Eve Monique Zucker. Forest of Struggle: Moralities of Remembrance in Upland Cambodia. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2013, 256p.

Forest of Struggle: Moralities of Remembrance in Upland Cambodia Eve Monique Zucker Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2013, 256p.Eve Zucker's book, Forest of Struggle is an important contribution to the literature on societies in the aftermath of extreme violence and specifically to the study of Cambodian society since the Khmer Rouge era. The book is ethnography, but not in the classical style of a snapshot in time of a single village; it tells the story of two villages, set on the margins of Khmer society, on the "edge of the forest." It belongs in a category with such important books as Linda Green's Fear as a Way of Life (about Guatemala) on the one hand, and Anna Tsing's In the Realm of the Diamond Queen on the other-stories of violence, fear, and displacement, but told from a local grounding. Zucker describes other studies of "social memory" as arguing that violence continues to influence the present as people "reinterpret their memories in efforts to cope with the violence of their past" (p. 11); but she would expand this discussion to include issues of morality and the remaking of the moral and social order. The memories she focuses on are primarily collective and are shaped by local history, including the way that local stories are re-told, and how these stories are tied to features of the landscape.The area of Cambodia where Zucker conducted research, the two communes she calls Prei Phnom and Doung Srae, are up against the mountains, an area viewed by lowlanders, the French colonial authorities, and subsequent state governments, as a haven for bandits and rebels. The Khmer Issarak (including the "White Khmer") and Vietnamese anti-French forces used the area as a base in the 1940s and 50s, and the community was divided between those who sought protection from these groups higher up the mountains, and those who went down to seek safety in the government controlled areas. This pattern would be repeated; in 1970 the Khmer Rouge arrived and many people fled with them to the forest. Many of the men from the area fought with the Khmer Rouge against the Lon Nol regime between 1970 and 1975. Others again descended to the plains and fought on the government side. During this period, people informed on one another; Lon Nol forces assumed everyone in the area were Khmer Rouge, but the Khmer Rouge accused people of being "White Khmer" under Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey. In Prei Phnom com- mune these accusations and killings were so rampant that most of the adult males were murdered. Zucker eventually learns the "public secret" that the villagers live with the memories of this internal betrayal, and that overwhelmingly they blame one man who was the village headman at that time.Perhaps the best chapter is the one on "Trust and Distrust"; while Zucker is told when she arrives in the village that everyone "loves one another" she also hears people habitually say that they do not trust people and situations. Zucker reviews theoretical work on the concept of trust, including importantly that of Giddens and Appadurai, and the limited comparative work on the topic in Southeast Asia. An obsession with seeking out internal enemies was central to Khmer Rouge ideology, Zucker discusses the effect constant surveillance and accusations had on families and other social groups. She writes: "In the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the distrust was sustained, rationalized and reproduced, creating a warped logic whose logical conclusion could only be total annihilation" (p. 54). The destruction of social institutions, from the local temple to kinship groups, that characterized the Khmer Rouge period sadly does not end for the residents of this area after 1979. Instead during the second civil war that follows, the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) and Vietnamese forces still distrust the survivors, as do the Khmer Rouge. For another 20 years people remain insecure; while an accusation is no longer cause for automatic execution, people were accused and killed for other reasons, including "sorcery. …