Research
Book Project
Mutual Aid in Mass Atrocity: Everyday Survival in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (in progress)
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. This book asks what makes people more likely to survive during periods of mass violence, how and why states target civilian populations, and how civilians exercise agency over their lives, even in the direst cases. I approach the question of survival through dual lenses of state repression and civilian agency. Based on a study of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979), this book builds a theory of where civilians were more likely to be killed and the strategies on which individuals and communities could draw to improve their chances at survival. I find that those who were able to maintain community and family ties were more likely to survive. I argue that their survival was aided by norms of reciprocity and mutual aid, particularly critical in agrarian societies, that buffered against the worst repression and violence of the regime. |
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)