Selling Symbols: Tourism, Heritage, and Symbolic Economy in Battambang, Cambodia

Over the past two decades, international tourist visitation to Cambodia has grown an astounding 2,178%, and the country now serves more than 5 million foreign visitors per year. Cambodians are also traveling within their own country much more frequently, creating new forms of domestic tourism that influence regional development. While the nation continues to struggle with the consequences of such rapid expansion, the growing number of tourists also provides opportunities for smaller urban spaces to compete with Cambodia’s larger cities through the creation of region-specific tourism industries. Such is the case in the northwestern provincial capital of Battambang City, where local residents and their provincial government are attempting to establish a ‘symbolic economy’ based on tourism that can tempt tourists away from well-trod tourist attractions found elsewhere in favor of regional offerings. In so doing, Battambang City can compete with larger cities like the national capital of Phnom Penh for tourist income while also promoting narratives about regional history and identity that challenge the nationalist discourse asserted by the central Cambodian government.
To establish a symbolic economy, residents of Battambang are utilizing two key aspects of the Disneyization process: theming and performative labor. In Battambang, themes are reinforced through the postmodern presentation of the urban landscape. In this work, I detail several such themes at work in Battambang and how they are changing to reflect the new goal of becoming Cambodia’s “Charming City.” Tourists of all origins engage with themes such as dark tourism, the ‘wild’ frontier, or the opulent timeliness of Indochina, but often do so following different narratives. So too can a single location represent multiple thematic possibilities and different narrative interpretations based on touristic desires. Through the analysis of specific themes and the touristic narratives that are negotiated by locals and guests within them, as well as the performative labor provided by local residents, Battambang City’s symbolic economy emerges as a complex form of place-based storytelling that allows locals to promote the region as resistant to outside influence, even if that influence comes from within Cambodian borders.