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.

Oscar Salemink describes ethnographic discourses concerning the indigenous population of Vietnam’s Central Highlands during periods of Christianization, colonization, war, and socialist transformation, and analyzes these in their relation to tribal, ethnic, territorial, governmental, and gendered discourses.