From rice fields to killing fields : nature, life, and labor under the Khmer Rouge /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Tyner, James A., 1966- author.
Edition:First edition.
Imprint:Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press, 2017.
©2017
Description:xxv, 241 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Language:English
Series:Syracuse studies in geography
Syracuse studies in geography.
Subject:Parti communiste du Kampuchea.
Parti communiste du Kampuchea.
Communism -- Cambodia.
Political violence -- Cambodia -- History -- 20th century.
Communism.
Political violence.
Politics and government.
Cambodia -- Politics and government -- 1975-1979.
Cambodia.
History.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11413996
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Varying Form of Title:Nature, life, and labor under the Khmer Rouge
ISBN:9780815635567
0815635567
9780815635413
0815635419
9780815654223
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-236) and index.
Summary:Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist Party of Kampuchea fundamentally transformed the social, economic, political, and natural landscape of Cambodia. During this time, as many as two million Cambodians died from exposure, disease, and starvation, or were executed at the hands of the Party. The dominant interpretation of Cambodian history during this period presents the CPK as a totalitarian, communist, and autarkic regime seeking to reorganize Cambodian society around a primitive, agrarian political economy. From Rice Fields to Killing Fields challenges previous interpretations and provides a documentary-based Marxist interpretation of the political economy of Democratic Kampuchea. Tyner argues that Cambodia's mass violence was the consequence not of the deranged attitudes and paranoia of a few tyrannical leaders but that the violence was structural, the direct result of a series of political and economic reforms that were designed to accumulate capital rapidly: the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of people through forced evacuations, the imposition of starvation wages, the promotion of import-substitution policies, and the intensification of agricultural production through forced labor. Moving beyond the Cambodian genocide, Tyner maintains that it is a mistake to view Democratic Kampuchea in isolation, as an aberration or something unique. Rather, the policies and practices initiated by the Khmer Rouge must be seen in a larger, historical-geographical context.
Other form:Online version: Tyner, James A., 1966- author. From rice fields to killing fields First edition. [Syracuse, New York] : Syracuse University Press, 2017 9780815654223