Home Dissolution and Family change: Gendered experiences of separation and divorce in rural cambodia

In recent years, the home has emerged as a rich and important site for geographical research. But while the building and creation of family and home life are now cast as highly interconnected processes, few academic studies, particularly in the Global South, have considered what happens to the home and its inhabitants when couples separate or divorce. Inspired by my previous doctoral research and the international media attention in 2008 surrounding a Cambodian couple who desperate, separated by sawing their house in half, this project sheds light on the gendered emotional, cultural, economic, legal and practical issues encountered in dissolving a home and the resultant shifts in meaning and materiality of domestic space.