1 The celebration will be described below; here I note the use of the ALA-LC transliteration system. Despite its sometimes awkward phonetic rendering of Khmer terms, I feel that the exact representation of each letter facilitates further research. A parenthetical approximation of the sound accompanies words whose spelling in English diverges greatly from the Khmer pronunciation.

2 The name of the village is fictitious. This is a new village, initiated through a government-sponsored social land concession in 2000, which brought people from around the country to turn the existing scrubby secondary forest into rice fields. Ethnographic research was conducted here in 2010–12.

3 The `ācāry is a ritual specialist in the service of the temple. `Ᾱcāry are typically older men from the village who served as monks in their younger years. They are often well-versed in Buddhist ritual and organise temple celebrations and donations.

4 David Chandler, ‘Cambodia before the French: Politics in a tributary kingdom’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, New Haven, 1974); Yang Sam, ‘Buddhism in Cambodia 1975–1954’ (M.A. thesis, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1990).

5 The Khmer Rouge did dismantle Buddhism during their reign in Cambodia. Before their takeover, however, Khmer Rouge cadres were encouraged to observe Buddhist precepts and to behave with constraint and humility toward villagers. Once in power, the Khmer Rouge inverted Buddhist vocabulary and conceptions of morality to serve their ideological purpose. See Keyes, Charles F., ‘Communist revolution and the Buddhist past in Cambodia’, in Asian visions of authority: Religion and the modern states of East and Southeast Asia, ed. Keyes, Charles F., Kendall, Laurel and Hardacre, Helen (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Harris, Ian Charles, Buddhism under Pol Pot (Phnom Penh: Documentation Centre of Cambodia, 2007)Google Scholar; Hinton, Alexander, ‘Songs at the edge of Democratic Kampuchea’, in At the edge of the forest: Essays on Cambodia, history, and narrative in honor of David Chandler, ed. Hansen, Anne and Ledgerwood, Judy (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2008)Google Scholar.

6 Kent, Alexandra, ‘Peace, power and pagodas in present-day Cambodia’, Contemporary Buddhism 9, 1 (2008) : 77–97Google Scholar.

7 Hansen, Anne Ruth, ‘Gaps in the world: Harm and violence in Khmer Buddhist narrative’, in At the edge of the forest, p. 57Google Scholar.

8 The notion of a return to normalcy by way of Buddhism is also important among the rising middle class and scholars. For a well-done volume on the subject, see Kent, Alexandra and Chandler, David P., ed. People of virtue: Reconfiguring religion, power and morality in Cambodia today (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2008)Google Scholar, especially the following articles by Cambodian scholars: Monychenda Heng, ‘In search of the dhammika ruler’; Ven Sovanratana, ‘Buddhist education today: Progress and challenges’; and Sreang Heng, ‘The scope and limitations of political participation by Buddhist monks’.

9 Kent, Alexandra, ‘A Buddhist bouncer: Monastic adaptation to the ethos of desire in today's Cambodia’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 24, 3 (2009): 291–303Google Scholar. The monk in Kent's story, the ‘Buddhist bouncer’, physically tackles violent youths at his temple's celebrations, putting an end to violence during the dances.

10 Durkheim, Émile, The elementary forms of religious life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 [1912])Google Scholar.

11 Geertz, Clifford, Negara: The theatre state in nineteenth-century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Kertzer, David I., Ritual, politics, and power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

12 Bell, Catherine M., Ritual theory, ritual practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

13 Colvin, Christopher J., ‘Shifting geographies of suffering and recovery: Traumatic storytelling after apartheid’, in Borders and healers: Brokering therapeutic resources in Southeast Africa, ed. Luedke, Tracy J. and West, Harry G. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Das, Veena, ‘The signature of the state: The paradox of illegibility’, in Anthropology in the margins of the state, ed. Das, Veena and Poole, Deborah (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

14 See Davis, Erik W., ‘Imagined parasites: Flows of monies and spirits’, in Cambodia's economic transformation, ed. Hughes, Caroline and Un, Kheang (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2011)Google Scholar, Holt, John Clifford, ‘Caring for the dead ritually in Cambodia’, Southeast Asian Studies 1, 1 (2011)Google Scholar, and Ledgerwood, Judy, ‘Buddhist ritual and the reordering of social relations in Cambodia’, South East Asia Research 20, 2 (2012): 191–206Google Scholar, for descriptions of the spirits and transactions that inhabit the imaginary of the Pchuṃ Biṇḍ in contemporary Cambodia. For pre-Khmer Rouge accounts, see Porée-Maspero, Eveline, Étude sur les rites agraires des cambodgiens (Paris: Mouton, 1962), pp. 315–59Google Scholar; Aymonier, Etienne, Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des cambodgiens (Paris: Cedoreck, 1984[1900]), pp. 83–8Google Scholar; Leclére, Adhémard, Cambodge: Fêtes civiles et religieuses (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1916)Google Scholar.

15 This is in late September or early October by Gregorian reckoning.

16 See Langford, Jean M., ‘Gifts intercepted: Biopolitics and spirit debt’, Cultural Anthropology 24, 4 (2009): 681–711Google Scholar; Klima, Alan, The funeral casino: Meditation, massacre, and exchange with the dead in Thailand (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; and Kwon, Heonik, Ghosts of war in Vietnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, for provocative discussions of the relationships with the dead in mainland Southeast Asia.

17 The other two are the Khmer New Year and the Kathin (robe offering) ceremony.

18 This is a mausoleum-like structure for storing the bones of ancestors. The temple association is currently raising money to build a community cetiy, but the more popular building project is the vihār, which is the consecrated building for prayer and ordination in the temple complex. Participating in the building of a vihār makes more merit than any other act of generosity. Only ordination exceeds it in merit accumulation.

19 Ledgerwood, ‘Buddhist ritual and the reordering of social relations in Cambodia’, pp. 191–205.

20 This is the third of the three piṭakas (literally, baskets) in the Palī canon, the focus of which is to provide a theoretical framework that explains the causal underpinnings of the path to enlightenment. The degree to which the Abhidhamma retains importance as a philosophical and phenomenological text in Cambodia, as was noted in the 1970s, remains under-researched. See Bizot, François, Le figuier à cinq branches: Recherche sur le bouddhisme khmer (Paris: Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient [EFEO], 1976)Google Scholar and Le don de soi-même: Recherches sur le bouddhisme khmer (Paris: EFEO, 1981)Google Scholar, for the pre-Khmer Rouge data. In contemporary Cambodia, local exegeses of this event, the power inherent in magically infused fetus amulets carried by witches and government ministers, and a booklet called ‘The kingdom of the body’ (nagar kāy), handed out at the robe-offering ceremony of a temple neighbouring Sambok Dung all resonate with the theoretical underpinnings of the Abhidhamma and lead me to suggest its continued salience in local understandings of the world.

21 Narada, Maha Thera, A manual of Abhidhamma (Abhidhammattha sangaha) (Kuala Lumpur: Buddhist Missionary Society 1975 [1956])Google Scholar, www.buddhanet.net, pp. 311, 338.

22 See Bowie, Katherine A., ‘The alchemy of charity: Of class and Buddhism in Northern Thailand’, American Anthropologist 100, 2 (1998): 469–81Google Scholar, for a discussion of the merit associated with giving, especially the parity of the relationship between offerings to beggars and to monks.

23 See Ledgerwood, Judy L., ‘A tale of two temples: Communities and their wats’, in Anthropology and community in Cambodia: Reflections on the work of May Ebihara, ed. Marston, John A. (Caulfield: Monash University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, for a recent discussion of the undiminished importance of merit-making in Cambodia, also May Mayko Ebihara, ‘Svay, a Khmer village in Cambodia’ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1968); and Keyes, Charles F., ‘Merit-transference in the kammic theory of popular Theravāda Buddhism’, in Karma: An anthropological inquiry, ed. Keyes, Charles F. and Daniel, E. Valentine, pp. 261–86 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar, for historical precedent.

24 Susan M. Speigel, ‘The role of the monk in Cambodian Buddhism: Crisis, change and continuity’ (M.A. thesis, Northern Illinois University, 2009).

25 Keane, Webb, Christian moderns: Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)Google Scholar, p. 19.

26 Chandler, David P., ‘Going through the motions: Ritual and restorative aspects of the reign of King Duang’, in Centers, symbols, and hierarchies: Essays on the classical states of Southeast Asia, ed. Gesick, Lorraine and Aung-Thwin, Michael (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1983), pp. 106–24Google Scholar; Yang Sam, Buddhism in Cambodia 1795–1954; Tambiah, Stanley J., World conqueror and world renouncer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

27 Yang Sam, Khmer Buddhism and politics from 1954 to 1984; Bektimirova, Nadezhda, ‘The religious situation in Cambodia in the 1990s’, Religion, state, and society 30, 1 (2002): 63–72Google Scholar.

28 Guthrie, Elizabeth, ‘Buddhist temples and Cambodian politics’, in People and the 1998 national elections in Cambodia: Their voices, roles and impact on democracy, ed. Vijghen, John L. and Hughes, Caroline (Phnom Penh: Experts for Community Research, 2002), pp. 55–73Google Scholar; Judy Ledgerwood, ‘Ritual in 1990 Cambodian political theater: New songs at the edge of the forest’, in At the edge of the forest, pp. 195–220.

29 John Marston, ‘Constructing narratives of order: Religious-building projects and moral chaos’, in At the edge of the forest, pp. 163–94; Gyallay-Pap, Reconstructing the Cambodian polity, p. 93.

30 Guthrie, Buddhist temples and Cambodian politics.

31 Springer, Simon, Cambodia's neoliberal order: Violence, authoritarianism, and the contestation of public space (London: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar; Hughes, Caroline and Un, Kheang, eds, Cambodia's economic transformation (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Pou, Sovachana, ‘Progress and challenges of education in Cambodia today’, in Cambodia: Progress and challenges since 1991, ed. Pou, Sothirak, Wade, Geoff and Hong, Mark (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012)Google Scholar.

32 Caroline Hughes et al., ‘Local leaders and big business in three communes’, in Cambodia's economic transformation, pp. 245–65; Andrew R.C. Marshall and Prak Chan Thul, ‘China gambles on Cambodia's shrinking forests’, Reuters, 7 Mar. 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/07/us-cambodia-forests-idUSTRE82607N20120307; Paul Vrieze and Kuch Naren, ‘Six villagers reported shot in Snuol land dispute’, Phnom Penh Post, 29 July 2012.

33 Harris, Ian Charles, ed., Buddhism, power and political order (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar, p. 3.

34 Mul, Bunchan, ‘The umbrella war of 1942’, in Peasants and politics in Kampuchea, 1942–1981, ed. Kiernan, Ben and Boua, Chanthou (London: Zed, 1982)Google Scholar.

35 For instance, in 1997 a prominent newspaper ran a letter from monks that called for leaders who ‘call themselves true Buddhists to conduct themselves in a Buddhist manner and prevent the worsening of the political situation in the country’, cited in Bektimirova, The religious situation in Cambodia in the 1990s, p. 67.

36 Harris, Ian, Cambodian Buddhism: History and practice (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), pp. 190–224Google Scholar. My field notes from the 2008 national elections reveal that monks who refused to become members of the ruling Cambodian People's Party were threatened with physical violence and defrocking.

37 Springer, Simon, ‘Culture of violence or violent orientalism? Neoliberalisation and imagining the “savage Other” in post-transitional Cambodia’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34, 3 (2009): 305–19Google Scholar. See also Heng Seiha, Kim Sedara, So Sokbunthoeun, Decentralised governance in a hybrid polity: Localisation of decentralisation reform in Cambodia (Working Paper no. 63, Cambodian Development Resource Institute, Phnom Penh, 2011). For a discussion of the ways that monks become embroiled in this process see Harris, Ian Charles, ‘Entrepreneurialism and charisma: Two modes of doing business in post-Pol Pot Cambodian Buddhism’, in Expressions of Cambodia: The politics of tradition, identity, and change, ed. Ollier, Leakthina Chan-Pech and Winter, Tim (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar.

38 Penny Edwards, ‘The moral geology of the present: Structuring morality, menace and merit’, in People of virtue, pp. 213–38; Hughes et al., Local leaders and big business in three communes, p. 259.

39 Kent, ‘Peace, power and pagodas’, pp. 77–97; Harris, ‘Entrepreneurialism and charisma’; Speigel, ‘The role of the monk in Cambodian Buddhism’.

40 The same distinction between state power and Buddha power is noted in, Collins, William, Grassroots civil society in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: Center for Advanced Study, 1998)Google Scholar.

41 This is in contrast to local sentiments recorded in 2006 that suggest the decentralisation initiatives of donor nations have made Cambodian politics more like the idealised politics of the donor. See Öjendal, Joakim and Sedara, Kim, ‘Korob, kaud, klach: In search of agency in rural Cambodia’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37, 3 (2006): 507–26Google Scholar.

42 Kent, ‘Peace, power and pagodas’, p. 77.

43 Collins, Grassroots civil society, p. 27.

44 Hughes, Caroline, The political economy of Cambodia's transition, 1991–2001 (London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003)Google Scholar, p. xx.

45 Maha Thera Narada, Manual of Abhidhamma, p. 311.

46 Kent, ‘A Buddhist bouncer’, pp. 291–303.

47 Fighting can also break out at other venues where alcohol and dancing converge, such as smaller wedding parties.

48 Czymoniewicz-Klippel, Melina T., ‘Bad boys, big trouble: Subcultural formation and resistance in a Cambodian village’, Youth & Society (2011): 1–20 [online, doi: 10.1177/0044118X11422545]Google Scholar.

49 Messerschmidt, James W., Masculinities and crime: Critique and reconceptualization of theory (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993)Google Scholar; See also Barker, Gary, Dying to be men: Youth, masculinity, and social exclusion (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar.

50 Cœdès, George, Inscriptions du cambodge (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1937–66)Google Scholar.

51 Huat, Seṅ Ṅuan, Cpâp prus, cpâp srī (Bhnaṃ Beñ: Seṅ Ṅuan Huat, 1965)Google Scholar.

52 It is suggestive that contemporary conceptions of desirable masculinity are similar to those of a conquering king. On hegemonic masculinity, see, Connell, Robert W., ‘Masculinities and globalization’, in Gender through the prism of difference, ed. Zinn, M.B., Hondagneu-Sotelo, P., and Messner, M. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Howson, Richard, Challenging hegemonic masculinity (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 73–6Google Scholar.

53 Deutsch, N.L. and Theodorou, E., ‘Aspiring, consuming, becoming: Youth identity in a culture of consumption’, Youth and Society 42, 2 (2010)Google Scholar: 229.

54 Jacobsen, Trude, ‘Being broh: The good, the bad, and the successful man in Cambodia’, in Men and masculinities in Southeast Asia, ed. Ford, Michele and Lyons, Lenore (New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar, p. 95.

55 Typically knives, swords, and clubs — no one can afford a gun.

56 See Morrissey, Sean Afnan, ‘Performing risks: Catharsis, carnival and capital in the risk society’, Journal of Youth Studies 11, 4 (2008): 413–27Google Scholar, for an interesting discussion of risk-taking and risk-avoidance in constructions of masculine identity.

57 Relations between the Khmer and the Cham in Cambodia are not typically marked by violence; see Kok-Thay Eng, ‘From the Khmer Rouge to Hambali: Cham identities in a global age’ (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2013). This contrasts with some Muslim minorities in Southeast Asia, see, Yegar, Moshe, Between integration and secession: The Muslim communities of the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, and western Burma/Myanmar (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002)Google Scholar; Johnson, Irving Chan, The Buddha on Mecca's verandah: Encounters, mobilities, and histories along the Malaysian–Thai border (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

58 Many of the youths who had money to offer were migrant labourers. Their salaries can be manifested as social capital in the village through temple offerings, which can also cleanse the often immoral nature of their work or living situations away from home. Often, low salaries preclude such remittances, but many can get money back to their villages. See Derks, Annuska, Khmer women on the move: Exploring work and life in urban Cambodia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), pp. 179–83Google Scholar, for a discussion of morality and agency among Phnom Penh's migrant workers.

59 The terms dhwoe puṇy and dhwoe pāp are often used as opposites. In this structure doing good is associated with making merit and doing ill with demerit.

60 The 227 precepts that make up the pāṭimokkh govern a monk's behaviour in the world. The monk broke many precepts, all having to do with refraining from political action.

61 Durkheim, The elementary forms of religious life.

62 Ibid., p. 164.

63 Keane, Christian moderns, p. 20.

64 Massumi, Brian, Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

65 Keane, Christian moderns, p. 172.

66 Ibid., p. 338.

67 Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, pp. 105–6.

68 Ibid., p. 399.

69 Ibid., pp. 8, 218.

70 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, p. 250.

71 Seligman, Adam B., Weller, Robert P., Puett, Michael and Simon, Bennet, Ritual and its consequences: An essay on the limits of sincerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, pp. 42, 25.

72 Ibid., p. 100.

73 Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, p. 106.

74 Rappaport, Roy A., Ritual and religion in the making of humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, p. 51.

75 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 175.

76 Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, p. 105.

77 When King Ang Duang re-established the Khmer monarchy at Udong in 1848 Buddhism had been decimated by Vietnamese control of the Cambodian state. Descriptions of the textual, architectural, and educational state of the Theravada monastic tradition at that time could have also described the post-Khmer Rouge era. See Chandler, ‘Going through the motions’; and Harris, Cambodian Buddhism: History and practice, p. 46.

78 Edwards, Penny, Cambodge the cultivation of a nation, 1860–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007)Google Scholar, p. 169.

79 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 175.

80 Bell, Ritual theory, ritual practice, p. 218.

81 Ibid., p. 106.