Originally published in 1968 and here reprinted with corrections, this complete introduction to spoken and written Cambodian can also be used as a comprehensive guide to grammar and usage. It includes a phonetic description of the language's sounds, for those with phonetic training, and for others, a series of comparisons with English and French. Gathered chiefly in Cambodia, the material can be followed entirely in transcription, or worked through in the orthography, and includes exercises and a full vocabulary.
In this concise and compelling history, Cambodia's past is described in vivid detail, from the richness of the Angkorean empire through the dark ages of the 18th and early-19th centuries, French colonialism, independence, the Vietnamese conflict, the Pol Pot regime, and its current incarnation as a troubled democracy. With energetic writing and passion for the subject, John Tully covers the full sweep of Cambodian history, explaining why this land of contrasts remains an interesting enigma to the international community. Detailing the depressing record of war, famine, and invasion that ha.
A fascinating analysis of the recent history of the beautiful but troubled Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia To many in the West, the name Cambodia still conjures up indelible images of destruction and death, the legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the terror it inflicted in its attempt to create a communist utopia in the 1970s. Sebastian Strangio, a journalist based in the capital city of Phnom Penh, now offers an eye-opening appraisal of modern-day Cambodia in the years following its emergence from bitter conflict and bloody upheaval. In the early 1990s, Cambodia became the focus of the UN's first great post-Cold War nation-building project, with billions in international aid rolling in to support the fledgling democracy. But since the UN-supervised elections in 1993, the nation has slipped steadily backward into neo-authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Hun Sen. Behind a mirage of democracy, ordinary people have few rights and corruption infuses virtually every facet of everyday life. In this lively and compelling study, the first of its kind, Strangio explores the present state of Cambodian society under Hun Sen's leadership, painting a vivid portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile the promise of peace and democracy with a violent and tumultuous past.
The study of Cambodian religion has long been hampered by a lack of easily accessible scholarship. This impressive new work by Ian Harris thus fills a major gap and offers English-language scholars a booklength, up-to-date treatment of the religious aspects of Cambodian culture. Beginning with a coherent history of the presence of religion in the country from its inception to the present day, the book goes on to furnish insights into the distinctive nature of Cambodia's important yet overlooked manifestation of Theravada Buddhist tradition and to show how it reestablished itself following almost total annihilation during the Pol Pot period. Historical sections cover the dominant role of tantric Mahayana concepts and rituals under the last great king of Angkor, Jayavarman VII (1181–c. 1220); the rise of Theravada traditions after the collapse of the Angkorian civilization; the impact of foreign influences on the development of the nineteenth-century monastic order; and politicized Buddhism and the Buddhist contribution to an emerging sense of Khmer nationhood. The Buddhism practiced in Cambodia has much in common with parallel traditions in Thailand and Sri Lanka, yet there are also significant differences. The book concentrates on these and illustrates how a distinctly Cambodian Theravada developed by accommodating itself to premodern Khmer modes of thought. Following the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970, Cambodia slid rapidly into disorder and violence. Later chapters chart the elimination of institutional Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge and its gradual reemergence after Pol Pot, the restoration of the monastic order's prerevolutionary institutional forms, and the emergence of contemporary Buddhist groupings.
The course of economic change in twentieth century Cambodia was marked by a series of deliberate ""conscious human efforts"" that were typically extreme and ideologically driven. While colonization, protracted war and violent revolution are commonly blamed for Cambodia's failure to modernize its economy in the twentieth century, Margaret Slocomb's Economic History of Cambodia in the Twentieth Century questions whether these circumstances changed the underlying structures and relations of production. She also asks whether economic factors in some way instigated war and revolution. In exploring these issues, the book tracks the erratic path taken by Cambodia's political elite and earlier colonial rulers to develop a national economy. The book closes around 2005, by which time Cambodia had be reintegrated into both the regional and into the global economy as a fully-fledged member of the World Trade Organization. To document Cambodia's path towards a modern economy, the author draws on resources from the State Archives of Cambodia not previously referenced in scholarly texts. The book provides information that is academically important but is also relevant to investors, aid workers and development specialists seeking to understand the shift from a traditional to a modern market economy.
Inspired by David Chandler's groundbreaking work on Cambodian attempts to find order in the aftermath of turmoil, these essays explore Cambodian history using a rich variety of sources that cast light on Khmer perceptions of violence, wildness, and order, examining the "forest" and cultured space, and the fraught "edge" where they meet.
"Dance is a means to tell stories across cultures and in The Cambodian Dancer: Sophany's Gift of Hope, we discover how it can also be used as a way to overcome immense pain and loss. Daryn Reicherter's moving story and Christy Hale's beautiful illustrations introduce us to Sophany Bay and show us how central dance was to her life. When she was forced to leave Cambodia, dance became the means for her to heal and help others connect with the culture. This is an important book that reminds us all that no matter what happens, we need to live. We need to dance. --award-winning author, John Coy"
At the forested edge of Cambodia’s development frontier, the infrastructures of global development engulf the land and existing social practices like an incoming tide. Cambodia’s distinctive history of imperial surge and rupture makes it easier to see the remains of earlier tides, which are embedded in the physical landscape, and also floating about in the solidifying boundaries of religious, economic, and political classifications. Using stories from the hybrid population of settler-farmers, loggers, and soldiers, all cutting new social realities from the water and the land, this book illuminates the contradictions and continuities in what the author suggests is the final tide of empire.
Cambodia for Sale details a post-conflict society that socializes children into a world of private rather than public goods. Through an ethnography of one village, Cambodia for Sale argues that efforts to rebuild Cambodia after decades of conflict have resulted in various forms of everyday privatization.
