Sowing and Sewing Inequality in the Home

Abstract

Chapter 4 explores how gender and demographic roles within the translocal household shape and are shaped by the changing balance of agriculture and industry. By outlining changes in smallholder farming practices over the last two decades—such as the widespread transition from labour intensive transplanting to capital intensive broadcasting—it demonstrates how changing patterns of mobility and earnings are both underpinned by and promulgate normative change in the home. Focusing in particular on the rise of Cambodia’s garment industry, the everyday experience of translocal factory and agricultural work is deconstructed in order to explore how inequalities in the home shape both agricultural and industrial livelihoods. By demonstrating, in this way, how inter-household inequalities shape intra-houshold power relations and norms, the chapter aims to highlight the translocal and unequal nature of normative change in the home.