Review for The Ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders: A Historical Contextualization, 1850-1990 (Anthropology of Asia Series) : This book is incredible, I have never been so frightened reading a book and yet so riveted that I couldn't stop reading. I loved this book. It grabbed me from the first page and I had trouble putting it down. Read it, you won't be disappointed.
The Ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders: A Historical Contextualization, 1850-1990 (Anthropology of Asia Series) info
This book looks at the multiple relations between the ethnographic representations of the Montagnard ethnic groups in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and the changing historical context in and for which the ethnographies were produced and in which they were consumed. There are two major arguments developed by the author. It is maintained that economic, political, and military interests within a specific historical context condition ethnographic practice. This is not however a one-way process: the author also argues that the ensuing ethnographic discourses in turn influence the historical context by suggesting and facilitating ethnic policies, and by contributing to the formation or change of ethnic identities through processes of classification. Ethnographic knowledge is not simply a more or less accurate reflection of indigenous society. Ethnography is a textual representation of a particular society constructed by outsiders, conditioned by their interaction with informants and by di
