Council on East Asian Studies: “Shedding Their Custom: Forced Marriage and Wartime Social Order in Democratic Kampuchea”

Event time: 
Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - 12:00pm
Location: 
Luce Hall, Room 203 See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520
Event description: 

The Council on East Asian Studies presents:

Rachel Jacobs, PhD Candidate, Comparative Politics, University of Wisconsin-Madison:  “Shedding Their Custom: Forced Marriage and Wartime Social Order in Democratic Kampuchea.”

This presentation looks at social policy and sexual violence in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979.  It asks why forced marriage policies were enacted and how they were implemented.  I argue that forced marriage was not only a tool of social engineering, but also as a targeted strategy of violence through which the Khmer Rouge tried to consolidate their control. This issue has become particularly important in light of the on-going tribunal that has begun to hear its second case against the Khmer Rouge leadership, which includes forced marriage in the charges of crimes against humanity. The regime’s strict ideology and efforts to level society were hallmarks of the Democratic Kampuchea period, but the policies designed to remake family structure and marriages were some of the most pernicious. In theory, traditional marriage practices, along with other religious activities, were banned to eliminate remnants of a hierarchical system; however, the new policies were not implemented uniformly across society. Instead, they were targeted at greater numbers of ethnic minorities and “new people” who had been relocated from the newly depopulated cities. Beyond the Cambodian context, I also seek to conceptualize forced marriage as a tool of sexual violence that is distinct from genocidal rape or forced concubinage.

Admission: 
Free
Open to: 
General Public