Katherine Brickell

‘Mapping’ and ‘doing’ critical geographies of home:

This paper reviews the diverse literatures on negative experiences of home at the domestic scale and sets out an agenda to further ‘critical geographies of home’. Tying into broader debates in critical geography on the delineations between the ‘mapping’ of exclusionary landscapes versus the ‘doing’ of something to transform them, the paper finds that the line between these two modes should not always be dichotomously drawn. Now is the time that the burgeoning interest in, and catalogue of research on, home is capitalized upon by pushing towards a critical geography that simultaneously illuminates and catalyses the addressing of domestic injustice.

‘The unbearable heaviness of being’ reflections on female altruism in Cambodia, Philippines, The Gambia and Costa Rica

Reviewing existing scholarship and drawing on our own experience of microlevel qualitative research on gender in countries in three regions of the Global South (Cambodia, the Philippines, Costa Rica and The Gambia), this article examines patterns of women’s altruistic behaviour within poor family-based households. As a quality and practice labeled as ‘feminine’, the article illuminates the motives, dimensions and dynamics that characterise this apparently enduring female trait. It also makes some tentative suggestions as to how the links between women and altruism might be more systematically examined, problematized and addressed in development, and gender and development (GAD) analysis and policy.

“The Whole World Is Watching”: Intimate Geopolitics of Forced Eviction and Women's Activism in Cambodia

Through fourteen in-depth interviews 1 conducted in February 2013 with women from Boeung Kak Lake—a high-profile community under threat in Phnom Penh—this article argues that the occurrence of, and activism against, forced eviction is an embodiment of “intimate geopolitics.” The article demonstrates the manifold relationship that forced eviction reflects and ferments between homes, bodies, the nation-state, and the geopolitical transformation of Southeast Asia. Forced eviction is framed as a geopolitical issue, one that leads to innermost incursions into everyday life, one that has spurred on active citizenship and collective action evidencing the injustices of dispossession to diverse audiences, and one that has rendered female activists’ intimate relationships further vulnerable. In doing so, it charts how Boeung Kak Lake women have rewritten the political script in Cambodia by publicly contesting the inevitability accorded to human rights abuses in the post-genocide country.

The ‘Stubborn Stain’ on Development: Gendered Meanings of Housework (Non-)Participation in Cambodia

Abstract  The persistence of intra-household inequality is widely regarded as a ‘stubborn stain’ on development achievements and aspirations. As a key hindrance, this article considers gendered meanings of housework undertaken in male-headed households of Siem Reap, Cambodia. Encompassing cooking, cleaning and child-care as forms of unpaid labour performed in the home, the article uses in-depth interviews to reveal the differential discourses that men and women draw upon to explain current variances in the (non)-sharing of this work. It brings to the fore the diversity, and divergence, of meanings surrounding this everyday practice, discursive domains of domestic inequality which must inform future development interventions and programmes. Until such time that these underlying discourses are taken seriously in the development arena, the article argues that womens housework will remain largely tied to appeals to cultures, traditions and customs that guard against the ‘cleaning up’ of housework injustice.

“We don’t forget the old rice pot when we get the new one”: Discourses on Ideals and Practices of Women in Contemporary Cambodia

Drawing on microlevel research with men and women of differing ages living in rural and urban Siem Reap (home to the global heritage and tourist site of Angkor), this article focuses on the key discourses and practices that men and women draw on to (de)stabilize putatively traditional ideals of Cambodian womanhood and to (re)situate them in the contemporary period. Mapping the complex ways that people represent, make sense of, and respond to prerevolutionary cultural norms of female behavior in a very different era (with particular, though not exclusive, attention paid to mobility and education), the article demonstrates how deeper ideological changes concerning women’s relationship to Khmer tradition will have to accompany the surface reordering of Cambodian gender relations if equality between women and men is to be achieved. Until then, the ideal woman in contemporary Cambodian society is ultimately one who can creatively negotiate and balance the multiple demands placed on her by society, family, and self.

Visual Critiques of Tourist Development: Host-Employed Photography in Vietnam

Abstract A considerable amount of research within tourism studies has been undertaken into the desires, motivations and behaviours of tourists, yet resident perspectives on tourism have been largely overlooked. Moreover, there remains a discernable lack of research that harnesses creative methods that acknowledge the downplayed gaze of the host, particularly in the developing world. This paper pushes this agenda forward by using host-employed photography (HEP) to examine perspectives on, and experiences of, tourism development in Hue, Central Vietnam. The paper argues that until methods such as HEP and video are more widely engaged, the needs and priorities of host communities will remain behind the lens cap.

Gendered violences and rule of/by law in Cambodia

This intervention is based on research in Cambodia on domestic violence and forced eviction. It draws on the distinction between rule of/by law to examine women’s experiences of rights claiming. While ‘rule of law’ is a value to be respected and a mechanism via which to guarantee justice and human rights to all citizens, ‘rule by law’ is a distortion that is more easily conceived of as an instrument of power and oppression. The intervention’s emphasis on the blurring between these distinctions highlights the stark absence of feminist geography work in the growing field of legal geographies.

Participatory video drama research in transitional Vietnam: post-production narratives on marriage, parenting and social evils

Based on two years of participatory video drama (PVD) research with men and women in the city of Huế, this article explores perspectives on, and experiences of, socio-economic transition and its influence on domestic life in Vietnam. Through a combination of output analysis, group screening sessions and individual interviews, it concentrates on the themes of marriage, parenting and ‘social evils’ which emerged in the PVD. It demonstrates how familial tensions collectively identified in the workshop and told in a single video-narrative are complicated by the more nuanced discourses that emerge from co-produced analysis in the post-production period. These illuminate a greater plurality of voices towards the liberalisation of the Vietnamese economy and the new life choices that this brings.

Geographical frontiers of gendered violence

This article acts as an introduction to the suite of interventions which aim to generate belated conversation across geography on gendered violences. As such, it brings together and formalizes dialogue convened at the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers(IBG) (RGS-IBG) Annual Conference 2013 on the theme of ‘new geographical frontiers’. Organized by the Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group as part of the ‘100+’ series of events marking the centenary of women’s admission to the RGS-IBG, a plenary panel on gendered violences provided case study insights from the Global North and South on this pressing issue. While far from exhaustive, we explain how the collective of interventions on rape, domestic violence, state-sponsored violence and religious and racial hate crime highlight a multiple set of gendered violences that affect the lives of women and men in different settings.

Gendered violences The elephant in the room and moving beyond the elephantine

In this short piece we identify some developments in recent scohlarship on gendered violence, as well as key issues highlighted in this collection of interventions. Rather than being the silent ‘elelphant in the room’, the spatial and power relations underlying myriad gendered violences need to become a mainstream concern within a wide range of geographical research and thinking e.g. social, economic, political, migration and cultural geogrpahies. Likewise, other scholars and practitioners need to be attentive to the geogrpahical underpinnings and dimensions of gendered.