Beyond Black Uniforms and Withered Victims: Exploring Individual Decision-Making in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1979

Abstract

This study explores the different choices taken by members of the Cambodiansociety in the traumatic period of the Khmer Rouge Communist regime between 1975and 1979. It attempts to contribute to the existing scholarship on that period byamalgamating individual stories into various themes altogether representing the outlinesof a common social history. While the repression and suffering were irrefutable, I arguethat there were some spaces for decision-making through cooperation, negotiation orresistance to the radical Khmer Rouge government. I chose to survey the wholeCambodian population without segregating their social background; for that reason, themain purpose of this thesis was to demonstrate the range of decisions and the complexrelationship between representatives of the state and members of society that transcend a simple victim/perpetrator binary.