ABSTRACT

The major social and political transitions occurring in the early 1990s finally provided Cambodians with the realizable goals of peace and economic stability. Such transitions would also mean the Angkor, Siem Reap region could re-enter the global stage, both as a World Heritage Site and as an exciting destination for the international tourism industry. This chapter begins to consider this new era by examining how the region was conceived, valued and managed as a heritage landscape. It opens with an examination of the policies adopted to politically and legally protect the site from its immediate environment, and the implications such a process of isolation would bring. This is followed by a critical analysis of a cultural heritage framework overwhelmingly dominated by temple conservation. Subsumed within a scientistic language of world heritage, Angkor was once again conceived as a series of static, even dead, set of ‘ancient’monuments. In the section entitled ‘Representations of space: neglecting the living’ it is argued that within this framework little attention is given to understanding the landscape in anthropological or socio-historical terms, a situation which de-humanizes both history and landscape, and neglects various areas requiring urgent attention such as urban planning and the socio-economic development of the local population. Finally, under the heading ‘Cultures of neo-colonialism?’ the chapter reflects upon the degree to which a world heritage framework acts as a form of neo-colonialism through its re-imposition of Eurocentric understandings of place, culture, and history.