Legal Pluralism, Gendered Discourses and Hybridity in Land-Titling Practices in Cambodia

• This article describes and analyses the tensions, ambivalence, and hybridity that prevail in the nexus between discourses of gender and the legal pluralism of the new, formalized, and customary ways of handling land titles. Based on empirical research in Cambodia, it reveals a number of mechanisms, challenges, and inconsistencies in the practice of land-titling. Foremost, the practice of titling seems to be highly informed by local discourses of marriage, family, gender, and age, which all affect to whom land is assigned; this leaves a hybrid construction in the nexus between statutory law and customary practices. The article departs from this observation and adds three contributions on a theoretical level to existing research: by incorporating the dimensions of discourse analysis and legal hybridity, by linking the concept of legal pluralism to the process of hybridization, and by introducing the notion of hybridity of implementation as a supplement to hybridity of law.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Sociologi

Sociology

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)