Overview

How do families remain close when turbulent forces threaten to tear them apart? In this groundbreaking book based on more than a decade of research set in Vietnam, Merav Shohet explores what happens across generations to families that survive imperialism, war, and massive political and economic upheaval. Placing personal sacrifice at the center of her story, Shohet recounts vivid experiences of conflict, love, and loss. In doing so, her work challenges the idea that sacrifice is merely a blood-filled religious ritual or patriotic act. Today, domestic sacrifices—made largely by women—precariously knot family members together by silencing suffering and naturalizing cross-cutting gender, age, class, and political hierarchies. In rethinking ordinary ethics, this intimate ethnography reveals how quotidian acts of sacrifice help family members forge a sense of continuity in the face of trauma and decades of dramatic change.

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9780520379374

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Reviews

Shohet's study responds to a single question: What holds families together despite the strain of a century of turbulent conflict and inequities stemming from liberalizing economic reform? Her chapters answer this question by focusing on three interrelated principles that sustain family connections in the midst of radical change: love, sacrifice, and asymmetrical reciprocity. She examines these concepts in five chapters that reveal, on the one hand, how individual, familial, and national sacrifices are mutually intertwined and can even dovetail. On the other hand, sacrifice for love can also enforce silences and cause conflicts-ideas that Shohet reveals through stunningly intimate portrayals of family relations. * CHOICE * Silence and Sacrifice is a rich and remarkable book. . . . it is a moving and thought-provoking account of human struggles to sustain life together and to live with love. * Ethnos * The book rewards a careful reading with ethnographic insights within and across families. It resists easy and flashy conclusions, but instead invites readers to sit with...ambiguity. * Journal of Asian Studies * Shohet continuously weaves together family interaction and life-history narratives with Vietnam's often conflictive past. Thus, while this is a book about family and language, it also illuminates much larger questions about the social legacy of war, political turbulence, and economic change. * Linguistic Anthropology * Shohet shows us how the extraordinary is lived as ordinary, and how continuity, however precarious, is achieved despite numerous tensions, divisions, and differences. * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *

"""Shohet’s study responds to a single question: What holds families together despite the strain of a century of turbulent conflict and inequities stemming from liberalizing economic reform? Her chapters answer this question by focusing on three interrelated principles that sustain family connections in the midst of radical change: love, sacrifice, and asymmetrical reciprocity. She examines these concepts in five chapters that reveal, on the one hand, how individual, familial, and national sacrifices are mutually intertwined and can even dovetail. On the other hand, sacrifice for love can also enforce silences and cause conflicts—ideas that Shohet reveals through stunningly intimate portrayals of family relations."" * CHOICE * ""Silence and Sacrifice is a rich and remarkable book. . . . it is a moving and thought-provoking account of human struggles to sustain life together and to live with love."" * Ethnos * ""The book rewards a careful reading with ethnographic insights within and across families. It resists easy and flashy conclusions, but instead invites readers to sit with…ambiguity."" * Journal of Asian Studies * ""Shohet continuously weaves together family interaction and life-history narratives with Vietnam's often conflictive past. Thus, while this is a book about family and language, it also illuminates much larger questions about the social legacy of war, political turbulence, and economic change."" * Linguistic Anthropology * ""Shohet shows us how the extraordinary is lived as ordinary, and how continuity, however precarious, is achieved despite numerous tensions, divisions, and differences."" * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *"

Shohet's study responds to a single question: What holds families together despite the strain of a century of turbulent conflict and inequities stemming from liberalizing economic reform? Her chapters answer this question by focusing on three interrelated principles that sustain family connections in the midst of radical change: love, sacrifice, and asymmetrical reciprocity. She examines these concepts in five chapters that reveal, on the one hand, how individual, familial, and national sacrifices are mutually intertwined and can even dovetail. On the other hand, sacrifice for love can also enforce silences and cause conflicts-ideas that Shohet reveals through stunningly intimate portrayals of family relations. * CHOICE *

Author Information

Merav Shohet is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.

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