Home SOS: Gender, Violence, and Survival in Crisis Ordinary Cambodia

by Katherine Brickell

Overview

Drawing on 15 years of fieldwork and over 300 interviews, Home SOS argues that the home is central to the violence and gendered contingency of existence in crisis ordinary Cambodia. 

• Provides an original book-length study which brings domestic violence and forced eviction into twin view
• Offers relational insights between different violences to build an integrated understanding of women’s experiences of home life
• Mobilises the crisis ordinary as a critical pedagogy and imaginary through which to understand everyday gendered politics of survival
• Positions domestic violence and forced eviction as manifestations of intimate war against women’s homes and bodies located inside and outside of the traditional purview of war
• Reaffirms and reprioritises the home as a political entity which is foundational to the concerns of human geography

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118898420
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	05/21/2020
Series:	RGS-IBG Book Series
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Katherine Brickell is Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research has been recognised by the 2014 Gill Memorial award from the RGS-IBG and 2016 Philip Leverhulme Prize from the Leverhulme Trust. She is journal editor of Gender, Place & Culture, former Chair of the RGS-IBG Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group, and has co-edited four books including The Handbook of Displacement (2020), The Handbook of Contemporary Cambodia (2017), Geographies of Forced Eviction (2017) and Translocal Geographies (2011). Katherine's current research focuses on developing feminist legal geography as an agenda.

Table of Contents

List of Figures x

List of Abbreviations xii

About the Author xiv

Series Editor’s Preface xv

Acknowledgements xvi

1 Fire in the House 1

2 Conceptualising Domestic Crises 27

3 National Trajectories of Crisis in Cambodia 47

4 Attrition Warfare, Precarious Homes, and Truncated Marriages 67

5 (Un)Invited and (Un)Eventful Spaces of Resistance and Citizenship 109

6 Intimate Wounds of Law and Lawfare 156

7 Dwelling in the Crisis Ordinary 195

References 209

Index 251

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘I read Home SOS while wearing a brand name pullover made by Cambodian women garment factory workers. Brickell’s gripping interviews and her bridging domestic violence to gendered forced evictions make me wonder what violences are sewn into my clothes. This is such an innovative, provocative book.’
Cynthia Enloe, Research Professor, International Development, Clark University, USA 

‘The home, Katherine Brickell argues, is neither a pre-political nor unexceptional place but instead a crucial site where the production and destruction of life is most powerfully expressed. Drawing on empirical evidence on domestic violence and forced evictions in Cambodia, Brickell provides a conceptually rich account of bio- and necropolitical relations that will resonate for all who are concerned with and seek to challenge the interrelated oppressions and violence that are manifest both inside and outside - but always connected to - the home.’
James A. Tyner, Professor of Geography, Kent State University, USA

Editorial Reviews

‘I read Home SOS while wearing a brand name pullover made by Cambodian women garment factory workers. Brickell’s gripping interviews and her bridging domestic violence to gendered forced evictions make me wonder what violences are sewn into my clothes. This is such an innovative, provocative book.’
Cynthia Enloe, Research Professor, International Development, Clark University, USA

‘The home, Katherine Brickell argues, is neither a pre-political nor unexceptional place but instead a crucial site where the production and destruction of life is most powerfully expressed. Drawing on empirical evidence on domestic violence and forced evictions in Cambodia, Brickell provides a conceptually rich account of bio- and necropolitical relations that will resonate for all who are concerned with and seek to challenge the interrelated oppressions and violence that are manifest both inside and outside - but always connected to - the home.’
James A. Tyner, Professor of Geography, Kent State University, USA

‘This is an important book with theoretical interventions and insights that take us beyond the confines of both Cambodia and Gender as analytic categories, even while remaining solidly grounded in each. Expanding the terms under which we conceive gender-based violence, Brickell puts forward a novel approach to social analysis that I will call a ‘home-based’ analysis. Through the lens of the home, which she argues is ‘intimately connected, rather than sealed off’ from the impacts of political processes (p. 8), this book connects the seemingly disparate episodes of forced eviction and domestic violence.’
Courtney Work, National Chengchi University (Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography)

‘…the book accomplishes a theoretically rich yet empirically grounded account of domestic violence and forced eviction as interrelated oppressions and brutalisations of domestic life. The depth of analysis is a timely offering to critical feminist geography and perhaps one that could only be achieved by the longitudinal nature of this study.’
Dr. Charlie Rumsby, University of Coventry (2021 book review from Gender, Place and Culture)

From the Publisher