ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author utilizes an anthropological perspective in approaching life histories of resettled Cambodian refugee women. After a brief historical sketch of the Khmer Rouge revolution in Cambodia and the lives of Cambodian refugees, she traces the interactive process of trust and reciprocation on which the life history, and all of ethnographic inquiry, is based. The research with resettled Cambodian refugees began as a medical anthropological project on infant feeding. While the physical and psychological trauma touched all Cambodians refugees, women suffer certain unique fates, by the nature of their roles in traditional Cambodian culture. The most obvious here is the tremendous maternal loss experienced through the deaths of children. Another related factor which bears most heavily on women was the breakdown of the family unit, either through forced separation instituted by the Khmer Rouge, or through “reeducation” designed to supplant the mother-child bond with allegiance to the State.
