ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, Cambodian forests have interacted in various ways with the sociopolitical transition process. Incorporated in the extension of overseas Chinese trading networks and French colonial development in Indochina between the late nineteenth century and the 1950s, the large-scale commercial exploitation of forests had significant sociopolitical meaning for the Cambodian society. “Muddying the waters” of the transition in Cambodia during the 1990s offered to many the chance of “catching” new economic and political opportunities. Commercial logging reinforced a social class governed by values that did not fit the traditional cultural model of Cambodian society, e.g., status based on capital accumulation. Authorizing or banning log exports represented the chief regulatory instrument in the hands of the Cambodian governments and a central item of the “good governance” agenda for the international community. By the mid-1990s, the ongoing war, widespread corruption, and forest plunder motivated donors to impose stricter conditionality upon the Cambodian government.
