Constructing Famine Memory: The Role of Monuments

This chapter suggests that rather than viewing Angkor as a monumental landscape of the ancient past, the site needs to be considered as a form of living heritage, pivotal in the articulation of cultural, ethnic and national identities. It draws on discussing the relationship between identity, place and history in terms of memory. The chapter examines how the relationship between landscape and memory is articulated within the context of tourism. It argues that constructing an account of the tourist encounter around a subject centred temporality reveals the dynamics which facilitate the formation of a series of collective identities. The chapter considers Khmer New Year to identify some of the values and meanings Cambodians ascribe to a festival which has become an important, aspect of Angkor's current development as a tourist space. It demonstrates the importance of examining how the landscape-identity relationships emerge from, and are fashioned by, broader socio-political dynamics.