White gold: a study of gender relations in rural Cambodia

Abstract

What is it like to be a rural farmwoman in contemporary Cambodia? During the past two decades, starting from the 1991 Paris Peace Accord, Cambodia has transformed itself politically and economically. Inescapably these transformations have influenced gender relations within the family and the community. In the rural areas, which are perceived as less affected by the global force and more resistant to the changes, there is a sense of strong attachment to Khmer traditions that is inspired by both Buddhist values and the patriarchy. I argue that the latter is seen as imposing barriers for rural women to advance and to move beyond family enclosure. This thesis considers the construction and transformation of gender identities of rural women and explores barriers and opportunities for their advancement by examining their everydayness as a struggle for identity, recognition, and power. Since the end of civil wars in 1979, international relief and development aid has been pouring into Cambodia together with developmental ideologies, many of them perceived Western. My ethnographic fieldwork in rural Cambodia closely examines how these new gender ideologies are seeping into the Khmer society through development agencies and how rural women receive and resist these ideologies. Through empirical research in farming communities from Battambang, Kampong Speu and Mondulkiri, I seek to make visible women farmers’ everyday lives, their social and gender norms and practices, and their interaction with non-human beings in making meaning and sense of themselves. In rural Cambodia where livelihoods still heavily depend on agriculture, especially rice farming, my thesis argues that gender relations are an integral part of an assemblage of different socio-ecological elements. It is thus important to place a greater emphasis on the roles and importance of more-than-human relations of rice and the surrounding environment in the construction of farmers’ gender identities.