ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how former Khmer Rouge (KR) leaders and the victims of the Khmer Rouge’s violence maintained functional coexistence between their groups at the local community level in post–Khmer Rouge Cambodia (1979–1993). The analysis focuses on the practices that community members adopted when cohabitating with former KR cadres and the social implications of preserving coexistence. These practices are social shunning, avoidance, subtle gestures to show tolerance, and indirect forms of social inclusion, which largely reflect the social and cultural contexts in which community members are situated. An analysis of these practices and contexts reveals that the maintenance of functional coexistence can positively contribute to not only stability and security in their lives but also their social reconciliation. This analysis also reveals the role of functional coexistence in fostering human interactions through which community members could learn about complex and multi-dimensional histories and identities of individual Khmer Rouge leaders. The chapter elaborates on the way in which functional coexistence at the local level demonstrates elastic inter-group interactions as well as on the agency of community actors within the process.
