Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat

Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
Lindsay French
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, USA
ABSTRACT The recent explosion of theft in sculpture from Angkor era temples in
Cambodia raises questions about the circumstances that make such destructive acts
possible at these historically sacred KJimer sites. Thispaper looks at the commodification of and traffic in temple sculpture in relation to a particular way of classifying
and evaluating the temples. It considers different systems ofclasstfication and theories
of value that have converged on the temples at different moments in history, and the
politics behind the ascendance ofparticular value systems. It uses ArfunAppadurai's
concept of a 'regime of value'to illuminate the intersection of many different value
systems at the temples today, and to shed light on the contradictory mix ofconservation
and exploitation, scholarship and commerce, preservation and development, which
co-exist at these now-international heritage sites.
KEYWORDS Cambodia, antiquities, regimes of value, international art trade, thefi
T
here is no more potent symbol of Cambodian history and culture,
and no more significant national icon for Cambodians, than Angkor
Wat. The most spectacular ofthe ancient Khmer temples in the Angkor
region, Angkor Wat has enormous emotional and cultural significance for
contemporary Cambodians. It is both a monument to the past greatness of
the Khmer people, and a source of inspiration and hope in a highly uncertain
future. The Angkor temples as a group and Angkor Wat in particular have a
great collective economic importance for Cambodia as well, as the country's
primary tourist attraction.
But the significance and value of the Angkor temples extends well beyond
Cambodia's physical and cultural borders. They have been important sites
for the production ofknowledge, prestige, and academic authority in the context
of both colonial and post-colonial relations between Cambodia and France,
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
171
and in the wider field of neocolonial relationships of post-civil war reconstruction and development. Since the international economic embargo of the
1980s was lifted and a peace agreement was signed in 1991 (which ended
Cambodia's political isolation, as well as the 12-year civil war that followed
the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979)^ the temples have been adopted
by such international organizations as UNESCO, the World Heritage Organization, and the World Monuments Fund as artistic and cultural treasures of
world-wide significance. Indeed, Angkor era sculptures are represented in
prestigious museum collections around the world, and are found increasingly
in private collections as well. Because commercial value attaches to their cultural and artistic desirability, these antiquities have also come to represent a
dependable source of income for thieves in a country where nobody's income is secure. This is apparent in the explosion of theft and smuggling of
temple carvings out of Cambodia in the last ten years (see Chaumeau 1997;
Ciochon & James 1994; Duong 1993; ICOM 1997; Kaye & Main 1996).
Several aspects of this situation are striking. First is the sheer volume of
the theft, and the brazenness of the thieves. Virtually no temple has been left
unscathed. Conservation and preservationists working at the Angkor temples report new thefts every time they return to their sites, but even one-time
visitors see lopped off heads and chipped out statues at every temple they
visit. Remote temples such as Banteay Chhmar, located far from centers of
government control and close to the Thai border, have been virtually dismantled in recent years (Mydans 1999).
Second, the number of people involved in the illegal removal and sale of
temple carvings and sculpture is remarkable. There are the thieves themselves
(presumable Khmer), police or military protection to guard the transport of
stolen goods through military-controlled territory to the Thai border, a Thai
connection and Thai military protection on the other side of the border, a
dealer in Bangkok who can provide convincing documentation for the stones,
an initial buyer, and any number of intermediary dealers who sell eventually
to a private collector or public art museum. The number of local worlds the
stones pass through, and the discrepancy of the economies on either end of
the transaction is striking as well: the domestic economy of a local Khmer
villager hired to guard the temples (or steal from them) could hardly be more
different from the economy of the international antiquities trade.
Finally, the range of interests that converge on the Angkor temples today,
and the different ways these interest groups understand the temples' value, is
also remarkable. In addition to thieves there are pilgrims, tourists, scholars,
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LINDSAY FRENCH
conservators, collectors, and developers of all kinds; international protection
agencies, national government ministries, foreign universities and academics, and military units at all levels of responsibility; Cambodians, French, Japanese, Americans, Brits, Indians, Indonesians, Thais, and United Nations
officials. Some of these categories of people overlap, and some of their interests coincide. Others seem to be in direct conflict and competition with each
other, and fight for control of the resources the temples represent. Underlying this fight, I would suggest, is a struggle for control of the very definition
of the temples' significance and value.
Arjun Appadurai has written about the classification of things and the
movement of things both within and between different classificatory categories in the introduction to his edited volume The Social Life of Things (1986).
All societies have systems of classifications that group objects of similar characteristics together in categories. That is, things have different kinds of value
and significance, and circulate (or don't circulate) in different spheres of exchange. Commodities, for example, are things with a value that is definable
in economic terms; they circulate within the commodity sphere; their worth
can be measured against any other thing with economic value. Other kinds
of things - like heirlooms, or children, or sacred places, for example - are
typically not classified in this way. They have a different kind of value and,
under ordinary circumstances, they are not for sale.
Tilings can move between different classificatory categories however. It is
a central understanding in Appadurai's work that the classification of objects
is not static; that objects can move in and out of different categories of value
over the lifetime of their existence. Appadurai, focusing on this process in
relation to commodities, suggests that rather than thinking about commodities as certain kinds of things, it is more useful to think about them as things in
a certain kind of situation, in which exchangeability (be it past, present, or
future) is their most socially relevant feature (1986:13).
Thus one can speak of the commodity phase of a thing, its commodity
potential, and the commodity context within which a thing comes to be
understood to have exchange value (1986:13). 'Commodity context' refers
to the political and cultural fi^amework within which things are classified as
commodities and their exchangeability is established. Exchange requires some
shared standard of value, but much exchange occurs between people who
have very different criteria for evaluating the same objects, and a very shallow set of shared value standards. TTius the term 'regime of value,' which
refers to precisely that often shallow space of value coherence that allows for
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
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exchange to occur. As Appadurai points out, it is this shared space of value
coherence that 'accounts for the constant transcendence of cultural boundaries by the flow of commodities' (1986:15). It is what enables us to trade with
our enemies, and with people we understand almost not at all.
Underlying any system of classification is always a theory of value. Thus
struggles over control ofthe classification of something are always struggles
over what system of classification and theory of value will prevail. This is
where power enters into the equation. For it is in the struggle to impose a
particular system of classification, Appadurai suggests, that hierarchies of
value are established and the politics of classification and evaluation are revealed (1986:56-58).
This paper addresses the question of how the once-sacred carvings from
the Angkor temples have come to be reclassified as commodities on such a
wide scale in Cambodia, and how the concept of a 'regime of value' can help
to illuminate the struggle for control ofthe temples today. It looks at how
different regimes of value have formed around the temples at different periods in history, and how we might understand the ascendance of a particular
value system at particular moments when several have converged. And it looks
at the politics at work behind the ascendance of particular value systems. In
particular it aims to show why so many different interest groups have converged around the Angkor temples to create the current regime ofvalue, what
set of conditions has allowed thieves to act with such impunity in the temples in recent years, and why no single value system prevails in the region, or
in Cambodia as a whole.
The Angkor Era
Angkor Wat, when it was built, had a particular kind of value and significance that combined spiritual potency with the temporal power of its creator. The Angkor empire, established in the early ninth century, is well-known
for the sacred temple/monument complexes that glorified its kinp. The most
impressive ofthe Angkor structures were built as physical manifestations of
their creators' semi-divine status, and to demonstrate their power, both to
their subjects and their enemies.^ Constructed in honor of a particular Hindu
god - usually Siva or Vishnu - the temples associated the divine power of
their deity with the person who built it. In the hierarchical universe in which
these nagara states rose and fell, kings occupied a position somewhere between gods and humans. Their strength was an indication of their divinity,
their divinity an aspect of their power.^
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LINDSAY FRENCH
Angkor Wat, an early twelfth century temple, is a symbolic representation
ofthe cosmic universe; at the center of this universe was (it is assumed) a
monument to Vishnu, the avatar ofthe God-king who built it. The Angkor
temples are perfect examples of what Igor Kopytoff refers to as 'singular objects,' whose value inheres precisely in their one-of-a-kind particularity (1986) .To
twelfth century Cambodians, these temples were like nothing else in the world.
They were the king's domain; they partook of his 'highness'; as long as he remained in power they were as untouchable as he.'*
The Angkor empire reached its apogee late in the twelfth century under
Jayavarman VII (r.1181-1218) who built the great city of Angkor Thom and
the spectacular Bayon temple. At the height of his power the Angkor empire
extended fi'om Northeast Thailand down through the entire Mekong River
Delta into what is now southern Vietnam. But the strength ofthe empire began to decline with the death ofJayavarman VII; throughout the next century successive kings were forced to retreat in the face ofthe expanding kingdom of Ayuthaya. In the early fifteenth century, the Khmer king abandoned
Angkor, moving his capital south to avoid attack. The once potent temple/
monuments were sacked and pillaged by the Siamese. Meanwhile, Theravada
Buddhism had been introduced to Mainland Southeast Asia, and had spread
throughout the lowland populations. The importance of instantiating the
king's power through monumental architecture faded. Angkor Wat, originally built as a Hindu temple, was converted into a sacred Buddhist space and
maintained as an active site of religious pilgrimage, but the jungle grew over
many other structures. The ruins remained spiritually potent, but they had
lost their dynamic political significance.^
The Colonial Period
On an expedition into the jungles of northwest Cambodia in the late 1850s,
Henri Mouhot, a French geographer and naturalist, 'discovered' the Angkor
temples for Europeans. Although they had never been 'lost' to Cambodians, having become part of a collective mythico-historical consciousness
(Thompson 1997), Mouhot's journals, with their lyrical descriptions and
drawing, excited a romantic nineteenth-century European imagination. Here,
it seemed, was a genuine 'lost civilization,' mind-boggling in its strange magnificence. By the early 1860s, the French, already established in Annam and
Cochin China, had developed a strategic interest in Cambodia and Laos as
a route up the Mekong River to China. Tlie temples at Angkor seemed to
demonstrate to the colonial administration that Cambodia was once and
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
175
could again be a great nation; they provided a useful justification for the
westward expansion of their mission dvilatrice - that of restoring a fallen
civilization to its past grandeur (Dagens 1995:46-47). Cambodia became a
French protectorate in 1864, the same year Mouhot's journals were published.
Additional exploration ofthe Angkor region after 1864 confirmed Mouhot's
early impressions for the French. An extended colonial research expedition
from 1866-68 generated much wider European interest in the temples. Ernest
Doudart de Lagre and Louis Delaporte, two French navel officers on a scientific mission to explore the Mekong, spent a long detour in the Angkor region, locating and mapping many previously unknown structures. They were
astounded by the magnitude and splendor of the architecture they found.
Determined to introduce this remarkable civilization to the European public, Delaporte conceived a project to bring examples of Khmer temple carving and sculpture back to France. He wrote: 'I could not contemplate these
monuments of a long ignored art without experiencing the liveliest desire to
make them known in Europe and enrich our museums with a collection of
antiquities that they might assume their rightful place alongside the antiquities of Egypt and Assyria' (Jarrige i997:xix).
Delaporte returned twice to Cambodia to make plaster casts and transport original stone work from temples to display in French national museums; four more extensive collecting expeditions were undertaken by 1885.
The Angkor sculpture taken to France during this period was the foundation
of an extraordinary collection of Khmer temple art, now housed in the Musee
Guimet in Paris. Replicas of Angkor temples were also displayed at the Universal Expositions in Paris in 1867 and 1878; mixing fantasy with the trappings of scientific inquiry, they were caught up in the nineteenth century European compulsion to discover, collect, display, and master the exotic wonders
ofthe entire world.^
There is little mention in the colonial accounts of Cambodian reaction to
these activities. We do know that the Cambodian king became increasingly
powerless under French 'protection' however. Originally King Norodom (r.
1864-1904) had requested protection from the French government to save
his kingdomfi-omthe ag^essive encroachment of both the Vietnamese and
the Thai (although by the time the Protectorate was ratified, jurisdiction over
the Angkor region had already passed into ITiai hands). But protection turned
progressively into direct political control as the king was forced to cede more
and more authority to the French administration (Chandler 1983:139-147).
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LINDSAY FRENCH
By the end ofthe century Norodom's authority was almost completely eclipsed
by the French. Disempowered and shamed, the king withdrew to his palace,
increasingly out of touch with his own people.
In Cambodia the fortunes ofthe people are traditionally understood to be
reflected in the strength and vigor ofthe king. As Norodom's political power
diminished, so did his potency at the spiritual and cultural heart of his kingdom. He had lost the ability to make things happen, and more subtly, to establish the meaning of things and events. The fate ofthe Angkor temples reflects this fact. Norodom had lost touch with the potency associated with
the ancient temples when the Angkor region passed out of his hands. And
when Thailand ceded the provinces of Battambang and Siemriep back to
Cambodia in 1907, it was the French who took control ofthe temples.
Under the direct protection and control of the French, the value of the
Angkor temples came to include scholarship as well as collection: they became important sites for the production of academic knowledge and expertise. According to the current director of Musee Guimet, Jean-Frangois Jarrige, by the first decades of the twentieth century 'the time had long since
passed when an expedition could venture into the jungle ... and wrest elements of a lost civilization from its dark recesses' (Jarrige 1997 :xx). Administrative structures had been established in Cambodia; expeditions to the temples had to have a clear scientific purpose and were regulated by the colonial
authorities. The Ecole Frangaise d'Extreme Orient (EFEO) was founded in
Hanoi in 1898, and in 1907 the Indochinese Archaeological Expedition was
established and extended its activities into the Angkor region. Again quoting
Jarrige, 'the chief aim was to develop the Khmer artistic patrimony to its full
extent in situ, while not neglecting to complete the Paris collections, increasingly used for teaching purposes' (1997 :xxi).
EFEO was the scholarly and scientific arm ofthe colonial enterprise in
Indochina; it developed in stature and authority in the succeeding decades.
Illustrious academic careers were built upon its work, especially at the Angkor Conservation Service. Henri Marchal, Louis Finot, Henri Parmentier,
Georges Coedes, and Bernard-Phillippe Groslier were all products of EFEO,
which had established control over all scientific research done in the Angkor
region: archaeology, conservation, preservation, epigraphy. An incident in
1923 involving Andr€ Malraux illustrates the significance of its control.
Malraux, a student and collector of Asian art and an amateur archaeologist (also the future French Minister of Culture under Charles de Gaulle) had
conceived a keen interest in the sculpture at Banteay Srei and obtained perETHNOS, VOL. 64:2, 1999
Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
mission to conduct his own private exploration ofthe area in which this site
is located. At the time the small Banteay Srei temple, which had been described hy EFEO archaeologists, had not heen officially 'classified' as an archaeological site and was, therefore, not under the direct protection ofthe
colonial administration. Malraux had determined that the temple was technically 'abandoned property,' and, although explicitly warned hy EFEO that
anything his party discovered had to he left in place, he was nevertheless arrested attempting to transport a large has relief out ofthe country, and brought
to trial for trafficking in antiquities.
What is interesting about this trial is the crux of legal contention - who
had authority over the stones? EFEO, disturbed by the flagrant theft of temple carvings in the early 1920s when European tourism to the Angkor region
had begun to blossom, had pressed the colonial administration to clarify its
regulations concerning the protection of historical and archaeological sites.
The Governor General of Indochina did so, designating EFEO the protector of the sites and prohibiting anyone other than a member of EFEO
from removing artifacts from Indochina. Malraux,ftiriousthat EFEO should
have such a monopoly over the temples, argued that since Banteay Srei had
never been specifically 'classified' as a monument to be preserved, the stones
were not legal artifacts and there was no basis for his arrest. Malraux felt that,
as a free agent and scholar, he should have as much right to the stones as any
EFEO affiliate. There was little question among the Europeans that some
Frenchman should have the right to determine their disposition, however
(Norindr 1996:77-81). The temples were the foundation of a growing European scholarship on ancient Khmer civilization. In the context ofthe colonial regime in Indochina, it was the French who would decide how the temples should be classified and managed.^
Malraux's interest in the Banteay Srei carvings (now considered among
the finest examples of late Angkorean sculpture) partook of an art historical
approach that deliberately separated or 'setfi-ee'fragments of sculpture 'fi-om
their architectural setting and their God' so as to more easily compare them
with other examples of great artfi"omother times and places (Malraux, quoted
in Bergstein 1992:476). Malraux's characterization of sculpturalfi^agmentsas
'fortunate mutilations' favored the formal comparison of historically disparate works of art in search of universal meaning. It also reveals a modernist
attitude about the virtue of removing sculpture fi-om its original setting - a
process of'liberation' (Malraux's term) from the fetters of context, for greater
(or wider) aesthetic appreciation.
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LINDSAY FRENCH
This evaluative approach was not supported by EFEO, however. Under
EFEO's control the importance of context had emerged: the temple carvings could best be understood and were therefore most valuable to scholars
in situ. Emphasis had shifted from collecting to conserving, and scholarship
developed around an understanding ofthe significance of these architectural
remains in Cambodian history. The restoration ofthe temples to their original state became a major focus of EFEO archaeologists' activity.
In part because of this developing scholarship, and the wider interest it
excited in the temples, Khmer antiquities had acquired a commercial value
in Europe and theft had become an issue. The Malraux incident was only the
best publicized of many thefts of temple carvings in the first decades ofthe
century. Soon after, the Angkor Conservation Service built a depot in the
Siemriep town, close to the largest temples, where any movable stone carvings discovered on an archaeological site were deposited for safekeeping. In
some cases the removed sculptures were replaced by concrete replicas in the
temples themselves; in others, pediments were left bare. Thus the restoration work was tempered with a pragmatic understanding ofthe need to protect the temples from theft.
Meanwhile, in 1918, concerned that traditional arts in Cambodia would
disappear if no effort was made to preserve them, Georges Groslier established a School for Cambodian Arts in Phnom Penh, and a museum of culture as part of it.* Artifacts from the Angkor Conservation Depot, as well as
from other sites around the country, were brought to Phnom Penh to build
a collection of Cambodia's 'cultural patrimony.' Thereafter no object of'singular value' was to be exported to France, only pieces similar to those already held in the Phnom Penh collection. This collection forms the core of
the National Museum in Cambodia today. Thus when the catalog of a recent
international exhibition of Angkor era sculpture states that the aim ofthe exhibition was 'to reunite for the first time masterworks of two museums, the
National Museum in Phnom Penh and the Musee Guimet in Paris, whose
collections are for historical reasons complementary,' we can see the literal
truth in this statement: they represent, in effect, two overlapping stages of
the same curatorial effort (Jarrige i997:xvii).
EFEO's interest in Cambodia's 'cultural patrimony' refiected a nineteenth
century French concern to codify its own cultural patrimony in a period of
national self-definition. Other scholars have written about the French view
of Angkor's specifically national historical significance, and about the impact of this perspective on elite Cambodians, who were educated in French
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schools, and worked with French scholars.' French-educated Cambodians
brought together an older, indigenous sense ofthe cultural significance of
the temples with a more European sense of national identity and pride. To
the extent that this educated elite was responsible for producing a national
curriculum when a system of public education was established at the time of
independence in 1954, French perspectives were infused into public consciousness in Cambodia in a more general way as well.^"
Indigenous beliefs and practices persisted around the temples, Cambodian scholars pursued historical and cultural studies at the university in France,
and technical expertise was developed in conjunction with the ongoing, EFEOdirected conservation and preservation programs in the Angkor region. Thus
the hierarchy of values surrounding the temples was at the very least strongly
infiuenced by the French ideas about national identity before the Khmer Rouge
seized power in 1975.
The Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge revolution was meant to liberate Cambodia from the
political, economic, and cultural imperialism ofthe West. Since most Cambodians with a university degree had been educated in France or America,
and most who had held positions in the governing bureaucracy since independence had benefited from French or American assistance to the governments of Norodom Sihanouk (r. 1953-1970) and Lon Nol (r. 1970-1975), the
Khmer Rouge targeted these people for execution when they took control of
the country. The revolution explicitly rejected what it considered Western,
capitalist, and imperialist values held by the country's ruling elite, but in fact
anyone who had prospered under the previous regime was considered suspect. Buddhism in all manifestations was also rejected as a Marxist opiate
and a waste of productive manpower, monks were forced to disrobe or were
killed, and Buddhist temples were desecrated.
The Angkor temples, however, were not deliberately harmed. The goal of
the Khmer Rouge revolution was to build an independent, self-sufficient agrarian socialism based on native Khmer genius, and the Angkor empire represented the fullest flowering of that indigenous genius to the Khmer Rouge. It
was a period in history when Khmer power and ascendance were unassailable. The Angkor temples were seen as examples of a golden age of Khmer
political and cultural supremacy, and were put forward as symbols of highest
Cambodian achievement.^^
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LINDSAY FRENCH
Thus the significance of Angkor was recast in an aggressive nationalist
key, and the temples became models of IChmer dominance and power to which
all Cambodians could and should aspire. In practical terms this was to be
accomplished by working fourteen hours a day under armed surveillance and
never questioning the wisdom ofthe Khmer Rouge organization. This revolutionary program was imposed through force and terror from above, and
produced an entirely new regime of value. Categories and distinctions of all
kinds collapsed. Everyone was subject to the absolute authority ofthe Khmer
Rouge, and everything belonged to the Khmer Rouge organization. There
was no private property, no money, no organized system of exchange. There
was only work, which often produced nothing at all; rice, which was provided
in grossly inadequate amounts; and the Angkaa, or organization, which controlled everything. Food was the only thing of real value under the Khmer
Rouge, but it could not be bought. It could only be scavenged, stolen, or begged.^^
The obliteration of distinctions between people with different talents and
skills combined with the extreme paranoia and destructive brutality ofthe
Angkaa, doomed the Khmer Rouge revolution to ultimate failure. In early
1979 the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia and forced the Khmer Rouge
from power. The Vietnamese installed their own government in Phnom Penh
made up of Cambodian communists who had defected from the Khmer Rouge,
and old cadres who had taken refuge in Hanoi in the late 1950s when Norodom
Sihanouk first banned communism in Cambodia. These actions by the Vietnamese provoked an economic embargo of the new government by most
non-communist countries in the west; the socialist state that emerged was so
impoverished that people survived only through government corruption,
subsistence farming, and black market trading at the country's borders.
Angkor in the 1980s
What happened during this period to the Angkor temples? Stones began
to disappear. People discovered that temple carvings could be sold at the Thai
border, and Thai traders quickly realized what a good price Khmer sculpture
and fragments of sculpture brought in the Bangkok antiquities market. During
the early 1980s, trade at the border markets revealed in just what desperate
straits people were surviving in Cambodia. People sold Angkor antiquities
for whatever price they could get. Temple carvings, previously considered
too potent and sacred to touch, were stolen and sold for a bowl of rice - because people were starving, and had nothing else to sell (ICOM, pp. 19-20).
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
j 81
Appadurai writes about situations in which price becomes almost completely unyoked from the value of commodity, when a shared framework of
standards and criteria for exchange becomes 'so attenuated as to seem almost absent' (1986:14). He suggests that this happens in situations of extreme
hardship, when the logic ofthe exchange has little to do with the commensurability ofthe sacrifice. It also happens when transactions are made across
cultural boundaries. Both situations obtained in the early 1980s in Cambodia. Whereas previously antiquities had heen taken from Cambodia by Europeans who valued them as works of art (or recognized by their commodity
value because other Europeans did) but were treated with respect by local
people, now the stones had slipped from the category of sacred for many
Cambodians, who were desperate enough to market them as ordinary commodities as well.
Throughout the 1980s little was done at the national level to protect or
conserve the temples. Local people continued to interact with and care for
the temples they lived near, but the Phnom Penh government was busy fighting
a civil war; it had neither the resources nor the manpower to attend to them.
Nor did it have the expertise to set up an overseeing body - almost every
Cambodian associated with earlier work on the temples had been killed, or
else had fled the country when the Khmer Rouge were overthrown in 1979
(ICOM 1997:23). In 1986, a team of Indian archaeologists arrived to conduct
restoration work at Angkor Wat, an arrangement most noteworthy for its political implications vis-a-vis India's relationship with the Soviet Union, which
was providing most of Cambodia's external support during this period. Later,
in the 1990s, when the civil war was officially over, the economic embargo
lifted, and western scholars had returned to Cambodia, the Indians' work
was denigrated as unprofessional and harmful to temples. But western scholars had no access to the temples then, and their evaluations carried no weight
in the closed political and economic context ofthe 1980s in Cambodia.
In 1989, after a devastating hurricane ripped through the Angkor region,
the Phnom Penh government made a general appeal to western countries
and international organizations to help Cambodia set up a program 'to help
repair, restore, and preserve one ofthe world's wonders' (quoted in Garfield
1992:44). The World Monuments Fund (WMF) responded to this appeal,
and sent a team of experts to assess the situation. At the same time, there was
movement toward settlement ofthe ten-year civil war, and in 1991 a peace
agreement was signed by the four warring Cambodian factions. The international economic embargo was lifted and the UN arrived in force to oversee
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the national elections. Meanwhile, the WMF report had initiated a series of
meetings that resulted in a multi-national restoration and preservation assistance effort in the Angkor region, coordinated by UNESCO.
The International Regime
Thus began a new era in the status and significance ofthe temples — in
effect, another new regime of value. Various figures within the Cambodian
government (which has changed three times since 1989, although a core group
of political figures has remained in positions of power) have recognized the
critical need for protection ofthe entire Angkor region. Other people see in
the temples a magnet for much needed foreign aid. Both scholars and international organizations have recognized in this need an opportunity for high
profile assistance and access to remarkable research sites. The value ofthe
temples themselves has been recast in the language of international responsibility: they are no longer referred to as Cambodia's 'cultural patrimony' but
rather as 'the cultural heritage of all mankind,' the scholarly and educational
interchange of which 'increases the knowledge ofthe civilizations of Man,
enriches the cultural life of all peoples and inspires mutual respect and appreciation among nations' (quoted in Merryman 1994:3). This language comes
fi"om the preamble to UNESCO's 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of
Cultural Property; the Cambodian government played directly to these interests in its intemationai appeal of 1989, writing that '[We] welcome all kinds
of assistance, cooperation and suggestions aimed at preserving this common
cultural heritage for future generations' (quoted in Garfield 1992:43).
This situation is, in many ways, a perfect example of Appadurai's concept
of a regime of value: very different cultural contexts have converged on a
shared interest in the disposition of the temples. In fact, the temples now
participate in several rather different systems of value. Tbe temples themselves retain spiritual power and meaning for many, perhaps most Cambodians. Their significance combines these meanings with the sense of cultural
patrimony and pride promoted by French scholarship and national, even racial,
chauvinism, asserted most vociferously (but not exclusively) by the Khmer
Rouge. They excite the intellectual and aesthetic interest of scholars from all
over the world who have never had access to them before, as well as philanthropists thrilled to be associated with such spectacular preservation projects.
Collectively the temples also provide Cambodians with an extremely important source of revenue. Tourism is estimated to have generated one third
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
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of Cambodia's capital inflow in 1996, and the Angkor temples are the country's primary - and since the July 1997 coup, possibly the only genuine tourist attraction (Birsel 1997; Pape 1997). Some developers see the value of
the temples mainly in terms of income to be generated through tourist hotels, restaurants, guided tours and entertainment extravaganzas. Others regard the temples as a form of cultural capital that must be protected from
despoliation if they are to continue to generate revenue. The interests of this
second group dovetail with the concerns of UNESCO and other international organizations, which are committed not just to protecting and preserving the temples themselves, but to developing the expertise and commitment
among Cambodians to support an ongoing program of preservation (Ciochon & James 1994:47). Needless to say, the monetary value ofthe temples
as a tourist attraction depends upon their being maintained and protected.
As the Secretariat ofthe International Committee for the Safeguarding of
Angkor, established in 1992 and comprised of representatives from thirtysix governmental and non-governmental organizations, UNESCO has been
actively involved in helping to coordinate the protection and management
ofthe Angkor region. The International Committee must work through the
government of Cambodia, however, and the government itself has changed
three times since 1992. This has made management difficult. In an effort to
provide stability, continuity, and direction to the Cambodian government's
involvement in the Angkor region, the Authority for the Protection and
Management of Angkor and the Region of Siemriep, or APSARA, was created in 1995 by royal decree. APSARA is the Cambodian government authority charged with managing both preservation and development in the Angkor region, within the government as well as in conjunction with international organizations.^^
In the past UNESCO had complained about a lack of centralized authority and control over conservation efforts within the government and no one
to hold conservators responsible for poor or ill-advised practices (Ciochon
& James 1994:48).** In fact, APSARA now fulfills that controlling function
within the government, and works hard to manage the processes of preservation and responsible development in a way that will bring greatest benefit to
Cambodians as a whole. But within the government itself there are people
with very different agendas. Many government officials regard their positions
as, among other things, valuable income-generating opportunities, and are
happy to find ways to facilitate developers and even foreign scholars if some
benefit will accrue to them (Draper 1996; de la Batut 1997). APSARA's abilETHNOS, VOL. 64:2, I 9 9 9
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LINDSAY FRENCH
ity to control this kind of individual deal-making depends largely on the status and power ofthe government officials involved, and its own standing within
the existing political configuration - something that, given the instability of
the Cambodian government, is never secure.
The International Trade in Antiquities
Another, more sinister, system ofvalue has developed around the commodification of temple sculpture, however. Black market trading networks established in the early 1980s to sell temple carvings in Thailand have developed into an extensive intemationai commerce in stolen antiquities. It is now
possible to look through albums of photographs in Bangkok, pick out a piece
still in place in a temple in Cambodia, and have it delivered to Thailand within a couple of weeks (Ciochon & James 1994:49). This business is highly illegal, but so lucrative as to receive the protection of the national armies on
both sides ofthe border.*^ The authentication of antiquities is professional
enough (or the checking of provenance lax enough) that they end up in collections as prestigious as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (ICOM
1997:11).^^
In fact, growing interest in Angkor antiquities (generated in part by restored access to and renewed scholarship around the temples) has created a
new demand for these objects among curators and collectors, but much less
awareness about how the objects get to them.^'' This new demand, combined
with the continued failure of many curators and collectors to insist upon clear
provenance records, creates opportunities for thieving and smuggling networks to flourish that would not otherwise exist. Without a buyer able and
willing to pay enough for a piece of sculpture to support the many links in
their smuggling chains, professional traffickers would be out of business. But
there seems to be little awareness on the part of antiquities collectors ofthe
part they play in this process.^*
One might imagine that better protection ofthe temples themselves would
alleviate the problem of theft. But the fact ofthe matter is, the Angkor temples are extremely difficult to guard. Figures for the number of ancient temples in Cambodia range from 500 to 1,000 (not all, of course, ofthe size and
importance of Angkor Wat). Many are in remote areas, and there is little incentive for a guard to risk his life protecting a temple from determined thieves,
particularly if he is offered a bribe to look the other way. TTie discrepancy
between the intemationai economy ofthe Asian antiquities market and the
domestic economy of a Cambodian temple guard is huge, and most temple
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
18 r
guards in Cambodia today cannot afford to turn down a decent bribe. A heist
of several tons of temple carvings intercepted at a police checkpoint in Cambodia in 1997 was found hidden in a Royal Cambodian Army truck transported by seventeen heavily armed govemment soldiers, includingfivemembers
ofthe personal body guard ofthe commander ofthe military region in which
the temple was located (Chaumeau 1997). When professional traffickers have
the ability to buy this kind of protection, a temple guard does not provide
much of an obstacle.
Ultimately, it is the Cambodian government which has both the responsibility and the authority to oversee the disposition ofthe temples today. But
the Cambodian government is an unstable entity. While APSARA has tried
to remain above the partisan contests within the government, and has worked
extremely hard to join the goals of protection and responsible development
in the region, the success of its work depends upon the cooperation it receives from government ministries, and support for its work at the local level.
While the govemment as a whole benefits from and claims to support the
goals ofthe protectionists, individualfigureswithin the government have not
always been inclined to push for policies that APSARA has promoted. Nor
have the highest level political and military leaders always shown the inclination (or, perhaps, the ability) to crack down on theft from the temples in a
serious way.
In part this is because national leaders maintain loyalty in the provinces
by leaving provincial affairs to provincial officials, especially when the military is involved. In part because the theft of Cambodian temple art had become part of a sophisticated network of international art theft and art dealership, it is a much larger problem than Cambodia can address on its own. But
in a more general way, over decades of war and instability, grinding poverty,
and repeated betrayal, everything has come to be commoditized in Cambodia, because at some point everything has had to be. Nothing is unthinkable
as an object of exchange, not heirlooms, not children, and not sacred places;*'
The fact that the protectionist regime and the regime of theft seem to contradict each other is not particularly significant. Many things are contradictory in Cambodia, and both regimes benefit powerful interest groups in a
variety of ways.
So these apparently contradictory systems of value continue to coexist in
the Angkor region. Neither one is in clear ascendance. In recent years antiquities thefts seemed to have been diminishing, due in part to the Cultural Heritage Police, established in 1994 through collaboration between UNESCO,
ETHNOS, VOL. 64:2, I 9 9 9
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LINDSAY FRENCH
the Ministry of the Interior, and a special unit of French police. However,
since the coup in Cambodia in July 1997, the withdrawal of International
Monetary Fund support in October of that year (a direct consequence ofthe
Cambodian government's failure to crack down on internal corruption; see
Neiss 1997:16) and the long period of political uncertainty following the July
1998 national elections, the Cambodian economy has taken a nose-dive and
tourism has dropped to less than one-tenth of pre-coup figures (Birsel 1997).
In this context of increasing economic desperation, a new wave of particularly
brazen looting has occurred in the protected area at the heart ofthe Angkor
region (McDowell 1997).
Conclusion
What does all of this suggest about the hierarchies of value surrounding
the Angkor temples today? First, that multiple systems of value may make
claims on the temples, but no single system prevails; and second, that this
convergence of competing value systems itself constitutes a 'regime of value,'
which is shaped by the politics of power in Cambodia in general, but is part
of a much hroader political economy of value not limited to local categories of
'sacred objects' or 'art' or even 'commerce' in any ordinary sense. This paper
illustrates how deeply these systems of value are embedded in the structure
of political and economic relations in Cambodia, and in Cambodia's position in the world today.
Theft from the Angkor temples has existed in all eras of Cambodian history, since the pillaging of rival rulers' monuments in the thirteenth century
to the international networks of thieves and smugglers at work in the region
today.^*' But the significance of theft has varied in different eras when different regimes of value have prevailed. The current 'regime of theft' may seem
to be in direct conflict with the 'protectionist regime' described above, but it
is supported by strong interest groups, including western art collectors who
are not overly concerned with the provenance of their collections, and high
ranking military figures both in Thailand and Cambodia who profit richly
from the trade. The very tenuousness ofthe Cambodian economy supports
the traffic, because it is so difficult to make an honest living in Cambodia
today. The Angkor temples continue to constitute value in any system of evaluation, and everyone wants a piece of them in one way or another, in this
country where so much of enduring value has been destroyed, and so little of
commercial value can be found.
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
187
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Mary Bergstein, Penny Edwards, and Ashley Thompson for extremely
helpful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. However, unless
otherwise noted, they cannot be held responsible for the ideas presented here.
Notes
1. Cambodia's recent history has included five years of civil war following a coup
d'etat in 1970, four years of starvation and slave labor under the Khmer Rouge,
an economic embargo imposed by much ofthe Western world after the Vietnamese
army overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and twelve more years of civil war as
various Cambodian political factions fought to depose the Vietnamese-installed
govemment in Phnom Penh. The 1991 peace agreement included provisions for
U.N.-monitored national elections in 1993; the coalition government that resulted
from this election was compromised by another coup in 1997. A second and
seriously flawed national election was beld in August 1998, the results of which,
while accepted by the international community, were rejected by much of the
Cambodian population. As of this writing, almost a year later, a national govemment
has only just been formed.
2. Some ofthe Angkor temples were built by lesser members ofthe royal families.
However, these did not compete in size and magnificence with the structures
built by kings.
3. Many people have written about the convergence of political, economic, and
spiritual power which the Angkor temples manifested. See, for example, HeineGeldem 1956, Coedes 1968, and Tambiah 1976.
4. With the decline in power of individual kings the structures associated with
them lost some of their political potency. Thus, throughout the Angkor era (the
ninth to the fifteenth century) the great temple/monuments were pillaged, destroyed, reoccupied, revalorised, and modified for new purposes in the ongoing
contest for political ascendancy. It is possible to see that the underlying spiritual
potency of these sites was not diminished, but actually augmented by eacb successive ruler (see note 5). But if we accept that the political power ofthe nagara
state was organized around its ability to inspire and maintain the loyalty of a
dedicated following, we have to assume that tbe desecration of temples during
tbe king's reign was unthinkable, unless one sought to challenge the authority
and power ofthe king himself.
5. See In the Shadow of Angkor Wat, a film made by Barbara Spitzer and Pierre
Oscar Levy, for a good description of the accretion of sacred meanings in this
and other Angkor era temples. TTiere are differences of opinion about how important
the Angkor temples remained as political symbols when the capital moved south.
See Chandler 1983a, chapter 5, and Thompson 1997.
6. J. Clifford's paper 'On Collecting Art and Culture' in The Predicament of Culture
(1988) wonderifiiUy evokes the collecting spirit in both art history and anthropology, two new scholarly disciplines established in the second half ofthe 19th century.
7. For a rare view of how one Cambodian regarded the colonial management of
the temples, see Edwards 1999, chapter 5. Edwards tells ofthe Khmer scholar
and poet Oknya Suttantaprija In (1859-1924) who accompanied both Khmer
and French officials to a ceremony at Angkor Wat to celebrate Thailand's retroETHNOS, VOL. 64:2, 1999
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LINDSAY FRENCH
cession of Battambang and Siemriep in 1909. He writes that he was 'overcome
with pity' for his fellow Khmers when he watched them laboring as coolies for
the French in the Angkor temples, dismayed by the sanitizing restoration work,
and horrified by the French archaeologists' destructive removal ofBuddhist additions
to the (originally Hindu) temples.
8. ficole des Arts Cambodgiens was established to teach the ancient arts of sculpture
and bas relief Groslier justified this effort with the argument that 'tourists needed
to be able to buy souvenirs that were neither stolen nor mass-produced rubbish'
(Dagens 1995:96). Today the school, which still actively instructs students in traditional Khmer arts and archaeology, is ringed with small shops selling carvings,
paintings and other souvenirs for tourists.
9. For an extended discussion ofthe goals and methods of French colonization in
Cambodia, see Edwards 1999.
10. For a discussion ofthe impact of French ideas on the governing elite under Sihanouk and Lon Nol, see Ponchaud 1989.
11. For a discussion of Khmer Rouge perceptions of Angkor, see Chandler 1983b.
12. For a very good description ofthe obliteration of all previous structures of classification and value under the Khmer Rouge, see Ngor 1987.
13. For a very good summary ofthe history ofthe Angkor region, a history of theft
and protection concems, national and international laws regarding protection,
international teams working with the region, and the structures and goals of
APSARA itself, see the APSARA publication Angkor. A Manual for Past, Present,
and Future.
14. For example, Richard Englehardt, the former director of UNESCO's office in
Phnom Penh, has been critical ofthe way many archaeologists and conservators
have sought permission to establish their own projects in Cambodia. 'What people
have been doing up until now, basically, is shopping around to find someone
who will say yes to requests to work on the monuments. They ask [Prime Minister] Hun Sen, and if he won't say yes, they ask the Ministry of Culture, and if the
Ministry of Culture won't say yes, they ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
if they don't say yes, then they go to the province level. Eventually, someone
will say yes' (quoted in Ciochon & James 1994:48).
15. T^e involvement of both Thai and Cambodian military in illegal border trade is
widely acknowledged if difficult to document, although fairly good documentation
exists in relation to the timber business. See Global Witness briefing documents,
1996 and 1997. My own research on illegal border trade at the Thai-Cambodian
border indicates that at least since the border came under martial law in 1979,
various branches ofthe Thai military have benefitedfi'omif not directly controlled
most ofthe illegal trade that crosses the Thai-Cambodian border. See French n.d.
16. In 1993, in an effort to alert curators and collectors to the huge number of objects
stolenfi'omAngkor temples now circulating on the antiquities market, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) published a booklet entitled One Hundred
Missing Objects: Looting in Angkor. Tliis booklet contained photographs and descriptions of some ofthe more noteworthy ofthe recently stolen pieces. One of
these pieces was identified in the collection ofthe Metropolitan Museum of Art
in 1994. Museum curators contacted the ICOM and Cambodian authorities, who
made a formal request for its return. TTie Museum agreed to return the piece in
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Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat
17.
18.
19.
20.
18 o
compliance with ICOM's Code of Professional Ethics. These transactions are
described in the second edition oi One Hundred Missing Objects; see ICOM 1997:11.
See, for example, Holland Carter's review ofthe now-annual gathering of Asian
art dealers in New York City entitled 'Dizzying Realm of Asian Art.' Published in
the Weekend section of The New York Times, 3/26/99, it is positively giddy about
the 'values' to be had in this new area of collecting. There is no mention ofthe
importance of learning about the provenance and history of objects one might
be interested in purchasing.
For a summary of existing regulations concerning the importation of antiquities
in the U.S. and current museum practice around the verification and purchase
of antiquities, see Dobrzynski 1999.
See, for example. Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children in Cambodia,
Physicians for Human Rights, 1997.
I am gratefijl to Ashley Thompson for pointing this out to me.
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