We Planted Rice and Killed People

” Symbiogenetic Destruction in the Cambodian Genocide

Bibliographic Data

ID12967280
AuthorsA Woolford (0000-0003-0057-359X, University of Manitoba, corresponding author), Wanda June (University of Manitoba), Sereyvothny Um (Documentation Center of Cambodia)
Year2021
Volume15
Issue1
Pages44-67
Publication date2021-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGenocide Studies and Prevention (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1911-0359 • E-ISSN: 1911-9933
PublisherInternational Association of Genocide Scholars (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1805
OpenAlexW3170169149
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited68

In recent years, genocide scholars have given greater attention to the dangers posed by climate change for increasing the prevalence or intensity of genocide. Challenges related to forced migration, resource scarcity, famine, and other threats of the Anthropocene are identified as sources of present and future risk, especially for those committed to genocide prevention. We approach the connection between the natural and social aspects of genocide from a different angle. Our research emanates out of a North American Indigenous studies and new materialist rather than Euro-genocide studies framework, meaning we see the natural and the social (or cultural) as inseparable, deeply imbricated, phenomena. We argue that those entities designated natural are often engaged in co-constitutive relations with the social and cultural groups that are the focus of genocide studies. Simply put, groups become what they are through interaction—or symbiogenesis—with their natural world(s). Symbiogenetic destruction, then, is the destruction of this symbiogenesis. We use this term to draw attention to how relations with more-than-human entities are integral components of the ongoing formation of group life, and how they are put at risk by genocide. In particular, we examine testimony that centers on the relationship between Khmer people and rice, including rice cultivation and consumption, as it was impacted by the Khmer Rouge. In so doing, we highlight the cultural consequences of social/natural death in the Cambodian genocide

Anthropocene · Biology · Criminology · Development economics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Famine · Genocide · Indigenous · Materialism · Meaning (existential · Political science · Scarcity · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · Law · Psychology · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Ecology

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