ABSTRACT
Throughout Southeast Asia, a distinction can be made between the inhabitants of lowland “state” societies and those of remote upland areas. This divide between hill and valley is one of the enduring social arrangements in the region-one that organizes much research on Southeast Asian society (Scott 2009). In Cambodia, highland people number some 200,000 individuals, or about 1.4 percent of the national population of approximately 15 million (IWGIA 2010). Located in the foothills of the Annamite Mountains in Cambodia’s northeast highlands, in the Cardamom Mountains to the southwest and in several other small enclaves throughout the country, Cambodia’s highland groups include, among others, the Tampuan, Brao, Jarai, Bunong, Kuy, and Poar. These groups share in common a distinction from lowland Khmer society based on language, religious practices, livelihood practices, forms of social organization, and shared histories of marginalization. This chapter provides an overview of research and writing about key issues concerning Cambodia’s highlanders. The focus is on research undertaken since the 1992-1993 United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), when an improved security situation allowed for a resumption of research with and about highland people. Important areas of concern for research on the highlands have included questions about highlanders’ experience of war and genocide, environmental knowledge, access to land and natural resources and problems of “indigeneity” within the politics of identity and ethnicity in Cambodia.
