Home SOS

‘I read Home SOS while wearing a brand name pullover made by Cambodian women garment factory workers. Brickell’s gripping interviews and her bridging domestic violence to gendered forced evictions make me wonder what violences are sewn into my clothes. This is such an innovative, provocative book.’ Cynthia Enloe, Research Professor, International Development, Clark University, USA ‘The home, Katherine Brickell argues, is neither a pre-political nor unexceptional place but instead a crucial site where the production and destruction of life is most powerfully expressed. Drawing on empirical evidence on domestic violence and forced evictions in Cambodia, Brickell provides a conceptually rich account of bio- and necropolitical relations that will resonate for all who are concerned with and seek to challenge the interrelated oppressions and violence that are manifest both inside and outside - but always connected to - the home.’ James A. Tyner, Professor of Geography, Kent State University, USA ‘This is an important book with theoretical interventions and insights that take us beyond the confines of both Cambodia and Gender as analytic categories, even while remaining solidly grounded in each. Expanding the terms under which we conceive gender-based violence, Brickell puts forward a novel approach to social analysis that I will call a ‘home-based’ analysis. Through the lens of the home, which she argues is ‘intimately connected, rather than sealed off’ from the impacts of political processes (p. 8), this book connects the seemingly disparate episodes of forced eviction and domestic violence.’ Courtney Work, National Chengchi University (Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography) ‘…the book accomplishes a theoretically rich yet empirically grounded account of domestic violence and forced eviction as interrelated oppressions and brutalisations of domestic life. The depth of analysis is a timely offering to critical feminist geography and perhaps one that could only be achieved by the longitudinal nature of this study.’ Dr. Charlie Rumsby, University of Coventry (2021 book review from Gender, Place and Culture)