This article examines one case of the ceremonial preservation of a Buddhist monk's body in rural Cambodia. While consistent with Buddhist relic veneration traditions and regional death ritual patterns, the case shows local actors and conditions influencing practice. The study discusses whether there is a recent efflorescence of such practices in Cambodia and whether the ‘post-socialist’ moment has tended to foster their revival.

The paper examines the metaphors and dynamics of Atsabe Kemak group identity construction, with a strong emphasis on local cultural ‘remembering’ of Atsabe history vis-à-vis relations of power. The analysis utilizes the analytical frameworks of Foucault's notion of discourse and Bourdieu's concept of habitus. The secondary burial of a former chieftain highlights the dynamics of Atsabe Kemak responses to new nation-building processes and to international influences that have appeared during the United Nations' transitional administration.

This article takes the dominant view of a top-down Khmer political culture as its point of departure and explores the extent to which the last decade's political changes have altered the socio-political landscape and triggered the growth of agency in rural areas. In particular, the reform of democratic decentralisation and its integrated ‘soft’ values are scrutinised in fields such as views on local governance, popular discourse on decentralisation, rural NGO activity and the gendering of politics.

This article is concerned with social and moral cohesion in the wake of war and violence. In the Cambodian village of O'Thmaa, villagers are making tentative and at times ambiguous efforts to connect to their pre-Khmer Rouge past to recreate a sense of community and moral order. This article examines this process through a detailed ethnographic description and analysis of the production of O'Thmaa's harvest ritual and festival, Bon Dalien.

Burma at the turn of the twenty-first century Edited by MONIQUE SKIDMORE Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Pp. vii, 304. Illustrations, Maps, Bibliography, Index.

State and society in the Philippines By PATRICIO ABINALES and DONNA AMOROSO Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. Pp. xxxiv, 353. Illustrations, Bibliography, Index.