CIAO DATE: 02/2011
Volume: 10, Issue: 0
June 2010
"Revolution by Eradication:" On the Khmer Rouge's Making of the Tragedy of Cambodia (PDF)
Matthew Weinert
Terminologically, genocide refers to the extermination of a gens, a people. Since Rafael Lemkin coined the term in 1948, scholars have focused on its unfortunate instances, perpetrators, victims, causes, and the legal machinery to punish those who commit it. Given the conventional emphasis of genocide-the obliteration of a nationally, ethnically, racially, or religiously defined people-James Tyner's The Killing of Cambodia makes a rather striking appearance on the bookshelf, for its gaze turns toward genocide's geographic dimensions. While many book-length accounts of the genocide have been published, Tyner's is the first to explore "the geopolitical discourses, the narratives and ‘spatial logics' that support, justify, and legitimate mass killings" (Tyner: 3). If geography is in part about the writing of space, then Tyner alerts us to the possibility that geography should also focus on the erasure of space. In the case of Cambodia, terracide was the complement to genocide.
To accomplish such a radical, totalizing mission, the Khmer Rouge needed an equally totalizing justification: the motivating myth of Angkar served as a rallying cry to make a new country, but also, poignantly, to unmake that which existed. I explore this issue in the first section. The essay then explores the terracidal acts that unmade Cambodia (all in an attempt to make Kampuchea). If these sections highlight both key moments and acts in the tragedy that was Cambodia from 1975 - 1979 and key aspects of Tyner's argument, then the third section offers a critical, if sympathetic, assessment of the book on three grounds: contribution to historical knowledge; contributions to geography; and contributions to our understanding of genocide.
Rights & Interests: Trade & Disputes (PDF)
Howard Guille
The global financial crisis led to the steepest drop in global activity and trade since World War II (International Monetary Fund 2009c). Recession means unemployment of people and resources. It is a bad time to be a worker and a despondent one for worker representatives. The crisis began, publicly at least, with financial panics and ensuing bank failures in the United States in September 2008. The financial bubble of securities and derivatives burst because of “the obesity of banks and shadow banks” (Johnson 2009). However, politicians and governments had given bankers and financiers a license for excess by deregulating finance and trusting open markets. In essence, elected politicians gave small government to bankers, who in turn gave neo-liberal globalization to us. Capitalist crises are a time to write-off old assets and old ideas. Some see the current crisis as an opportunity for a “better” globalization. One of the discussions at the 2009 World Economic Forum concluded, “[f]inancial governance requires a new mindset and a new paradigm of thinking. This is not a time for piecemeal reform, but for large-scale, big picture rethinking on how best to govern global capital and the world marketplace” (WEF 2009a). This statement gives a lead to asking what a “better globalization” might entail, especially for labor and the environment. I will use this organizing question to approach the three books under review even though they are not directly about the global financial crisis. Two are about trade; one is explicitly on human rights and trade, the second about the record of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on public health and the environment. The third book illuminates important issues about ascertaining the public interest, which is especially germane to evaluating claims about trade.
Is the Wedding of Trade and Human Rights a Marriage of Convenience or a Lasting Union? (PDF)
Susan Ariel Aaronson
Where many see trade policies and agreements as undermining human rights, Emilie Hafner- Burton takes a contrarian and more optimistic view. Her provocative and well-written book, Forced to Be Good: Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights, is based on years of qualitative and empirical analysis of the marriage of trade agreements and human rights. She shows that, rather than undermining human rights, Americans and Europeans have developed “mutually binding trade agreements that safeguard people’s rights and even impose penalties for violations” (2). Moreover, Hafner-Burton provides an illuminating analysis as to why developing countries might accept increased human rights conditionality. She concludes that acceptance of human rights conditionality illustrates an “extraordinary political conversion in the way governments manage trade” (4). With this book, Hafner-Burton forces scholars to reconsider why policymakers develop and developing countries accept trade agreements with human rights provisions. I agree with Hafner- Burton’s conclusion, which has been little noted by human rights activists and scholars, economists, or policymakers. Moreover, in this essay, I argue that scholars have missed the magnitude and implications of the marriage of trade and human rights.