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Discourses and Practices between Traditions and World Heritage Making in Angkor after 1990

  • Chapter
Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission

Abstract

After three decades of civil war in Cambodia, Angkor was recaptured to serve the civilizing visions of a country that had re-emerged from barbarity and the decadence of its cultural heritage and traditions. In this sense, UNESCO’s international campaigns to “Save Angkor,” launched in 1991, and the subsequent World Heritage nomination in 1992 (Angkor was simultaneously inscribed on the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger) were to become civilizing missions that allowed Cambodia to be re-integrated into the international community of “civilized nations.” In the nearly two decades since, the focus of attention paid to Angkor by the Cambodian government and the international community has shifted from a rescue operation of the monuments and sites to a campaign on how to effectively utilize the heritage for economic development in the country. It has also involved questions of how to control people’s presence and activities in the site, which has necessitated the restriction of some “traditional” local practices. Many of the restrictions were imposed on the inhabitants for the sake of tourism development and the maintaining of the assumed ideal conditions of a World Heritage Site; that is, World Heritage-Making. Discourses have emerged about which traditions to respect and maintain, and which ones to restrict or abandon. At the same time, new traditions have been invented to suit the era of tourism development. This paper analyses the divergent and somewhat contradictory discourses and practices on traditions and “World Heritage-making” in Angkor, as demonstrated by various social actors, local, national, and international.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I met him at the Bayon temple and interviewed him in Siem Reap in March 2010.

  2. 2.

    Luco also reports on the two French conservators as the great personalities of the EFEO, as remembered by the older people, see Luco 2006, 120.

  3. 3.

    Cf. Parsons 2000, 351.

  4. 4.

    “ker” is derived from a Sanskrit term ‘kīrti’ meaning “fame, renown; speech, and report.” It can also mean heritage and inheritance such as in “ker dâmnael” (Headley and Rath 1977, 44). “Morodâk” means heritage, legacy, and inheritance, which is also derived from a Sanskrit word “mṛtaka,” which means a dead person (Headley and Rath 1977, 722). According to Michel Antelme, a Khmer language teacher at INALCO, France, “dâmnael” is derived from the Khmer word “dael” and “dael kee”––something used by someone else first, or leftovers (personal communication) (Miura 2004, 27).

  5. 5.

    The trot is a ritualized dance procession performed from house to house on the Khmer New Year. It is performed for purification, to call for rain at the beginning of the rainy season, and for exorcism (cf. Porée-Maspero 1962, 207–32).

  6. 6.

    They say that Cambodian refugees who had returned from various border camps introduced this Thai custom.

  7. 7.

    He has also been the chairman of the Council of Ministers and remains so today (2012).

  8. 8.

    The population in 1992 was reported to be approximately 22,000 persons, but in 2011 more than 130,000 persons was the estimate made by Khuon of APSARA at the 2nd International Workshop about Angkor/Cambodia called ‘Rebirthing’ Angkor? Heritage Between Decadence, Decay, Revival and the Mission to Civilize, Heidelberg University, May 8–10, 2011. Online accessed 10 January 2015. http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/research/d-historicities-heritage/d12/angkor-workshops/2011.html

  9. 9.

    The commune is an administrative unit consisting of several villages and is smaller than the district.

  10. 10.

    The author’s addition.

  11. 11.

    Cf. ADI Team et al. 2002, 2; Khuon 2006a, 116; Hing and Sokphally 2007, 27 and 39; De Lopez et al. 2006, 6; Esposito and Nam 2008, III–36.

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Acknowledgement

I owe a great deal of thanks to many individuals and organizations for their various contributions during my PhD research on Angkor heritage, local communities, tourism development, and heritage management (1998–2004). Although I am unable to list all the names here, I would like to make special mention of the UNESCO Office in Phnom Penh and the APSARA Authority for sharing knowledge, concerns, and data, as well as facilitating my research and participation in international conferences on Angkor. I would like to extend my special thanks to the Research Institute of Wet Rice Culture of Waseda University in Tokyo, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Promotion Research of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), and the interdisciplinary cultural property research group of Göttingen University for enabling me to continue my research in Angkor. Last, but not least, I acknowledge my debt of gratitude to the Cluster of Excellence, “Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” Heidelberg University, for their kind invitation to attend the 2nd International Workshop on Heritage in March 2011 and for including this paper in the proceedings.

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  1. School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Keiko Miura

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Correspondence to Keiko Miura .

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  1. Karl Jaspers Centre, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Michael Falser

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Miura, K. (2015). Discourses and Practices between Traditions and World Heritage Making in Angkor after 1990. In: Falser, M. (eds) Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13638-7_11

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