‘Land for my children’: Gendered moral economies, social reproduction and resistance against land grabs in rural Cambodia

Abstract

This article elaborates the connections between women's roles in household and community social reproduction and their leadership in resistance against land dispossession. Drawing on interviews with women land activists in two rural provinces, situated in south and central Cambodia, it examines the beliefs and processes of meaning-making underpinning women's activism against state-sanctioned land acquisitions through an examination of the symbols, discourses and imaginaries of land, home and social reproductive labour that embed their struggles. It argues that rural women's resistance makes visible gendered moral economies—moored to agrarian social relations and shaped by the modalities of social reproduction—that legitimate contestation against state-sanctioned land dispossession.