Organizer and Chair: Lindsay French, Dartmouth College
Discussant: Anne Thurston, Independent Scholar
Part two of this panel looks closely at the effects of twenty-five years of war and political violence on social relationships and social processes in Cambodia today, and in particular at the way peoples' memories of the past come together through the power structures of the present to shape their endeavors for the future. Papers on this panel examine state efforts to manage the memories of Pol Pot time through the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide in Phnom Penh, and the ways this public effort clashes with individual experiences and understandings; the threat that their students' creativity poses to teachers of traditional culture, whose own status and authority is just recently and tenuously resurrected from the devastations of the Khmer Rouge and after; and the ironic representations of social hierarchy in political cartoons, one place where the structure of existing power relations may be simultaneously (and ambiguously, thus relatively safely) both inscribed and mocked. All three papers demonstrate that even the most private and personal accommodations to loss have a social component, and are profoundly affected by the various forms and relations of power in the present. This panel, together with Part I, presents findings from the first group of anthropologists to do ethnographic research in Cambodia since the 1991 Peace Agreement, when the most restrictive constraints on research were lifted. Both panels include Cambodian scholars along with western academics.
Violence and Memory: The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide in Cambodia
Judy Ledgerwood, East-West Center
Before the wars of the last twenty-five years in Cambodia, Tuol Sleng was a high school. On a quiet, sunny afternoon looking out across the grounds you can still imagine it as such. But inside, the presentation of horrors of Democratic Kampuchea, the years of Khmer Rouge control in Cambodia, are so vivid and ghastly that Tuol Sleng has become the central site for the construction of memories of that period. This paper explores the museum as a public and state-sponsored representation of the DK years, targeted to both foreigners and to local and diaspora Khmer.
While describing Tuol Sleng as a physical place, the paper focuses on two controversial issues. The first centers on a map of Cambodia made of skulls and bones which hangs in the last room of the museum, the horrific climax of the tour. At issue is whether these bones and those at Choeng Ek, the most famous of Cambodia's various "killing fields," should now be cremated in accordance with Buddhist notions of proper funeral ceremonies, allowing the souls to continue on their cycle of rebirth.
The second, related, but much more complicated issue, is whether the museum presents not just "Truth" about the Khmer Rouge period but a "Khmer" truth. That is, is the museum the creation of international (read Vietnamese, but also Russian and [East] German) notion of what genocide means, while sacrificing Khmer sensibilities about how the period should be remembered?
Cambodian Political Cartoons and the Representation of Hierarchy
John Marston, University of Washington
It is the paradox of hierarchy that it defines a framework both for social solidarity and for the forces of resistance that undermine social solidarity. It represents at one time a map of the path of social mobility and of the constraints on social mobility. It is not surprising that the texts that describe and inscribe hierarchy are full of irony.
While there is no simple way to describe hierarchy in Cambodian society it is fair to say, in the most general terms, that Khmer models of hierarchy imbue family life and that these models parallel and intersect with the understanding of hierarchy which underlies Cambodian polity. One window for looking at hierarchy is political cartoons, a media which inscribes an image of society while calling attention to its inconsistencies and ironies.
A political cartoon, almost by definition, calls for change and acts to shape the direction of change. My paper will look at the image of hierarchy depicted in Cambodian political cartoons from the late 1980s to the present, and in particular the cartoons of Em Sokha.
It is not my intention to analyze cartoons as representations of the positions of particular Cambodian factions or parties in relation to specific political events. Rather, I will use cartoons to examine the iconography of hierarchy in Cambodia, and ask questions about the significance of Cambodian irony about hierarchy at a particular point in history.
Patronage, Favoritism, Corruption: A Khmer Trend?
John Vijghen, Cambodian Researchers for Development
Patronage is a fundamental structure of Khmer society. Patron-client systems have formed the basic fabric of Cambodian life as far back as the Angkor era, and continue still in Cambodia's towns and villages, as well as the royal court. Favoritism is one aspect of this age-old system which has become more pronounced in recent years, suppressing other aspects like loyalty and reciprocity. This change in the emphasis of patronage relationships had impacted on villagers and city folk alike. We argue that favoritism has been further transformed into corruption and that with this, the basis of patronage itself has changed. In this paper we analyze the factors involved in this transformation, in particular the impact of events of the Pol Pot period, and the likely outcome of these changes on Cambodia's future.
Ebihara's descriptions of village life and social relations in the 1960s provide a good reference to social life before Pol Pot. Her research will be compared with the author's findings based on research in 1992 and 1993. We argue that while the Pol Pot regime affected family life and social relations in significant ways in Cambodia, it had a more limited effect on patronage systems. We suggest that the transition from a socialist government to a democracy and a planned to a market economy had a much greater impact on patronage and favoritism, to the extent that patron-client relationships have been changed in their very nature. These changes appear to be having a radical impact on Cambodia's future.
Culture Into Nation: Conflict and Lack of Concensus in Cambodia
Carol Mortland, Independent Scholar
Cambodians' perceptions of themselves as a people and a nation have diversified significantly through the devastations and divisions of the last twenty-five years. These perceptual changes are evident in differences between the ways homeland and diaspora Khmer regard the Kingdom of Cambodia and relate to each other.
The Cambodia described to me by Cambodians in America has remained remarkably similar for fifteen years: Cambodian culture has been lost, in part because of the death in the 1970s of teachers, artists and craftsmen; the culture that remains has been bastardized. Cambodia as seen by many overseas Khmer is dangerous and desperately poor. Cambodia's neighbor and traditional enemy, Vietnam, remains a threat to Cambodia's existence: Vietnamese are trying to steal Cambodia through their settlement of land and control of businesses. Pre-1970 Cambodia is remembered as an idyllic time, when peace-loving, women-respecting, non-competitive Khmer lived comfortably and happily together. But the Cambodia I observed in 1995 and the perceptions of homeland Khmer are quite different. Cambodian culture thrives in Cambodia, changed and changing, but ever dynamic. While parts of Cambodia still suffer the depredations of landmines and the Khmer Rouge, increasing numbers of Cambodians are escaping the extreme poverty and hunger of the war years. Today's problems remind homeland Khmer of the pre-war years when, contrary to diaspora myth, Cambodia suffered many of the same ills of a rapidly changing society: polarization between rich and poor, rural and urban; corruption; oppressive political control; and few civil rights.