In the hill country of northeast Cambodia, just a few kilometers from the Vietnam border, sits the village of Tang Kadon. This community of hill rice farmers of the Jarai ethnic minority group survived aerial bombardment and the American invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, only to find themselves relocated to the “killing fields” of the Khmer Rouge regime. Now back in their homeland, they have reestablished agriculture, seed by seed.

Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories tells the story of violence and dispossession in the highlands from the perspective of the land itself. Weaving rich ethnography with the history of the Jarai and their treatment at the hands of outsiders, Jonathan Padwe narrates the highlanders’ successful efforts to rebuild their complex, highly diverse agricultural system after a decades-long interruption.

Focusing on the ecological dimensions of social change and dispossession from the precolonial slave trade to the present moment of land grabs along a rapidly transforming resource frontier, Padwe shows how the past lives on in the land. An engrossing treatment of timely issues in anthropology and political ecology, this book will also appeal to readers in environmental studies, geography, and Southeast Asian studies.

"To describe the physical and spiritual landscapes that have shaped the lives of the Jarai of Tang Kadon for centuries, the author uses different narrating styles to illustrate different aspects of the local agricultural system. . . Padwe immerses the reader in old Jarai tales with the eloquence of a traditional village storyteller."

"[A] beautifully written and insightful ethnography that draws on Jonathan Padwe's long-term work in the Jarai village of Tang Kadon, in Cambodia's Ratanakiri province...Although Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Lives is a wonderful example of more-than-human anthropology, it will resonate with broader audiences who work on frontier dynamics, violence, memory and the co-production of nature–society in and beyond mainland Southeast Asia."

"This thought-provoking book...is excellent in its richness and detail."

"Being of blurred genre, beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries of anthropology, human geography, Southeast Asia studies, or ethnohistory, this text may be of comparative interest for those anywhere engaged in bottom-up restoration—whether Native American revival of land stewardship through cultural burning, urban folk attempting to restore gift economies through permaculture garden systems, and others thinking deeply about ecological resilience and recuperation in the conjunctures of our post-pandemic world."

"The stories that Padwe narrates are a pleasure to read and capture a sense of the world in which the highlanders of northeastern Cambodia live."

"Southeast Asia scholars in multiple fields will be drawn to the book for its impeccable attention to the ethnographic, oral, and archival record of the Vietnam-Cambodian borderlands."

"By zooming in on vernacular geography and ecology in combination with history and anthropology, Padwe has crafted a compelling addition to this small library of vernacular highland histories in mainland Southeast Asia. A highly readable book that does not suffer from overtheorization, Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories will be of interest for historians and anthropologists of the region and, more importantly, for those interested in how a “more-than-human anthropology” and history might look like in practice."

"[T]he book analyzes forest biota and agricultural practices, enabling a new approach to conceptualizing landscapes that melds representation, materiality and ecology."

"[N]ot your average academic book...a truly interdisciplinary contribution...Its strength lies precisely in this interdisciplinarity, allowing Padwe to draw out novel and thought-provoking insights in an engaging writing style (complemented with beautiful photos)."

"Based on extensive fieldwork, this book is part ethnography of a marginal Cambodian hill tribe of rice farmers, the Jarai, and part eco/cultural treatise about the mutual influences between people and their land and between history and memory."