The Concentration of Silence: Historical Memory of War in Rural Cambodia

• In Event: Political Violence in Southeast Asia: Origins and Consequences in Daily Politics

Abstract

A recent wave of research in political science uncovers the long-term effects of war, particularly as they manifest into collective trauma and shape the identity of victims and their communities, impacting their political attitudes and behaviors. Most studies have focused on stable democracies with basic political rights that safeguard victims from their perpetrators (e.g., Germany, Spain, US, Korea, Ukraine before the Russian incursion). In this article, I examine how historical memory is transmitted in post-genocide Cambodia, where those who killed still live next to relatives of those they killed. Relying on fifty in-depth interviews and two months of immersive ethnographic reporting in Ratanakiri Province, I find central opacities in my respondents’ political beliefs. Their attitudes toward foreign actors and historical adversaries shift like quicksilver between anger, forgiveness, defiance, and submission. My respondents hold onto a morally expansive perspective on war, one in which multiple things can be true at the same time and accommodates the possibility that aid, development, and coercion can come from anywhere.

Author

• Erin Lin, Ohio State University