'Playing family': unruly relationality and transnational motherhood. Issue 2 (1st February 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dragojlovic, Ana
• Is Part Of: Gender, place and culture. Volume 23:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 243
• Page End: 256
• Publication Date: 2016-02-01
• Subjects: heterosexual relatedness -- transnational motherhood -- mobility -- Bali -- changing forms of family; relacionamiento heterosexual -- maternidad transnacional -- movilidad -- Bali -- formas cambiantes de familia; 异性恋关係性 -- 跨国母职 -- 能动性 -- 巴厘岛 -- 改变中的家庭形态; Human geography -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; Géographie féministe -- Périodiques; 305.305
• DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2015.1034241
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-369X

Abstract

Abstract : Scholarly literature on interpersonal relationships between tourist women and local men has been largely discussed under the heteronormative framework of love and sexuality. However, the plenitude of ways in which these intimacies manifest themselves requires that we pay attention to the manifold forms of heterosexual relatedness that these intimacies generate. This article considers how intimate liaisons between Western women and Balinese men that commenced as holiday romances in Bali transform into unruly relationality and transnational motherhood. Focusing the analysis on women's narratives, the article explores how subjects engage in the production of sexual, reproductive, social and economic forms of transnational relatedness wherein the mother and child live permanently in the women's country of citizenship while the Balinese father remains in Bali. Rather than aspiring towards a monogamous relationship and cohabitation as heteronormativity prescribes, the article demonstrates how these non-conventional, transnational families perpetually challenge the nuclear family norm, boundaries of normative motherhood and dichotomies of home versus away.