Camps, cooperatives and the psychotopologies of Democratic Kampuchea

Abstract

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 execution. In this paper we contextualise the violence unleashed on Cambodia not through a focus on the "taking of life" but instead, paradoxically, on the "making of life." More specifically, we take seriously the CPK's purported goal of raising its citizens' livelihood through the establishment of communes and cooperatives. To date, scholars of the Cambodian genocide have focused surprisingly little attention to the function of communes and cooperatives. In this paper we highlight the centrality of the "camp concept" towards such an understanding. More precisely, we suggest that communes and cooperatives were the geographic pivots on which the Khmer Rouge sought to make possible their revolutionary remaking of a post-revolutionary society. In so doing, our paper makes two contributions. First, we provide a much-needed addition to the scholarly study of the Cambodian genocide, namely an argument that the Khmer Rouge effort to "build socialism" was necessarily a material and geographic project. Second, we contribute to the flourishing yet transforming literature on camps, notably via an engagement with the concept of psychotopologies.

Critical Physical Geography and the Study of Genocide: Lessons from Cambodia

“…Subsequently, to achieve an initial surplus of rice, a violent redistribution and reorganisation of population throughout Cambodia took place (Rice & Tyner, 2017; Tyner & Cromley, 2018; Tyner et al, 2014). In Democratic Kampuchea, workers laboured and produced under the ever‐present, gun‐pointing watch of a Party that ruled in the name of the state for the expressed purpose of capital accumulation.…”

Agrarian Marxism, Animal Geographies, and non-human labor in Democratic Kampuchea

“…In the absence of money and markets, the CPK would through the establishment of cooperatives provide—in principle but not practice—all material necessities for their citizenry (Tyner and Cromley, 2018). These would include clothing, blankets, mats, pillows, and “materials for common and individual uses” such as “water pitchers, water bowls, glasses, teapots, cups, plates, spoons, shoes, towels, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs, medicine … writing books, reading books, pens, pencils, knives, shovels, axes, spectacles, chalk, ink, hats, raincoats, thread, needles, scissors, lighters and flint, kerosene, lamps, etc.” (CPK, 1988c: 111).…”