This collection of articles focuses on the interrelationship of tradition and change in the Cambodian context. In doing so, it seeks to achieve a number of objectives: first, to contribute to the debate over the role of ‘culture’ in political life in Cambodia; second, to challenge some of the preconceptions about the nature of ‘culture’ in general, and Cambodian culture in particular, upon which that debate has been based; and third, to achieve these first two aims by bringing together in productive dialogue recent speculations on Cambodia in the disciplines of political science and anthropology. As such, the symposium seeks to reflect on the relationship between culture and politics; the implications of different framings of this relationship for the politics of contemporary international engagement with Cambodia; and the implications of these for the disciplinary lenses commonly adopted by political scientists and anthropologists.