key episodes in Cambodias modern historyincluding the 1980s, the Khmer Rouge years, and the French
colonial periodall of which continue to be documented through the textual and photographic evidence found in official archives and publications.
The other two papers in the section Re-scripting Angkor also look at
the sites circulation within particular texts and cultural industries. The
contribution by Norindr considers the narratives and representations at the
heart of an enduring, and now global, fascination for Angkor, and in particular Angkor Wat; a situation that, he suggests, needs to be traced back
to its French cinematic and literary origins. To reflect critically on the
legacy of a colonial past, Norindr examines the recent film The People of
Angkor by Rithy Panh in order to argue that we need to move away from
representations that petrify Angkor as a site of architectural grandeur
towards accounts that focus more on the invisible, the marginal, and the
subaltern. The chapter by Winter turns to consider Angkors circulation
within the socio-cultural landscape of international tourism. Tourism in
the post-conflict era has come to revolve around two historical episodes,
the Khmer Rouge and Angkor, framed and represented as modern tragedy
and ancient glory. While seemingly incongruent and polarized, Winter
argues that these two histories actually come to weave in and out of each
other and mutually constitute one another in unexpected ways. In this
light, tourism and its cultural artifacts emerge as forces that have
contributed to, and mobilized, particular conceptions of heritage, development, and memory since Cambodia re-established itself as a major
destination in Southeast Asia.

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Winters analysis of tourism brings into the fold a number of publications and cultural texts designed to help navigate Cambodia as the other
within a coupling of home and abroad. This mediation of transnational geographies through texts is also paralleled, but this time reversed, by Um and
Poethig in their analyses of the internet as a forum for diasporic expressions of the homeland. Poetry and other online postings are examined to
explore questions of active citizenship and public participation, but also
questions of cultural citizenship (Featherstone and Lash 1999: 7). Their
accounts reveal how the internet has emerged as a vital cultural space for
political dialogues across borders, for articulating and sharing thoughts
about exile, banishment, longing, and homeland for members of the communities still straddling the hyphenated and non-hyphenated typologies
of CambodianAmerican and AmericanCambodian. In a similar vein,
Olliers chapter on rap music, a discursive practice not commonly associated with Cambodia, also offers us a rich point of focus for understanding
how a diasporic identity is contingently negotiated. She suggests that rap
music constitutes part of a signifying system of identity that engages with,
and thus responds to, a shifting US political climate. In other words, by
foregrounding a reading of Prach Lys lyrics, Ollier analytically draws out
a series of connections between the artist, his audience, and the broader
public sphere within which that diaspora resides.
Away from the technologies of the internet and online virtual communities, Klairung Amratisha tells us about the emergence of women writers
in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia who, for lack of a publishing industry
and due to the high cost of printing, began their career by renting in
Phnom Penhs market stalls copies of their novels written in pencil to
fiction-starved readers in the 1980s. But just a decade later, these same
women would write made-for-television soap-opera scripts and short stories
for newspapers, thus bringing to the mainstream this literary genre, which
was never popular before in Cambodia.
While in a previous section we pointed to the undeniable link between
culture and social networks of power, politics, and capitalism, in this
section we see signs of more spontaneous, scripted or unscripted, expressions of Cambodia; expressions that together account for the circularity,
hybridity, creation, and recreation of culture and identity in its multiple
forms, and open the field of Cambodian studies to alternative spaces where
identity and culture are constantly being expressed, performed, debated,
and contested.

Notes
1 Excerpts from Sam 1996: 85; Norodom Sihanouk cited in Sam 1996: 88 and
Ranariddh 1998: 23 (our translation).
2 A term adopted by Mehta and Mehta (1999).
3 www.talesofasia.com/cambodia-update-dec03.htm.

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4 The following pages are not intended to be a comprehensive literature review

of academic scholarship on Cambodia published in English. Rather, by citing
a number of the books published in recent years, our aim is to provide the
reader with an overview of some of the dominant themes that give shape to the
field of Cambodian studies today. Unfortunately, due to limitations of space,
we are unable to include numerous recent PhD theses and journal articles that,
we fully acknowledge, have valuably contributed to the field.
5 See also Edwards 2001, 2002, 2005.
6 Recent notable publications here include: Ashley Thompson (2005) Calling the
Souls: a Cambodian ritual text; Ang Choulean (2004) Brah Ling; Anonymous
(2003) Seams Of Change: clothing and the care of the self in late 19th and 20th
century Cambodia; Vann Molyvann (2003) Modern Khmer Cities; Anonymous
(2002) Cultures of Independence: an introduction to Cambodian arts and culture in the 1950s and 1960s. All are published by Reyum Publishing, Phnom
Penh.
7 W. Benjamin (1940) On the Concept of History, Gesammelte Schriften I,
691704. SuhrkampVerlag. Frankfurt am Main, 1974. Translation: Harry Zohn
(2003), from Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 4: 19381940, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 3923.
8 Around 61 percent of that total, 1.39 billion US dollars, was actually disbursed:
see Cambodian Rehabilitation and Development Board 1996.
9 With around three hundred Cambodians either killed or maimed each month,
the effect of landmines on agricultural production and rural communities was
devastating (Chandler 1998).
10 Srey is a common Cambodian first name and literally it also means girl or
woman. As for the order of first and last names, Cambodians in Cambodia
place their last name first and their first name last. Cambodians of the diaspora,
on the other hand, have typically adopted the Western ways and do the opposite. But when they return to Cambodia, many of them choose to revert back
to last name first and first name last. The ordering of names used in this volume
follow the convention chosen by each individual source.
11 The Cambodian Constitution, www.constitution.org/cons/cambodia.htm (Accessed:
10 June 2006).
12 In this introductory chapter, we have chosen the term Cambodian to refer to
all people of Cambodia, born in Cambodia or born of Cambodian parents, regardless of their ethnic origin. The term Khmer is used here to draw attention to
identity assertions made by Cambodians that draw upon ethnic or historical
ideas of a Khmer race or Khmer Empire. In this volume, the contributors
have chosen to use one term or the other and sometimes both alternately. Our
usage of these two terms does not necessarily reflect that of other contributors.
Unfortunately, because of a lack of space, it is difficult to discuss in any great
depth Cambodians returning from Eastern Europe and from other Southeast
Asian countries and their contributions to the politics, culture, the arts, and the
business world in Cambodia. It is hoped that more in-depth study will be done
on the subject.