The hydro-logic of genocide: remaking land, water, and bodies in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-79
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Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2019-08-24
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Citation of Original Publication
Rice, S, Tyner, J, Munro-Stasiuk, M, Kimsroy, S, Coakley, C. The hydro-logic of genocide: Remaking land, water, and bodies in democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979. Area. 2019; 52: 386– 393. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12582
Rights
"This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Tyner J, Rice S. Agrarian Marxism, Animal Geographies, and non-human labor in Democratic Kampuchea. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. August 2021. doi:10.1177/25148486211038799, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12582. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited."
Subjects
Abstract
Recent scholarship in hydropolitics and the hydrosocial cycle has emphasized the ways that water
and society are co-constitutive, acknowledging the productive entanglement of hydraulic and social actors
and processes. In this paper, we apply a hydrosocial framework to understand an infamous waterscape of
mass violence. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge planned and partially implemented an extensive
irrigation system to increase rice production in the Cambodian countryside. The programs of rationing,
forced labor, and execution imposed by the government during construction killed up to two million
people. We find that these infrastructural projects helped the Khmer Rouge remake water into a
technology of capital accumulation and social control. The production of these systems enrolled water as
an active agent into new relations of power, providing the state with classification and control over not
only water, but the physical bodies of Cambodian men, women, and children. Furthermore, we find the
Khmer Rouge’s infrastructural violence was predicated on the production of new subjectivities—ones that
emerged from a narrow imagination of idealized rice plants and laboring bodies. This case illustrates how
a pervasive materialist logic, combined with the imperative of capital accumulation, may evolve into
justification for mass murder.