Storytelling Domestic Violence: Feminist Politics of Participatory Video in Cambodia

Abstract

Domestic violence is often referred to in development circles as the most pervasive, yet least recognised, human rights abuse in the world. Based on four participatory video (PV) workshops in Cambodia, the paper analyses spontaneous and orchestrated forms of storytelling on this normatively “private” issue. Bringing into conversation emerging geographical scholarship on storytelling with more established PV literature, it provides an exploration of the feminist politics that arise when participants’ narratives belie established academic knowledge on the causes of, and solutions to, domestic violence.  In tandem with questioning whose narrative authority “counts”, the paper works to problematise commonly held assumptions about the efficacy of PV to overcome hegemonic norms and discourses.