Description
Book SynopsisIn Salvage, Krisna Uk draws on extensive research in a Cambodian village she calls Leu to provide a unique ethnography of the Jorai, an ethnic minority group that lives in Vietnam and in the most heavily bombed region of northeast Cambodia. The Jorai inhabit a remote region largely beyond the reach of the nation-state but have suffered the devastating effects of battles between and within states. Uk focuses on the experience of a Jorai community that experienced violent and protracted international and domestic conflictsthe Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge regime. These conflicts had enduring effects on the community''s moral fabric, the villagers' activities, and the physical and spiritual environments with which they engage daily.Uk's ethnography is an exploration of a resilient communal life that refuses to surrender its integrity to the blind, destructive forces of modern aerial warfare and that struggles to come to terms with the unintelligible violence unleashed by Cambo
Trade Review
I envied her smooth transitions through discussions of dense theory, reviews of related literature, and traditional anthropological fieldwork. Clearly written and well organized, the book is also a testament to the care that many people, in this case those at Cornell University Press, put into creating such a fine work.
-- Kurt Borchard, University of Nebraska Kearney * Historical Geography *
Uk's book [is] a pioneering anthropological study of an ethnicity that has been at the fulcrum of major historical events for many decades. The author has set a high mark for those who will, we can only hope, enjoy further opportunities to undertake ethnographic research with the minority communities of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
* Pacific Affairs *
