Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat

Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat Lindsay French Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, USA ABSTRACT The recent explosion of theft in sculpture from Angkor era temples in Cambodia raises questions about the circumstances that make such destructive acts possible at these historically sacred KJimer sites. This paper looks at the commodifica- tion of and traffic in temple sculpture in relation to a particular way of classifying and evaluating the temples. It considers different systems ofclasstfication and theories of value that have converged on the temples at different moments in history, and the politics behind the ascendance ofparticular value systems. It uses ArfunAppadurai's concept of a 'regime of value'to illuminate the intersection of many different value systems at the temples today, and to shed light on the contradictory mix ofconservation and exploitation, scholarship and commerce, preservation and development, which co-exist at these now-international heritage sites. KEYWORDS Cambodia, antiquities, regimes of value, international art trade, thefi here is no more potent symbol of Cambodian history and culture, and no more significant national icon for Cambodians, than Angkor T Wat. The most spectacular of the ancient Khmer temples in the Angkor region, Angkor Wat has enormous emotional and cultural significance for contemporary Cambodians. It is both a monument to the past greatness of the Khmer people, and a source of inspiration and hope in a highly uncertain future. The Angkor temples as a group and Angkor Wat in particular have a great collective economic importance for Cambodia as well, as the country's primary tourist attraction. But the significance and value of the Angkor temples extends well beyond Cambodia's physical and cultural borders. They have been important sites for the production ofknowledge, prestige, and academic authority in the context of both colonial and post-colonial relations between Cambodia and France, ETHNOS, VOL. 64:2, 1999 © Routledge, Taylor & Francis Ltd, on licence from the National Museum of Ethnography, pp, 170-191 Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat 171 and in the wider field of neocolonial relationships of post-civil war recon- struction and development. Since the international economic embargo of the 1980s was lifted and a peace agreement was signed in 1991 (which ended Cambodia's political isolation, as well as the 12-year civil war that followed the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979)^ the temples have been adopted by such international organizations as UNESCO, the World Heritage Orga- nization, and the World Monuments Fund as artistic and cultural treasures of world-wide significance. Indeed, Angkor era sculptures are represented in prestigious museum collections around the world, and are found increasingly in private collections as well. Because commercial value attaches to their cultural and artistic desirability, these antiquities have also come to represent a dependable source of income for thieves in a country where nobody's income is secure. This is apparent in the explosion of theft and smuggling of temple carvings out of Cambodia in the last ten years (see Chaumeau 1997; Ciochon & James 1994; Duong 1993; ICOM 1997; Kaye & Main 1996). Several aspects of this situation are striking. First is the sheer volume of the theft, and the brazenness of the thieves. Virtually no temple has been left unscathed. Conservation and preservationists working at the Angkor temples report new thefts every time they return to their sites, but even one-time visitors see lopped off heads and chipped out statues at every temple they visit. Remote temples such as Banteay Chhmar, located far from centers of government control and close to the Thai border, have been virtually dis- mantled in recent years (Mydans 1999). Second, the number of people involved in the illegal removal and sale of temple carvings and sculpture is remarkable. There are the thieves themselves (presumable Khmer), police or military protection to guard the transport of stolen goods through military-controlled territory to the Thai border, a Thai connection and Thai military protection on the other side of the border, a dealer in Bangkok who can provide convincing documentation for the stones, an initial buyer, and any number of intermediary dealers who sell eventually to a private collector or public art museum. The number of local worlds the stones pass through, and the discrepancy of the economies on either end of the transaction is striking as well: the domestic economy of a local Khmer villager hired to guard the temples (or steal from them) could hardly be more different from the economy of the international antiquities trade. Finally, the range of interests that converge on the Angkor temples today, and the different ways these interest groups understand the temples' value, is also remarkable. In addition to thieves there are pilgrims, tourists, scholars, ETHNOS, VOL. 64:2, 1999 172 LINDSAY FRENCH conservators, collectors, and developers of all kinds; international protection agencies, national government ministries, foreign universities and academ- ics, and military units at all levels of responsibility; Cambodians, French, Ja- panese, Americans, Brits, Indians, Indonesians, Thais, and United Nations officials. Some of these categories of people overlap, and some of their interests coincide. Others seem to be in direct conflict and competition with each other, and fight for control of the resources the temples represent. Under- lying this fight, I would suggest, is a struggle for control of the very definition of the temples' significance and value. Arjun Appadurai has written about the classification of things and the movement of things both within and between different classificatory categories in the introduction to his edited volume The Social Life of Things (1986). All societies have systems of classifications that group objects of similar char- acteristics together in categories. That is, things have different kinds of value and significance, and circulate (or don't circulate) in different spheres of exchange. Commodities, for example, are things with a value that is definable in economic terms; they circulate within the commodity sphere; their worth can be measured against any other thing with economic value. Other kinds of things - like heirlooms, or children, or sacred places, for example - are typically not classified in this way. They have a different kind of value and, under ordinary circumstances, they are not for sale. Tilings can move between different classificatory categories however. It is a central understanding in Appadurai's work that the classification of objects is not static; that objects can move in and out of different categories of value over the lifetime of their existence. Appadurai, focusing on this process in relation to commodities, suggests that rather than thinking about commodities as certain kinds of things, it is more useful to think about them as things in a certain kind of situation, in which exchangeability (be it past, present, or future) is their most socially relevant feature (1986:13). Thus one can speak of the commodity phase of a thing, its commodity potential, and the commodity context within which a thing comes to be understood to have exchange value (1986:13). 'Commodity context' refers to the political and cultural fi^amework within which things are classified as commodities and their exchangeability is established. Exchange requires some shared standard of value, but much exchange occurs between people who have very different criteria for evaluating the same objects, and a very shallow set of shared value standards. TTius the term 'regime of value,' which refers to precisely that often shallow space of value coherence that allows for ETHNOS, VOL. 64:2, I999 Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat j ^ o exchange to occur. As Appadurai points out, it is this shared space of value coherence that 'accounts for the constant transcendence of cultural bounda- ries by the flow of commodities' (1986:15). It is what enables us to trade with our enemies, and with people we understand almost not at all. Underlying any system of classification is always a theory of value. Thus struggles over control ofthe classification of something are always struggles over what system of classification and theory of value will prevail. This is where power enters into the equation. For it is in the struggle to impose a particular system of classification, Appadurai suggests, that hierarchies of value are established and the politics of classification and evaluation are re- vealed (1986:56-58). This paper addresses the question of how the once-sacred carvings from the Angkor temples have come to be reclassified as commodities on such a wide scale in Cambodia, and how the concept of a 'regime of value' can help to illuminate the struggle for control ofthe temples today. It looks at how different regimes of value have formed around the temples at different peri- ods in history, and how we might understand the ascendance of a particular value system at particular moments when several have converged. And it looks at the politics at work behind the ascendance of particular value systems. In particular it aims to show why so many different interest groups have converged around the Angkor temples to create the current regime of value, what set of conditions has allowed thieves to act with such impunity in the temples in recent years, and why no single value system prevails in the region, or in Cambodia as a whole. The Angkor Era Angkor Wat, when it was built, had a particular kind of value and significance that combined spiritual potency with the temporal power of its crea- tor. The Angkor empire, established in the early ninth century, is well-known for the sacred temple/monument complexes that glorified its kinp. The most impressive ofthe Angkor structures were built as physical manifestations of their creators' semi-divine status, and to demonstrate their power, both to their subjects and their enemies.^ Constructed in honor of a particular Hindu god - usually Siva or Vishnu - the temples associated the divine power of their deity with the person who built it.

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