Khmer

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The Khmer are the numerically and politically dominant ethnic group of Cambodia. They make up 90 percent of Cambodia's 12 million inhabitants, approximately 10.8 million people. Khmer also live in northeast Thailand, southern Laos, and southern Vietnam as minority groups. Khmer is also the name of the language this group speaks, a member of the Mon-Khmer group of the Austroasiatic ethnolinguistic family. The earliest-known inscription in the Khmer language is dated 612 CE. However, the Khmer did not begin to be unified as a people until the reign of the Angkorian king Jayavarman II (770–850, reigned 802–850).

Modern Khmer live much as their ancestors did. The majority of Khmer society is agrarian (85 percent), focusing on paddy rice cultivation. Prior to the twentieth century, each household practiced subsistence agriculture, using simple technology to farm. The Khmer traditionally established their villages near a water source, natural or man-made. Even today, the majority of the population inhabits one-third of Cambodia's arable land, primarily around the Tonle Sap (Great Lake), extending east and south to the Mekong River. The proximity to water also makes fish a staple of the Khmer diet.

The construction of a rural Khmer house has not changed over centuries. Khmer in rural areas continue to live in wood houses that are elevated off the ground for better air circulation and protection from wild animals and dangerous spirits.

Khmer society is hierarchical, traditionally divided into royalty, nobility and officials, and the peasantry. These classes continue to dominate contemporary society. Royalty was viewed as having semidivine status; officials taxed and administered the majority of society; and peasants and landless laborers cultivated the land. Merchants were traditionally excluded from this system, since local traders were either women, whose social status was defined by gender, or of a different ethnicity, such as Chinese. Brahman priests and Buddhist monks were associated with royalty and occupied a prestigious category outside society's hierarchy. Slaves were used during Angkorian times (802–1431) to work on the king's and the nobility's estates, but slaves were usually not of Khmer descent.

Hierarchical relationships continue to define day-to-day relationships among individuals. Elders are authority figures, and their status depends not only on age but sex, wealth, political position, occupation, and religious piety. Social order is dependent on respecting elders and maintaining one's position in society; those positions are supported by Buddhist concepts of karma and merit. Disorder is viewed as dangerous and is exemplified by the wild jungles lurking on the edge of a village. Oral codes of conduct (chbap), which are based on Buddhist teachings, help maintain the moral fiber of society.

In Khmer society, many roles are determined by gender. In rural areas men are responsible for plowing the fields, caring for large animals such as water buffalo, building houses, and other work with wood, while women plant the rice fields, care for smaller livestock, care for children, weave cloth, and cook meals. Men are seen as superior to women; a husband always assumes the position of elder in relation to his wife. Men are legally heads of households and responsible for providing money for the family, but women possess a great deal of authority in managing the household and are in control of monetary matters. Outside the home, women are traders at the market and participate in agricultural work, but men do the heavy tasks.

Kinship is traced through both the mother and father, and sons and daughters possess equal inheritance rights. The society is matrifocal (focused on the bride's family) in that the groom's family must pay a bride-price to the bride's family before the marriage occurs, newlyweds reside near the bride's parents, and the groom usually works for the father-in-law. Marriages are also arranged by parents and sometimes with the assistance of a matchmaker, demonstrating the importance of the elder in decision-making processes.

The formal unit of social organization among the Khmer is the nuclear family, and there is little cohesion beyond the family unit. A weaker sense of kinship extends to grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and first cousins. However, neighbors and relatives provide a network of cooperation if help for the construction of a house is required, for example. A patron/client relationship also exists in Khmer society to provide greater support. A patron provides monetary loans and physical protection, and in exchange the client will be politically loyal to the patron and give physical labor as requested by the patron.

Eighty-five percent of the population live in rural communities or villages. A village is defined by the presence of a Buddhist temple and a village headman, who is employed by the government. The neak ta cult of guardian spirits also loosely unites the village members, but solidarity among the community is weak.

The Khmer are Theravada Buddhists but practice a popularized form of Buddhism infused with their animist beliefs. Buddhist concepts of karma and merit heavily influence daily life, and appeasement of the multitude of spirits in the Khmer belief system is considered very important. Neak ta are ancestral or guardian spirits that the Khmer pay homage to in their homes, villages, and the surrounding forests.

Khmer daily life was primarily unaffected by external forces until the mid-nineteenth century, when Cambodia became a French colony. The French introduced cash crops such as rubber and changes to land ownership. Many rural Khmer lost land rights and were no longer self-sufficient, since they had to devote a portion of their land and energy to raising cash crops. World War II and the two Indochina wars disrupted Khmer life, and U.S. bombing of Cambodia in the early 1970s devastated the lives of many people. Cambodia began to experience food shortages.

The Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979) caused the most severe changes. The regime intended to erase all Khmer traditional institutions, such as family, religion, and hierarchical relationships. The regime was responsible for the death of 2 million people (estimates vary widely), primarily through execution and starvation. It destroyed temples and animist shrines, separated families, and emptied urban areas. The years following the removal of the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979 have returned some stability to the Khmer, but military unrest persisted into the late 1990s, despite the fact that elections were held in 1993.

More than 800,000 people fled to Thailand and Vietnam in the 1970s and early 1980s. Some of the refugees then resettled in countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, and France. The displaced Khmer have sustained their cultural traditions in their new countries. Khmer classical dance and musical performances are common, as the younger generations are learning these classical arts. Heritage language classes also teach the generations born outside of Cambodia the native language of their parents and grandparents. Khmer community networks exist globally, and the Internet assists in the maintenance of strong links among the Khmer diaspora.

Chandler, David P. (2000) A History of Cambodia. 3rd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Ebihara, Mary M., Carol A. Mortland, and Judy Ledgerwood, eds. (1994) Cambodian Culture since 1975: Homeland and Exile. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Ledgerwood, Judy. (1995) "Khmer Kinship: The Matriliny/Matriarchy Myth." Journal of Anthropological Research 51, 3: 247–261.

Mabbett, Ian, and David Chandler. (1995) The Khmers. Cambridge, U.K.: Blackwell.

Ovesen, Jan, Ing-Britt Trankel, and Joakim Ojendal. (1996) When Every Household Is an Island: Social Organization and Power Structures in Rural Cambodia. Uppsala Reports in Cultural Anthropology, no. 15. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University.

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