The main purpose of Senshu University’s survey of Cambodia in its research for “Exploring
Social Capital towards Sustainable Development in East Asia,” a project for strategic basic
research infrastructure at private universities, launched by the Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), is to acquire a specific understanding of social capital
in Cambodia through questionnaire survey conducted in the country. Distribution and collection
of the questionnaire forms are completed and an analysis paper of the Cambodian side has been
already been prepared based on the questionnaire. Statistical analysis of the data collected
through the survey has also been made.
This paper is not a statistical analysis of the collected data; rather, it: 1) formulates a
specific hypothesis about how Cambodian society has changed from a traditional society through
the modernization process and in the progress of internationalization and globalization in recent
years, based on a variety of existing discussions on the country’s history, and at the same time,
2) studies how the results of the questionnaire conform to the historical context of the country
or whether they produce new knowledge.
This paper places as much emphasis as possible on the viewpoint of which interpretations
of the data will permit deeper understanding of the social situations behind them. Above all,
section 2 sorts out some of the findings obtained by comparing two contrasting communities in
Cambodia – one in an urban area and one in a rural area – based on results of a questionnaire
and interviews conducted in the communities. Additionally, a pilot questionnaire survey was
conducted in East Timor, which is often cited as an example of “post-conflict country” in Asia,
like Cambodia, by distributing and collecting in a rural farming area the same questionnaire
forms as the ones used in Cambodia. Section 3 of this paper compares Cambodia with East
Timor by discussing their similarities and differences based on the results of the surveys
conducted in the two countries. This paper aims to figure out the characteristics of social capital
in Cambodia through such tasks.