Exploring the silkscape: Relationships and materialities of silk production in post-conflict Cambodia (1991–2018)

Silk production and consumption in Cambodia nearly halted during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79), and resumed in the post-conflict era under global and local dynamics that combined heritage and preservation policies with social and economic development. In the 1990s, foreign investment and humanitarian aid heavily changed the practice and significance of silk weaving and dress. Extant literature on Cambodian textile production and dress practices remains fragmented and limited in scope, either discussing silk weaving as a traditional practice or providing general facts and figures on the state of contemporary production as a struggling domestic industry. This article proposes to reframe the domestic commodity chain of Cambodian silk as a transnational network of exchanges, funding, textiles, fibre resources and actors inside and outside Cambodia, while also incorporating diasporic communities in the United States. It does so by using Appadurai’s theorization of globalized flows and scapes and the de-hierarchized methodological approach of Actor-Network Theory to remap this cottage industry into a dynamic silkscape . The Cambodian silkscape incorporates the circulation of materials, skills, designs and people alike, including numerous stakeholders – weavers, middlemen, craft companies, international non-governmental organizations and wearers, such as locals, tourists and Cambodians in the diaspora. This post-conflict landscape remains influenced by pre-existing Cambodian social and kinship systems such as the khsae , which means ‘threads’ or ‘network’ in Khmer. These invisible contractual links tying humans in unequal power relationships underpin the production and transfer of silk resources in Cambodia. By investigating the inner organizational, material and social flows activating the Cambodian silkscape, this article aims to highlight the frictions, interdependence and imbalances in the local and transnational connections between materials, makers and wearers. Overall, it demonstrates how these inequitable power relations affect Cambodian silk production and trade and prevent its development into a socially and economically sustainable model.