Gender in a Global/Local World. Farnham, Eng.; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. xii, 150 pp. £60.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4094-3431-3.
This book is part of a series that explores global forces and local gender identities. It contains 11 chapters divided into two main parts. The first three chapters are devoted to adapting James Scott’s theory of resistance to notions of “disciplinary power” and “biopower” and exploring these within the context of postwar gender norms in Cambodia. The author presents arguments that globalization is making space for Cambodian women to forge new political identities through access to technology, discourses on democratic practices that are inclusive, and through material culture shaping new images identifying women as politicians.
The first main section of the book is entitled “Gender, Resistance and Gender-Based Violence.” This section focuses on non-governmental organizations’ approaches and understandings of this subject. It contains slim chapters (co-authored with Mikael Baaz) on the handling of gender-based violence (GBV) issues within the Extraordinary Court of the Chambers of Cambodia (ECCC) and “biopower and resistance” in the ECCC.
Case studies based on interviews with women in politics and NGOs from the 1990s form the basis of the rest of the book. Cambodian perspectives on gendered identities and new roles for women and men were gathered through the author’s interviews with 41 women and men from a variety of political parties between 1997 and 2007. It is not stated how many of each were interviewed. In addition, 11 NGO workers were interviewed from four NGOs. All but two of the interviewees were based in Phnom Penh. For the chapter on how the ECCC dealt with gender-based violence, the author and Mikael Baaz conducted 33 interviews in 2010 of investigating judges, lawyers, prosecutors, witnesses, victims and civil parties. English was the language of most interviews with interpreters used for some. The length and details of the interviews were not reported.
In the chapter reviewing women politicians and their resistance to gendered norms of male power, the author posits that Western models of the state are referred to in order to justify their ambitions. The irony that women in Western states are also politically marginalized is not discussed. The author concludes: “globalization provides subaltern groups with discourses from abroad that they can employ to renegotiate power sites, in this case the gender equalities within the public administration” (99).
The following chapter examines the strategies and approaches of four local non-governmental organizations in combating gender-based violence. Here it is argued that because the NGOs are largely financed by Western organizations, the values of gender they espouse have an influence over the approach of the work. This is not argued so persuasively by the evidence presented, however, especially as the chapter focuses more on techniques of male trainers with men in local communities and less on value systems and gendered identities.
From initially focusing on women, the NGOs moved to include men in their training and awareness-raising campaigns. Concepts of universalism (in so far as hegemonic masculinity is at play) and particularism are used to examine men’s roles as family members (fathers, sons, husbands) and as those who hold most power in society. The subject position of women in Cambodian society as marginalized and passive is discussed as a hurdle that both men and women have to overcome in order for gender-based violence to be reduced. It would have been interesting for the author to include the approaches to combat GBV by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs since it was the key institution in crafting the law against domestic violence and also works with NGOs to spread key messages and help change attitudes of men and women.
One of the more interesting chapters of the book is an examination of the struggles to get the issue of gender-based violence to be part of the ECCC agenda. These focused foremost on the phenomenon of “forced marriages” of which up to 500,000 took place during the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979. These marriages were often conducted en masse, among couples that did not have a say in their union.
In light of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 that recognizes the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace negotiations, various international and local human rights organizations began to advance the issue of “forced marriage” as a legitimate civil party complaint. However, some court staff, including those who themselves remained in forced marriages, objected to these cases. The author writes: “Male Cambodian court staff, some of whom still live in ‘forced marriages’, seemingly obstruct or refuse to admit the existence of trauma, thereby undermining the survivors’ credibility… In all, the resistance from the men in power was often substantial against the new victims’ stories of ‘forced marriages’” (65) and this had the result of undermining the confidence of some witnesses in the efficacy of the ECCC to deliberate their cases with impartiality.
This book will be of interest to Southeast Asianists who teach or study global/local gender relations. So, too, it will be of interest to scholars and students of Cambodia generally, and especially to those interested in post-1975 social developments.
Kate Grace Frieson
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 358-359