The steady commoditization of goods and services brought on by market globalization and technology often prompts societies to reevaluate the cultural relevance and diversity of indigenous production. In particular, the loss or homogenization of heritage products such as indigenous food and medicine is felt acutely because it represents an existential threat to the uniqueness of cultural identity and to the sacredness of the land. The specter of what Jacques Ellul refers to as the “technical phenomenon” dominating the psychic equilibrium compels society to embed imagined narratives of the nation into production, particularly in agricultural transformation (following Benedict Anderson, 1983). In this way, the Hebrew bible valuated and legitimized the spiritual productivity of land of Israel for the Levites by calling it the land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 33:3). And while milk and honey may not be the heritage product of choice in every cultural milieu, the narrative can be filled with other iconic agricultural products—perhaps palm sap and aromatic rice in the case of Cambodia. And regardless of the content of the narrative, under increasing disequilibrium brought on by the disproportionate growth of technique in the commoditization of goods, the contemporary nation can attempt to position its heritage products as a form of protected patrimony. The euphoria for industrial products beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, which has inspired much of Jacques Ellul’s warnings about the escalation of the technological society, has subsided and the new mental construct is heritage and diversity protection, particularly in cases dealing with indigenous food and medicine (Classen and Howes 1996). But the inertia and subtle workings of technique persist, and in Cambodia, these heritage imperatives manifest in ways that do not always strictly work against the commoditized food and medical systems.
Following Jacques Ellul’s conceptualization of civilization, I use Cambodia’s recent and dramatic turn towards heritage production to illuminate how the nascent movement for local ecologism in developing countries advances and formalizes pre-modern agriculture to counter dominance of technique. I compare this contemporary experience with France’s historic development of the Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) and with China’s development of a health system with equal emphasis on traditional medicine. The importance of this topic for development rests on normative notions of how, given the imperative to ‘catch up with’ the North, developing countries can pre-empt industrial alienation brought on by technique by developing local hybrid cultures of production (Moreiras 1999). With evidence from market studies, archival research, and ethnographic work in Cambodia, I demonstrate that contemporary developing countries often have a keen awareness of the risk of cultural alienation from globalization, which has prompted reflexive explorations into the spiritual and naturalistic dimensions of their material heritage. National metanarratives built on spiritual-historic characterizations, such as ‘the land flowing with milk and honey’ converge with individual narratives governed by intergenerational naturalistic memory, national solidarity, and personal tastes and preferences. As the spiritual and naturalistic basis for heritage food and medicine conservation evolves, so does the capacity of a nation to wrest control over the product form and availability from the forces of globalization.