ABSTRACT
This chapter examines continuities and discontinuities in local-level social organization and culture through a comparison of village culture in the "old society" prior to 1975, the reformulations of local life attempted in Democratic Kampuchea (DK), and the situation in the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). With the dissolution of the DK communes, another major development in the People's Republic of Kampuchea was the reconstitution of the family as a social unit. The People's Republic of Kampuchea has not only permitted but actively supported private household production, called "the family economy," as a necessary supplement to communal organization. In Democratic Kampuchea, however, various measures, new forms of organization, and revolutionary ideology served to weaken greatly the family and, by extension, broader kinship bonds. The old system of stratification was replaced, however, by new social distinctions that often affected an individual's placement and treatment in the new order.
