In September 2005 the Cambodian National Assembly ratified the ‘Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of the Victims’. Drawing on in-depth research undertaken in Siem Reap and Pursat Provinces over a two-year period, this seminar explores the hiatus that has emerged between promises enshrined in legal reform and progress realised on the ground.
Through individual interviews, household surveys, and community level participatory video dramas, Katherine traces the everyday politics of the 2005 law from the perspective of different lay and institutional stakeholders. This seminar questions how the law has been variously embraced and rejected in the homes, commune councils, and government offices that contribute to its success or failure to meet its objective, to: ‘prevent domestic violence, protect the victims and strengthen the culture of non-violence and harmony within the households in society in the Kingdom of Cambodia’.
The seminar is based on research findings emerging from a joint funded study by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and UK Department for International Development (DfID) entitled ‘Lay and Institutional Knowledges of Domestic Violence Law: Towards Active Citizenship in Rural and Urban Cambodia’ (2012-2014).
About the Speaker:
Dr Katherine Brickell is Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a development and social/cultural geographer with expertise in the qualitative analysis of gendered injustices which manifest in, and emerge from, the interactions between macro and micro level socio-economic change in Cambodia and Vietnam.
She is currently writing her first monograph Home SOS: Gender, Injustice and Rights in Cambodia. See www.katherinebrickell.com and Twitter @K_Brickell for further information on her work.
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