James Tyner

Kent State University | KSU · Department of Geography

In 2022, engineers at Rice University revealed a new procedure to reanimate the corpse of a spider. Hailed as a biotechnological achievement, the experimental procedures designed to convert death into useful, productive labor portend a deepening of necrocapitalism and the violence of science. In this commentary, we call attention to three overlappi...

Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) embarked on a genocidal program of sweeping economic, social, and political change. In an effort to modernize Democratic Kampuchea, as Cambodia was renamed, CPK officials forced the entire populace to clear forests; build dams, canals, and reservoirs; and grow rice in an effort to accumu...

For holistic accounts of past and present genocides to exist, the production of critical geographies of genocide, produced at the interface of human and physical geography, is vital. The emergent area of critical physical geography (CPG) scholarship stands to provide such holistic accounts in addition to providing genocide studies with a much‐neede...

Genocide is an inherently spatial process, and yet, until recently, geographers have not readily engaged with the topic. This has changed, however, and geographers now stand alongside historians, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists in the study of historical and contemporary genocides. In so doing, geographers...

The major contribution of this research is the analysis of chronic waiting of mobile subjects whose unclassifiability can neither situate them here nor there. Their undefinable political belongingness, spatial in-betweeness, alleged racial and ethnic impurity justifies the multi-modal and multi-axial forms of direct and indirect violence through ex...

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to think more deeply about who and what we value in society, with value determined not on conditions set by capital but instead on achieving meaning in life. In this commentary, we pose a series of interconnected questions to geography: What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Furthermore, is such a l...

The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to think more deeply about who and what we value in society, with value determined not on conditions set by capital but instead on achieving meaning in life. In this commentary, we pose a series of interconnected questions to geography: What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Furthermore, is such a l...

Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist Party of Kampuchea sought to establish a non-monetary and non-market economy. In the process, however, upwards of 1.7 million men, women, and children perished. This paper provides a critical evaluation of the CPK’s decision to eliminate money in its attempt to transform Cambodia’s pre-revolutionary economy into...

Between 1975 and 1979 upwards of two million men, women, and children died in the Cambodia genocide. Decades after the cessation of direct violence, the question of reconciliation in Cambodia remains fraught, in part because of competing claims over the meaning of reconciliation; and also because of the ‘authorship’ of Cambodia’s past. Coincident w...

The Cambridge World History of Violence - edited by Louise Edwards March 2020

Between 1975 and 1979 approximately two million men, women, and children perished during the Cambodian Genocide. These deaths are attributed to specific administrative policies and practices initiated by the senior leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), all of which were geared toward the basic objective of increasing agricultural pr...

Often discussed, the spatial extent and scope of the Khmer Rouge irrigation network has not been previously mapped on a national scale. Although low resolution, early Landsat images can identify water features accurately when using vegetation indices. We discuss the methods involved in mapping historic irrigation on a national scale, as well as com...

Recent scholarship in hydropolitics and the hydrosocial cycle has emphasised 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 Kh...

Between 1975 and 1979, upwards of two million men, women, and children perished from starvation, disease, exhaustion, inadequate medical care, torture, murder, and execution during the Cambodian genocide. Within this context, the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh has figured prominently in the literature, especially with regard to the violence encoun...

On April 17, 1975 Khmer Rouge soldiers began the forcible evacuation of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city. The evacuation has been the subject of considerable debate surrounding the Cambodian genocide and remains a topic of prime importance toward the understanding of Khmer Rouge policy and practice. In this field note, we present a geographicall...

Foundational to Jim Crow era segregation and discrimination in the United States was a “ra-cialized reputational politics,” that constructed African Americans as not only inferior, but as villainous threats to the normative order, leading to the lynching of thousands of African Americans. While black villainy is a destructive force within society,...

Between 1975 and 1979 Cambodia was witness to a period of mass violence in which approximately two million people died from famine, disease, and murder. This violence was the result of policies initiated by the Communist Party of Kampuchea, better known as the Khmer Rouge. To date, little research has systematically or empirically studied the geogr...

Between 1975 and 1979 approximately two million men, women, and children died during the Cambodian genocide. These deaths are attributed to specific administrative policies and practices initiated by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), all of which were geared toward the basic objective of increasing agricultural production as a means of buildi...

Between 1975 and 1979 upwards of two million men, women, and children died from exposure, exhaustion, disease, starvation, and murder under the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Pervasive to the widespread forms of structural and physical violence was a complex security apparatus. In this paper, my direct concern lies not in the legalities of sur...

Between 1975 and 1979 the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK; also known as the “Khmer Rouge”) sought to establish a new society governed by a Marxist–Leninist‐inspired vision of collective ownership. In the process, however, upwards of two million men, women and children succumbed to extreme exhaustion, disease, starvation, torture, murder and exec...

This research examines the diffusion process of the religious institutions of Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity in coastal China, using the case study of Zhejiang Province since 1949. The spatial distribution dynamics and diffusion process associated with the religious establishments are presented and discussed in the GIS environment. The results...

Over the last 20 years, urban political ecology has made substantial contributions to the study of urban ‘socionatures’, part of the field's aim of applying political ecology to urban space. At the same time, urban political ecology has been limited by a perspective that tends to confine urbanisation to urban spatial forms; a conflation of process...

Mortality is most often conceived in demographic terms as the state or condition of being dead. Consequently, numerous terms and measures have been developed to classify and document patterns and causes of mortality. Recent scholarship has broadened the concept of mortality to consider the political, economic, and cultural meanings and practices su...

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 thi...

The geographical and historical analysis of mass violence, such as genocide, has been limited by incomplete data sets. Accordingly, geographers and other social scientists have in recent years attempted to synthesize disparate sources of information in order to provide more robust analyses of the patterns and trends of mass violence. In this articl...

In this commentary, I provide critical feedback to a suite of interventions directed toward the geographic study of gendered violence. In furthering this dialogue, I identify three interrelated objects that must be foundational to any geographic study of gendered violence: putting the ‘person’ into interpersonal violence; resituating understandings...

Between 1975 and 1979, approximately 2 million men, women, and children died in Cambodia during the brutal regime of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK; the Khmer Rouge). To date, much scholarship has focused on the widespread practices of torture, starvation, and execution; decidedly less attention has been directed toward the cultural or aesth...

Between 1975 and 1979, approximately two million Cambodians died from exposure, disease, starvation, and execution under the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as the Khmer Rouge. The standard narrative interprets these murders as the brutal acts of a cadre of radical communist ideologues, bent on establishing a pure, despotic, and auta...

Between 1975 and 1979 approximately two million people died in the Cambodian genocide. We argue that the mass violence that transpired during this period was a manifestation of the Khmer Rouge's attempt to make life. Through a focus on the production of both violence and vulnerability we direct attention to the contradictory policies and practices...

During the Cambodian genocide (1975–1979), approximately 200 security-centers were established by the Khmer Rouge. One of these institutions, designated by the code-name S-21, had the primary responsibility of punishing individuals deemed ‘guilty’ of crimes against the state. Much research has examined S-21, albeit from the standpoint of its symbol...

The discipline of geography has a long albeit uneven engagement with militarism. This is witnessed in the on-going efforts of geographers to influence military policy as well as the development of technologies used in military action. This forum, based on papers originally presented at the 2014 Association of American Geographers annual meeting in...

Violence on the one hand is taken as something natural and normal. On the other hand, certain violent actions, such as hate-crimes, are portrayed as forms of exceptional violence, while systemic inequalities are rendered ordinary. In this paper, I de-naturalize the concept of violence through a critical evaluation of hate-crimes. I argue that the c...

Recent work in environmental politics has sought to expand the domain of ‘the geopolitical’ to include geologic transformation, bringing the human alteration of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric forms into the political sphere. In line with this ‘geologic turn’, this paper examines China's recent land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea...

This paper extends our understanding of Malcolm X as both a critical theorist of geography and a radical political philosopher. Through an examination of speeches by Malcolm X, I outline his particular geographic understanding of civil and human rights, and detail how place figured prominently in his articulation of racial oppression. More specific...

What, James Tyner asks, separates the murder of a runaway youth from the death of a father denied a bone-marrow transplant because of budget cuts? Moving beyond our culture’s reductive emphasis on whether a given act of violence is intentional-and may therefore count as deliberate murder-Tyner interrogates the broader forces that produce violence....

In this article we highlight the changing geographies of race and racism, from the era of European colonialism to the present. We emphasize the co-constitution of race and space and highlight how epistemological understandings of ‘race’ greatly inform racist practice. Our objective in this article is to consider the legacy and malleability of racia...

Recognizing that war and terrorism are inherently geographic, we aim to highlight the expanding geographies of war and terrorism. We believe that all-things-military are increasingly permeating the everyday and everywhere. The blurring of ‘militarized’ and ‘civilian’ space and the overlap of military technologies and everyday life is a distinctive...

On April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the armed forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Cambodia, however, was not primed for revolution. This is significant in that it contributed to specific postconflict policies and programs initiated by the CPK, including the promotion of geographic education and the use of p...

Recent events in Hong Kong direct attention to a disturbing trend - the neglect of (selected) life. The society is increasingly discarding its policies and practices concerning immigrant workers, foreign pregnant women and impoverished men and women, whom it deems unworthy of protection or assistance. In this article, I argue for a radical cosmopol...

Between 1975 and 1979 approximately two million people died in the Cambodian genocide. We argue that the mass violence that transpired during this period was a manifestation of the Khmer Rouge's attempt to make life. Through a focus on the production of both violence and vulnerability we direct attention to the contradictory policies and practices...

Between 1975 and 1979, more than 2 million men, women, and children died in what has become known as the Cambodian genocide. In just under four years, approximately one quarter of the country's prewar population succumbed to arbitrary murder, torture, detention, starvation, and disease. Amidst these acts of destruction, however, the Communist Party...

The role of geography within the study of conflict is increasingly popular, and “space” is taken seriously as an essential component of understanding conflict. Research areas in which spatial concepts have particular resonance include the location of conflict, the location(s) of violence within conflicts, diffusion and contagion patterns of violenc...

Between 1975 and 1979 approximately two million people died in Cambodia. Whereas most literature has focused on the ‘direct’ killing associated with torture and execution, we focus on the structures of violence that contributed to the death of men, women and children through famine-related causes. Accordingly, this paper sits at the intersection of...

Mortality has figured prominently in the field of population geography; death, conversely, has received minimal attention. This has important implications given that mortality directs attention primarily to populations whereas death focuses attention toward individual bodies. In this progress report, I situate the geographic study of mortality with...

Women's everyday experiences in war remain occluded; moreover, the bodily impacts of war remain hidden, masked by masculinist accounts of warfare that too often glorify heroic male combatants. In this article, we contribute, first, to the ongoing project to understand violence in everyday life and, second, to the understanding, specifically, of wom...

The Cambodian genocide continues to be framed as a “communist” revolution, which leads to incomplete and inaccurate conclusions. This paper applies a Marxist critique to the Khmer Rouge's so-called “communist revolution” through the twin tasks of (1) retheorizing Democratic Kampuchea's economy as an exploitative system of production for exchange an...

The study of the memorialization of landscapes of violence is a vibrant field both within and beyond geography. Previous scholarship has highlighted the contestation that surrounds the memorialization of landscapes of violence as well as the politics of memory that are manifest on the landscape. To date, however, little work has explicitly theorize...

During the Cambodian genocide, between 1975 and 1979, approximately 200 security centres were established by the Khmer Rouge. One of these prisons, designated by the code-name S-21, was responsible primarily for the punishment of individuals ‘guilty’ of committing state crimes. During their detainment at S-21 prisoners were documented, photographed...

Phnom Penh, as it existed during the Cambodian genocide (1975-79), has been held up as a textbook example of urbicide. However, this representation is not entirely accurate, for Phnom Penh remained a vital city during this period. While the depopulation of Phnom Penh during the Cambodian genocide has received considerable analytic attention, decide...

Between 1975 and 1979, approximately two million people were killed in the Cambodian genocide. To date, considerable research has examined the legacies of this period of Cambodia's history, as well as the geographies of memorialization associated with genocidal violence. In this paper we both critique and expand current understandings. We do so, fi...

The geographic study of mortality is enjoying a renaissance. This is indicated by the growing number of studies on necropolitics, thanatopolitics, ‘deathscapes’, and the inequalities of premature death. Population geographers, however, have contributed little to the broader theoretical conceptualization - and spatiality - of mortality. Previously,...

An estimated 300 mass grave sites, and more than 19,000 burial pits, have been unearthed in Cambodia. These graves mark the sites where approximately 2 million Cambodians died, either from starvation, disease, or execution. In recent years considerable research has directed attention both to the forensic study of Cambodia’s mass graves and also to...

Within philosophy, a long-standing debate has addressed the moral distinction between ‘taking life’ and ‘letting die’. In this paper I re-situate this debate within the context of the capitalist labor market. Drawing on insights from both Marx and Agamben, I re-theorize the figure of figure of homo sacer as a (potentially) dead laborer to argue tha...

The study of violence has increasing academic purchase. However, the academic treatment of violence imparts an ontological status that masks violence from critical scrutiny. We argue for the social sciences to (re)theorize violence and to develop a dialectics of violence. Our purpose is to provide a space for dialogue, to open a broader debate with...

All that remains of Keat Sophal is a photograph (Figure 1.1). We know little about her death, and even less about her life. Documentary evidence indicates that she was arrested on 13 April 1977. She was detained at Tuol Sleng, the infamous ‘security center’ code-named ‘S-21’, for 99 days until the day of her ‘termination’ on 22 July 1977. Her remai...

The subject of ‘population’ is undergoing a renaissance in geography; this is seen, for example, in the voluminous studies addressing ‘marginalized’ populations, including but not limited to refugees, internally displaced persons, and children. In short, scholarship has focused on those lives rendered ‘wasted’, ‘precarious’, or ‘superfluous’. Popul...

This paper addresses the politics of memory in post-genocide Cambodia. Since 1979 genocide has been selectively memorialized in the country, with two sites receiving official commemoration: the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes and the killing fields at Choeung Ek. However, the Cambodian genocide was not limited to these two sites. Through a cas...

This paper combines insights from political philosophy, bioethics, and political geography to examine the practice of medicine by the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian genocide. Through a discussion of both destructive and constructive health-related policies and practices enacted by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, this paper documents how th...

Direct, interpersonal violence is a pervasive, yet often mundane feature of our day-to-day lives; paradoxically, violence is both ordinary and extraordinary. Violence, in other words, is often hidden in plain sight. Space, Place, and Violence seeks to uncover that which is too apparent: to critically question both violent geographies and the geogra...

Despite expanded debate on energy security, the American relationship to foreign oil in the ten years since 9/11 has remained unchanged. We argue that energy policy has languished for three reasons: (1) the creation of a fake ‘addiction’ discourse, (2) the real petroleum dependency of American militarism, and (3) the importance of oil as a weapon i...

Overseas employment programs are used by many developing countries throughout Asia. Operationally, these programs are of ten spatially concentrated in a few key urban locations. The spatial structure of these programs, however, is poorly understood. This paper examines the changing spatial structure of the Philippines' overseas employment program a...

Violence, war and militarism continue to play an important role in the organization of modern society. A key factor in the creation, perpetuation and significance of violence is the way it is linked with the military-industrial-academic complex and the way those links perpetuate a war culture. In this paper we argue for a wider academic effort to a...

“I have a dream that one day every valley will be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed … So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire … from the mighty mountains of New York … from the sn...

From 1898 to 1936, Philippine immigrants were routinely excluded from the United States, where incipient practices of eugenic “science” and geopolitics were informing social policy. Concomitant with emergent theories of evolution, a geopolitically informed eugenics forewarned of possible racial competition and societal degeneration. Immigration leg...

"I have a dream that one day every valley will be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed⋯. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire⋯from the mighty mountains of New York⋯from the snow-c...

Many geographers have approached geography from the stand-point that geo-graphy is about the writing of space. Such a conceptualisation of spatiality has important implications for the study and understanding of genocide. In this paper, a parallel argument is advanvced—namely, that anti-geographies constitute the un-writing, or erasure, of space. T...

Landmines, cluster-bombs, chemical pollutants, and other remnants of war continue to cause death to humans and damage to the environment long after the guns have fallen silent. From the jungles of Vietnam to the arctic tundra of Russia, no region has escaped the legacy of warfare. To understand the legacy of modern militarism, this book presents an...

Major urban areas in the United States have undergone rapid shifts in their ethnic compositions. However, ethnic change is not limited to urban areas; rural areas, likewise, have witnessed substantial changes in recent decades. Scholarship, though, has paid minimal attention to the day–to–day lives of migrants in non–urban, and ethnically–homogenou...

Nearly five million migrant workers from the Philippines are employed in over 190 countries and territories. They work as doctors and domestic helpers, engineers and entertainers, seamstresses and surveyors. It is through their collective labor that the Philippines has assumed a global presence. For over five centuries the Philippines has been inte...

Founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale as a grassroots organization, the Black Panther Party achieved national and international prominence through their local activities and global ideas. By employing the concepts of spaces of dependency and spaces of engagement, I detail the spatial transformations associated with the evolving political t...

Recent work in geography has focused attention on the imbrication of landscape and literature. A dominant thread of these ‘fictive geographies’ has been a concern with how imagined landscapes contribute to the constitution of self. Informed especially by post-structuralism and post-colonialism, geographers have recently provided critical readings o...

International labor migration is produced and patterned through the activities of government and private institutions, such as labor recruiters and government officials. Recently, labor recruitment agencies have utilized the World Wide Web as a means of facilitating the procurement of foreign employment contracts. The purpose of this research is to...