Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A High Price to Pay: Weddings and Waithood in Cambodia

A High Price to Pay: Weddings and Waithood in Cambodia Young people across the globe are increasingly likely to experience waithood—a prolonged period between adolescence and adulthood. Simultaneously, marriage expenses are on the rise. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cambodia, this article examines the relationship between the commercialisation of weddings and waithood. I argue that the high cost of weddings puts intense strain on many rural Cambodian families. Under economic conditions in which it is difficult to secure a stable and lucrative livelihood, young men often struggle to raise sufficient funds for bridewealth, and may delay marriage and the transition into adulthood as a result. As their life trajectories take on new temporalities, young men’s relationships with their elders can grow tense. By focusing on intergenerational dynamics, this article provides a deeper understanding of how rising marriage expenses and waithood shape not only the lives of young people but those of their family members as well. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Taylor & Francis

A High Price to Pay: Weddings and Waithood in Cambodia

Estes, Jennifer
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology , Volume 24 (1): 17 – Jan 1, 2023
Download PDF
17 pages

A High Price to Pay: Weddings and Waithood in Cambodia

Abstract

Young people across the globe are increasingly likely to experience waithood—a prolonged period between adolescence and adulthood. Simultaneously, marriage expenses are on the rise. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cambodia, this article examines the relationship between the commercialisation of weddings and waithood. I argue that the high cost of weddings puts intense strain on many rural Cambodian families. Under economic conditions in which it is difficult to secure a stable and...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/a-high-price-to-pay-weddings-and-waithood-in-cambodia-8KB7oL0bsX
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2022 The Australian National University
ISSN
1740-9314
eISSN
1444-2213
DOI
10.1080/14442213.2022.2132356
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Young people across the globe are increasingly likely to experience waithood—a prolonged period between adolescence and adulthood. Simultaneously, marriage expenses are on the rise. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cambodia, this article examines the relationship between the commercialisation of weddings and waithood. I argue that the high cost of weddings puts intense strain on many rural Cambodian families. Under economic conditions in which it is difficult to secure a stable and lucrative livelihood, young men often struggle to raise sufficient funds for bridewealth, and may delay marriage and the transition into adulthood as a result. As their life trajectories take on new temporalities, young men’s relationships with their elders can grow tense. By focusing on intergenerational dynamics, this article provides a deeper understanding of how rising marriage expenses and waithood shape not only the lives of young people but those of their family members as well.

Journal

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jan 1, 2023

Keywords: Weddings; Marriage; Waithood; Youth; Intergenerational Relations; Cambodia

References

  • The ‘Stubborn Stain’ on Development: Gendered Meanings of Housework (Non-)Participation in Cambodia
  • Youth and Cultural Practice
  • Contested Mobilities: Gendered Migration Pressures among Cambodian Youth
  • Is Regular Migration Safer Migration? Insights from Thailand
  • Svay, a Khmer Village in Cambodia
  • On Waiting Willfully in Urban Uganda: Toward an Anthropology of Pace
  • Coming of Age in Peace, Prosperity, and Connectivity: Cambodia’s Young Electorate and Its Impact on the Ruling Party’s Political Strategies
  • I Could Be the Last Man: Changing Masculinities in Enga Society
  • Regulating Over-Indebtedness: Local State Power in Cambodia's Microfinance Market
  • Placing Cambodia’s Agrarian Transition in an Emerging Chinese Food Regime
  • The Exclusionary Power of Microfinance: Over-Indebtedness and Land Dispossession in Cambodia
  • Precarious Debt: Microfinance Subjects and Intergenerational Dependency in Cambodia
  • Translocal Precarity: Labor and Social Reproduction in Cambodia
  • Negotiating Love and Marriage in Contemporary Senegal: A Good Man Is Hard to Find
  • Marriage Expenses in Rural China
  • Migration as Distinction?: Class, Consumption and Rural-Urban Migration in Contemporary Cambodia
  • The Scorpion’s Sting: Youth, Marriage and the Struggle for Social Maturity in Niger
  • Celebrating Distinctions: Common and Conspicuous Weddings in Rural Namibia
  • Marriage as an End or the End of Marriage? Change and Continuity in Southern African Marriages
  • Friendship as Liveliness, Friendship as Discipline: Un(Der)Employed Young People’s Peer-to-Peer Relations and the Reproduction of Everyday Village Life in Rural Indonesia
  • The Economic Imperatives of Marriage: Emerging Practices and Identities Among Youth in the Middle East
  • ‘Slow Marriage,’ ‘FastBogadi’: Change and Continuity in Marriage in Botswana
  • The Individual and the Transformation of Bridewealth in Rural North China