Autonomous institutions in the Southern Khmer’s traditional rural society

Abstract

Inherently as the inhabitants of agricultural practices specializing in water rice cultivation, the Southern Khmer, once settling down on the Southern land and primarily gathering in the Mekong Delta, grouped themselves into units of residency, later organized into traditional autonomous societal units with two institutions of autonomy which bore such communal democracy values as phum and srok. In addition, when settling down on the Southern land, the Khmer people brought with them their religion – Theravada, and on this land, Buddhism of the Southern Khmer could both meet the spiritual need of the mass and be the consolidating catalyst to gather up community members. The elements of ethnic culture of the water rice inhabitants combined with those of Buddhist culture not only exerted great influence on their living style, on their material and mental culture, but also deeply engraved themselves in their autonomous mechanism, creating a particular feature of fundamental and typical nature belonging to the Southern Khmer’s traditional rural society. That is the autonomous mechanism of phum and srok which is closely related to and intertwined with the management system of pagodas in order to efficiently manage and regulate the society. Until the 1975 Liberation, phum and srok management and regulating system bearing traditional features of the Southern Khmer had ceased to exist. Although the management system of feudal government and of later governmental regimes already replaced the traditional management system, their imprint and influence still impose deep impacts on various aspects of the Khmer people’s current lives. In the framework of this research, the paper focuses on analyzing the traditional autonomous institutions and on how the mixed intertwining nature of these institutions made up special features of the Southern Khmer’s societal organization.