Khmer Women on the Move: Exploring Work and Life in Urban Cambodia (Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory) - Hardcover

Derks, Annuska

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9780824831288: Khmer Women on the Move: Exploring Work and Life in Urban Cambodia (Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0824831284 ISBN 13: 9780824831288

Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr, 2008

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This work offers an ethnology of young Cambodian women who move from the countryside to work in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh. The book challenges the dominant image of these young rural women - that they are controlled by global economic forces and national development policies or trapped by history and restrictive customs.

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From the Publisher:

"This is a fascinating ethnography about young Khmer women moving to the city to work in the garment factories, in prostitution, and as street sellers. The author makes good use of new theoretical approaches in anthropology that focus on negotiation and creativity in situations of rapid change. The result is not only a welcome new book on post-war Cambodia but an important addition to the literature on women, migration, and labor in Southeast Asia and the world." --Judy Ledgerwood, Northern Illinois University

Khmer Women on the Move offers a fascinating ethnography of young Cambodian women who move from the countryside to work in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh. Female migration and urban employment are rising, triggered by Cambodia's transition from a closed socialist system to an open market economy. This book challenges the dominant views of these young rural women--that they are controlled by global economic forces and national development policies or trapped by restrictive customs and Cambodia's tragic history. The author shows instead how these women shape and influence the processes of change taking place in present-day Cambodia.

Based on field research among women working in the garment industry, prostitution, and street trading, the book explores the complex interplay between their experiences and actions, gender roles, and the broader historical context. The focus on women involved in different kinds of work allows new insight into women's mobility, highlighting similarities and differences in working conditions and experiences. Young women's ability to utilize networks of increasing size and complexity allows them to move into and between geographic and social spaces that extend far beyond the village context. Women's mobility is further expressed in the flexible patterns of behavior that young rural women display when trying to fulfill their own "modern" aspirations along with their family obligations and cultural ideals.

About the Author:

Annuska Derks is currently a coordinator and researcher in a comparative research project on debt, mobility, and dependency in Southeast Asia with the University of Berne and the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, Geneva.

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