The Ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders

"Oscar Salemink skilfully unravels the multiple relations between the ethnographic representation of the indigenous ethnic groups in the Central Highlands of Vietnam (sometimes called 'Montagnards'), and the changing historical context in which, and for which, the ethnographies were produced and consumed for more than a century. Looking at the ethnographic discourses with respect to the indigenous population of Vietnam's Central Highlands through periods of Christianization, colonization, war and socialist transformation, the book analyzes how changing ethnographic representations had a profound but varied impact on the people who formed the objects of such discourse. The author conceptualizes this impact in terms of tribalization, ethnicization, territorialization, governmentalization, marginalization and gender transformation."--Jacket.