The Architecture of Access: Education, Inequality, and Social Reproduction in Cambodia

In developing countries, education is often framed as one of the most important vehicles of growth and development. In order to properly evaluate the present challenges and future possibilities of a nation's schooling system, it is critical to understand the historical forces that have shaped it. In Cambodia, the education sector has been repeatedly reconstructed as schools have been used as sites of academic learning, but also as instruments to mold citizens, transmit ideology, and consolidate power. Examining these transformations reveals the profound entanglement between schooling and state formation. At the same time, drawing on political and anthropological perspectives allows for attention to the lived realities of education through how teachers, students, and communities experience, interpret, and navigate these broader political structures. The legacies of colonial governance, revolutionary upheaval, and post-conflict reconstruction continue to shape contemporary educational institutions and outcomes. Understanding these efforts sheds light on Cambodia's ongoing process of national reconstruction while contributing to broader conversations about how post-conflict societies use schooling to attempt to heal divisions, restore institutional credibility, and construct new futures. By situating contemporary educational challenges within this longer trajectory of educational upheaval, political transformation, and social recovery, Cambodia's schooling system offers a valuable lens through which to consider questions of development, identity formation, and everyday realities of education in post-conflict contexts.