War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count »

James A. Tyner is Professor of Geography at Kent State University. His research interests include mass violence, war, and social justice. The author of numerous books, articles, and book chapters, he is the recipient of the Glenda Laws Award from the Association of American Geographers, among other honors.

Grounded in theory and research, this book offers a spatial perspective on how and why populations are regulated and disciplined by mass violence—and why these questions matter for scholars concerned about social justice. James Tyner focuses on how states and other actors use acts of brutality to manage, administer, and control space for political and economic purposes. He shows how demographic analyses of fertility, mortality, and migration cannot be complete without taking war and genocide into account. Stark, in-depth case studies provide a powerful and provocative basis for retheorizing population geography.

1 Journeys from the Killing Fields 1

A Retheorized Population Geography 7

Toward a Philosophical Reorientation 15

An Embodiment of Population Geography 17

Violence and Spaces of Moral Exclusion 33

Why I Write 42

2 Biopower in Vietnam 46

The Context of the Vietnam War 51

The Demographics of State Building 54

Population and the Rostow Doctrine of War 58

Rostow's Air Campaign of Terror 66

(De)Population Forecasting 74

Population and (the Destruction of) the Environment (Part I) 81

Population and (the Destruction of) the Environment (Part II) 92

The Control of Populations 97

Embodied Instruments of Warfare 104

Conclusions 107

3 Death and the Erasure of Space 109

Sowing the Killing Fields 111

The Other Killing Fields 120

The Birth of Democratic Kampuchea 127

The Place-Death of Cambodian Cities 129

We Are Family, You Are Not 133

Subjugating the Political Body 142

Conclusions 149

4 Spaces of Planned Violence 151

Colonial Constructions 153

Independence 158

Preparations for a Genocide 164

Genocide Unleashed 170

The Embodiment of Rwanda's Genocide 172

The Biopolitics of Genocidal Rape 179

Conclusions 184

5 Population and Peace Education 186

Educating for Peace 194

Concluding Thoughts 199

Notes 201

References 205

Author Index 220

Subject Index 223

About the Author 226