Contemporary Anthropology of Religion: Creating the Montagnard-Dega Refugee Community

Pearson, T.

This study offers a fresh reading of religious conversion by analyzing a variety of "missionaries" that sought to influence the Montagnard-Dega refugee. Thomas Pearson uses ethnographic and archival research to tell the story of cross-cultural contact in the highlands during the Vietnam War, Christian conversion, refugee exile, and the formation of the Dega refugee community in the United States. His insightful study considers not just evangelicals and Catholics, but humanitarian workers in the highlands, refugee resettlement volunteers in the United States, and the American Special Forces soldiers. This book makes the case that the Dega have appropriated the anthropological and religious discourses of this disparate group of missionaries to recreate themselves through a multivalent "conversion."

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2009-07-14

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9780230615366

DOI: 10.1057/9780230622524

Dimensions: 216cm x140cm

Pages: 241