Everyday Politics of (In)formal Marital Dissolution in Cambodia and Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Placing contemporary marriage and its dissolution at its heart, this paper explores rural women's experiences of customary and legal unions in Cambodia and Indonesia. We contend that women's navigation in-between ‘informal’ ethics and morals versus ‘formal’ state-sponsored legal doctrine constitute a form of ‘everyday politics’ that has been unduly neglected. Critiquing the taken-for-granted nature of marriage in academic scholarship, we show how the axiomatic notion that marriage registration is inherently beneficial to women is complicated by the nonlinear and mobile trajectories of conjugality in our two case study communities. In turn, we call for marriage and its breakdown to receive more sustained and nuanced analysis as the primary unit of Southeast Asian life.

KEYWORDS:

• Marriage
• custom
• law
• Cambodia
• Indonesia

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to the Royal Geographical Society-with Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) for the grant which funded the research by Katherine Brickell in Cambodia. Support is also acknowledged by Maria Platt for the Endeavour Research Fellowship from the Commonwealth Government Department of Education, Science and Training, as well as two Postgraduate Research Fellowships from La Trobe University, Australia. Maria would also like to thank the Asia Research Institute for additional fieldwork support.

Notes

1. The actual date for Indonesian independence has been disputed, with Indonesia recognising it as occurring on 17 August 1945. However, Dutch forces did not cede defeat until 1949. However, official Dutch recognition of 1945 as marking Indonesian independence occurred in 2005.

2. It is important to note, however, that the latest Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS4) has made efforts to distinguish between registered, adat and religious marriages, although little distinction between different types of divorces is made.

3. The World Bank-funded Land Management and Administration Project was established with the stated aim of improving security of tenure for the poor and reducing land conflicts in Cambodia by systematically registering land and issuing titles across the country.

4. Both data sets use pseudonyms for participants.

5. Arun moving to live with the family of Chhean reflects the tendency in Cambodia to follow a pattern of uxorilocality. See Ledgerwood (1995) for a detailed account of kinship relationships in the country and her rebuttal of Népote's (1992) argument that the Khmer society was organised along matrilineal lines.

6. Article 975 of the 2007 Civil Code states that husband and wife must be jointly liable for obligations to a debtor that are agreed in writing by both spouses.