Research
Book Project
Survival Against All Odds: Social ties and resisting famine in the Cambodian Genocide (under review. Book workshop held June 2025)
Reports of crises, famine, or conflicts around the world highlight the question of survival: people survive in part due to the risks that others take for them, like hiding people or stealing food, that insulate them from danger, and the risks that they undertake to protect themselves or others. The choices that individuals make during conflict are not haphazard or made in a vacuum, but rather, they respond to potential openings and rely on societal norms. Who they choose to help is equally important and demonstrates the power of social ties in seeking protection. Survival Against All Odds: Social ties and resisting famine in the Cambodian Genocide asks how and why states target civilians through indirect violence, how civilians exercise self-protection, and what makes people more likely to survive during periods of mass violence. It demonstrates successful civilian self-protection during times of crisis and famine through a historical lens of the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge. Through this study, this book builds a theory of civilian self-protection that takes into account the agency of individuals to engage in protective actions, within a framework of repression and violence from a genocidal state. Survival Against All Odds examines where civilians were more likely to be killed and how social ties improved civilians’ chances at survival, primarily by enabling acts of everyday resistance. Based on a study of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979), I approach the question of survival through dual lenses of state repression and civilian agency, through which I develop a dynamic theory that includes both top-down and bottom-up approaches. I focus on those living under extreme repression through narratives of ordinary Cambodians who survived the Khmer Rouge period. During this period, approximately one quarter of the country’s population was killed, approximately half from direct execution and the other half from indirect means like starvation or exhaustion (Heuveline 1998). Thus, this study takes on the critical issue of deaths from indirect means. I carry out this research in three analytical steps: first, I assess the repressive and violent policies that led to civilian deaths in the establishment of collective agriculture and how these policies were put in place, second, I demonstrate the relationship between social policies and deaths from indirect violence, and finally, I situate the strategies that civilians used in response to extreme repression in the context of mass violence. I find that those who were able to maintain community and family ties were more likely to survive. I conclude that the state employed a logic of revolutionary governance that targeted ethnic, religious, and political groups in line with regime ideology, however, family and community ties gave civilians avenues for self-protection from their seemingly overdetermined deaths while facing famine within mass violence. |
Cheoung Ek Genocide Memorial, Phnom Penh
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Articles and Book Chapters:
Married by the Revolution: Forced Marriage as a Strategy of Control in Khmer Rouge Cambodia (2020, Journal of Genocide Research):
This article asks how genocidal regimes select policies of social control and why they vary in implementation within a revolutionary movement. Using the case of forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge regime, I argue that regime ideology was used to make violence against civilians appropriate. I find that forced marriages of civilians were most frequent among targeted population groups that represented an internal threat and among populations living in highly productive economic regions. Forced marriage was a unique tool of sexual violence: unlike other wartime practices of sexual violence, these marriages were meant to be permanent. Both parties married together were civilians, coerced into matches by state agents, and enforced by armed militia members who monitored the couples’ behaviour. I find that the content of the regime’s ideology made forced marriages not only thinkable, but the only appropriate choice. Lastly, this article pushes back on the claim that highly ideological groups do not commit sexual violence against civilians, but rather the findings suggest that regime ideology made permissible new tools of sexual violence and shaped practices of violence perpetrated by the state on civilians.
“Atrocity Processes and Dynamics: Top-Down Strategy or Bottom-Up Escalation?" With Scott Straus. In Oxford Handbook of Atrocity Crimes eds. Barbora Hola, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, and Maartje Weerdesteijn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022):
This chapter emphasizes the meso-level dimensions of mass atrocity, which is illustrated through cases of genocide in Rwanda and Darfur, Sudan, and communist mass violence in Cambodia. This chapter asks how meso-level actors shape the patterns of violence during mass atrocity. In doing so, the authors offer three pathways through which meso-level actors can escalate, or restrain, violence. The three pathways are: first, top-down policies of violence that meso-level actors put into place; second, from-the-middle dynamics where meso-level actors escalate violence for their own independent interests; and third, information distortions by meso-level actors about the progress of national policies that lead to deaths.
This article asks how genocidal regimes select policies of social control and why they vary in implementation within a revolutionary movement. Using the case of forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge regime, I argue that regime ideology was used to make violence against civilians appropriate. I find that forced marriages of civilians were most frequent among targeted population groups that represented an internal threat and among populations living in highly productive economic regions. Forced marriage was a unique tool of sexual violence: unlike other wartime practices of sexual violence, these marriages were meant to be permanent. Both parties married together were civilians, coerced into matches by state agents, and enforced by armed militia members who monitored the couples’ behaviour. I find that the content of the regime’s ideology made forced marriages not only thinkable, but the only appropriate choice. Lastly, this article pushes back on the claim that highly ideological groups do not commit sexual violence against civilians, but rather the findings suggest that regime ideology made permissible new tools of sexual violence and shaped practices of violence perpetrated by the state on civilians.
“Atrocity Processes and Dynamics: Top-Down Strategy or Bottom-Up Escalation?" With Scott Straus. In Oxford Handbook of Atrocity Crimes eds. Barbora Hola, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, and Maartje Weerdesteijn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022):
This chapter emphasizes the meso-level dimensions of mass atrocity, which is illustrated through cases of genocide in Rwanda and Darfur, Sudan, and communist mass violence in Cambodia. This chapter asks how meso-level actors shape the patterns of violence during mass atrocity. In doing so, the authors offer three pathways through which meso-level actors can escalate, or restrain, violence. The three pathways are: first, top-down policies of violence that meso-level actors put into place; second, from-the-middle dynamics where meso-level actors escalate violence for their own independent interests; and third, information distortions by meso-level actors about the progress of national policies that lead to deaths.
Working Papers:
“A Logic of Forced Labor During Mass Atrocity: Evidence from Cambodia” (Under review)
“Repertoires of Coercion in Mass Violence: A Framework from the Cambodian Genocide” (Under review)
“Autocratic Backsliding and the Limits of Hybrid Tribunals: Evidence from Cambodia” (In progress)
“Surviving Atrocity: A Framework from Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge” (In progress)
(drafts of working papers available by request)
“A Logic of Forced Labor During Mass Atrocity: Evidence from Cambodia” (Under review)
“Repertoires of Coercion in Mass Violence: A Framework from the Cambodian Genocide” (Under review)
“Autocratic Backsliding and the Limits of Hybrid Tribunals: Evidence from Cambodia” (In progress)
“Surviving Atrocity: A Framework from Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge” (In progress)
(drafts of working papers available by request)