ABSTRACT
Many scholarly works have claimed that Khmer society was organized along matrilineal principles, sometimes conflated with the notion that Cambodia was matriarchal in some distant past time. This article reviews the history of conceptualizations of Khmer kinship and argues that such notions were the products of a particular academic paradigm and specific anthropological models of human evolution. It situates these notions within two key debates in the study of Khmer history: arguments over the genealogical records of priestly families and discussions focusing on the lineages of Khmer kings. The available information on Khmer kinship is used to demonstrate that the patterns evident in Khmer kinship terminology and social relations do not support the matrilineal designation. Further, anthropologists now question making such categorizations and prefer, rather, to talk about kinship systems as flexible and changing over time. The article also addresses the issue of women and power and lays aside the notion of Khmer matriarchy.
