Forest of struggle
In the context of studying Southeast Asian history there are fewer studies that have been done on Cambodia compared to ‘the big three’ (Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia).[i] Meanwhile, those that have been done on Cambodia have tended to focus on major themes such as the rise and actions of the regime of Democratic Kampuchia (‘the DK regime’ or ‘Khmer Rouge’), Khmer Buddhism and, of course, Angkorian civilization. Hence, Zucker argues that there have been many studies that have focused on the “recovery” of Khmer culture, there have been few that focused on the village level (p.12).
The push toward understanding the margins of history in Southeast Asian studies that was enlivened by a discussion of Van Schendel’s conceptions of Zomia has, ironically, less frequently included a major ‘uplands’ region in Cambodia, the Cardamom Mountains. Perhaps this is because Cambodia is one of the only mainland Southeast Asian states, or even, one of the only three Southeast Asian states (the other two being Singapore and Brunei) to comprise much smaller portions of upland terrain. Additionally, the Cardamom Mountains are not contiguous with the rest of mainland upland Southeast Asia, so perhaps this is why there has been relatively little academic focus on this particular region. Nevertheless, the Cardamom Mountains have gained increased attention through the efforts of conservationists, development workers and from the increasing academic interests of archeologists in the early-modern burial jar culture that existed in this region has long been part of the Khmer-Thai borderlands. With the above generalizations in mind, Zucker’s detailed, committed anthropological study of the village level discourse in four villages (O’Thmaa and three others in Doung Srae district), regarding the practice of historical memory, is a welcome contribution to the broader academic understanding of this fascinating landscape, where Zucker seeks to “broaden the frame of analysis to include…the promise of the future,” arguing that “by emphasizing the making of the moral order we gain a sense not only of people’s implicit and explicit understanding of what social relations ought to be, but also of how these ideals may absorb and help settle the cataclysmic rupture of the past” (p. 11).[ii]
Rupture and (re-) construction
The cataclysmic rupture of the past that Zucker refers to is most overtly the years of civil war that ravaged Cambodia, not only through worst of the regime of Democratic Kampuchia (1975-1979), but also through the decades of civil strife, war, and ‘post-conflict’ struggles that have affected the area of the Cardamom mountains. Furthermore, there are deeper histories that are prevalent here. As Zucker points out, a local oral historical narrative regarding a Thai invasion stretching into the forest motivated by the ‘civilization superiority’ of the Khmers is inherently tied to a contemporary context as well as deeper histories. To emphasize this point Zucker draws upon ‘the godfather of Khmer Studies’ David Chandler in his assertions that the story of Preah Ko Preah Keo regarding the Thai capture of Longvek (1594) was inherently tied to a 19th century political context when the Khmer court was caught between Thai claims on one side and Vietnamese claims on the other, as well as the sack of Angkor by the Thai in 1431/1432 (p. 145), which was additionally tied to the Khmer Rouge’s envisioning of Khmer nationality. Curiously, a highly related narrative of the Thai capture of the Khmer chronicles (Vickery?), is not mentioned in this discussion, nevertheless, the author uses the discussion to connect the themes of several chapters of Forests of Struggle (particularly chapters 3 and 7) in order to suggest that all of these narratives have a certain contemporary relevance in that they are retold as “histories and circumstances made some means more salient and efficacious – and available – than others in rebuilding their social and moral world” (p. 177).
In this book the author draws upon a wide variety of examples of social and moral constructions that are inevitably related to the constructions of history. For example, contemporary (now illegal) trade in hinterland forestry goods has been perceived as a traditional means of securing a livelihood. Hence the trade of kleum[iii]or kleum chan Krishna has been considered a traditional means of economic gain, as in other locations in mainland Southeast Asia. Most recently, the increased regulation of hinterland trade has had the direct result of an increase in bribes that traders regretfully pay to local police and officials in order to continue their livelihood. Hence many look back on the ‘deregulated’ days of the Sihanouk era with a certain sense of fondness (p. 37). In another example, an elder Buddhist layman (acar), and former Khmer Rouge participant, was at the same time isolated from the village of O’Thmaa, where he was tied to most of the villagers by blood or marriage relations, but re-incorporated into the social fabric of Doung Srae Commune. This narrative is fascinating as the villagers of O’Thmaa do not seek revenge on him,[iv] but rather reincorporate him. Furthermore, Zucker reports that Ta Kam actually further demoted himself, noting that he was not an acar, but rather serving the acar looking out for his next life (pp. 77-84). Nevertheless, Zucker sees his narrative as part of a practice of intentional forgetting that is related to narratives of an old village where there was once a cholera outbreak. That village is now abandoned and forgotten. Zucker also sees this as parallel to the oral narrative of a woman who was two promiscuous and hence, not only blamed for the death of her two nephews when they got sick and died but also buried without a phnom yong khmaoch funeral marker, and thus, isolated from this world and the next (p. 63).[v]
The cost of eliminating the ancestors
The centrality and importance of the funerary towers brings up another point of the aspect of memory and ‘forgetting’ in the construction and reconstruction of the moral order in the Cardamom Mountains. During the civil war there were many people that were targeted for their allegiance to the White Khmer forces of Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey, which was not for Lon Nol or the Khmer Rouge (p. 41). Hence they were targeted when the Khmer Rouge came to power, especially as the culture of mistrust spread and a connection between the White Khmer and those who did not ‘flee to the mountains’ along with the Khmer Rouge was made (pp. 41-42). Local administrative promotions were used to encourage spying (pp. 56-57) and those who were ‘disloyal’ to the Khmer Rouge cause, particularly for being Buddhist leaning, intellectual, or “White Khmers” were marked for execution. At the same time, the Khmer Rouge, perhaps even more symbolically than they intended, severed the ties between generations and an ancestral past by destroying the ‘funerary towers’ (phnom yong khmaoch). The emphasis of Chapter 6 demonstrates that “The power to transform relatedness may help to explain why the Khmer Rouge were so keen to break so many prohibitions concerning kinship, commensality, food, and ancestral worship” as “this chapter helps us to understand some of the intricacies of what undoing those…[practices]…would have implied” (p. 132). This history also helps to explain, perhaps combined with an increase in Christian conversion in O’Thmaa (where 10% of the population is Christian), why the practice of building phnom yong khmaoch has been declining in recent years. Zucker records that villagers have noted this decline in practice and articulated that it is linked to the deaths of the individuals who knew how to build them (p. 89). Hence, the process of ‘forgetting’ a historical practice may not be intentional in certain circumstances as well (p. 89).
Overall, the greatest contributions of Zucker’s study are that the author clearly achieves their stated aim of a contribution “directed toward the nascent body of literature on social memory in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge” (p. 15) through and emphasis “not only on what people said but also on what they did and their motivations for the doing” (p. 179). Furthermore the author enters into an interesting discourse on the relationship between forgetting and remembering as well as trust and distrust, lenses that also shaped their ability to complete her fieldwork (p. 18; p. 74). Nevertheless, in one of the examples that the author raises readers may note a greater discourse regarding anthropological methods, translation, readership and historical context that is not necessarily present in certain places in the book. For example, when discussing the nature of trust, the author notes that there is a relationship for one of her informants between the “hearts (chett) and the minds” of two elements of society (rich and poor) (p. 68). The phrase itself harkens to a clear Vietnam War context leaving likely leaving readers with questions, such as: was a phrase that had entered into local discourse from that context, originated locally or was this a liberal translation for the sake of readership? On the other hand, the author offers an excellent discourse on the root language of the Bon Dalien festival, which has been noted as a method of a revival of communal identity in recent years through, unlike other Khmer festivals, its entirely local manifestation (p. 153).[vi] Furthermore, there is very detailed discourse in this book regarding the nature of local identity (pp. 28-29) and incredible detail, down to the individual types of food used to worship spirits (p. 124). Finally, there is an important inversion of both traditionally colonial and local Khmer understandings of the uplands, or the hinterland forests (prei), as Zucker suggests “in the regional literature, as in my own findings, nature as prei is a potent force that not only constitutes a site of destruction, chaos, and violence, but is also capable of producing and reproducing society and individuals” (p. 115). In this way, the author not only achieves their stated goal of making this literature relevant to the constructions of moral reordering and historical memory in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, but also to a wider regional discussion regarding highland and lowland relations within a Southeast Asian context.
William B. Noseworthy, Center of Khmer Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison (noseworthy@wisc.edu)
[i] Van Schendel, W. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia’, Environmental and Planning D: Society and Space 20: 647-688
[ii] For another village level discourse on memory and history in Cambodia see: Osman, Y. 2006. The Cham Rebellion: Survivors’ Stories from the villages. Phnom Penh, Cambodia: DC-CAM (Documentation Center of Cambodia)
[iii] Cham: gahlau; Vietnamese: trầm hương; agarwood/aloeswood
[iv] Which may have been a cultural practice in other upland areas of Southeast Asia.
[v] These funerary towers appear to resemble certain towers used in the highland regions of Kalimantan
[vi] Bon Dalien takes place during the Khmer month of Makh (January-February). There is also a discourse on whether it is a single festival or in fact multiple festivals. It is not, as in the case with many other Khmer festivals, in any sense a ‘state affair.’ (p. 153)