Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Violence in Capitalism
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 6/10/1966
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
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NATIONALITY:
https://www.kent.edu/geography/profile/james-tyner * http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Violence-in-Capitalism,676375.aspx
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
n 2003091181
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/n2003091181
HEADING:
Tyner, James A., 1966-
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PERSONAL
Born June 10, 1966, in CA.
EDUCATION:University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1995.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator and writer. Taught at colleges in CA; Kent State University, Kent, OH, professor of geography.
AWARDS:Julian Minghi Award for outstanding contribution to political geography, 2007, for Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines’ Will to War; AAG Meridian Book Award for outstanding scholarly contribution to geography, for War, Violence, and Population, 2009.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
James A. Tyner received a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Southern California and taught geography at various colleges in California before accepting a professorship at Kent State University, in Ohio. The focus of his research is to understand the place of violence in society. In an article about Tyner and his work, a contributor to the Kent State University Web site quotes Tyner explaining the enthusiasm for geography he acquired in childhood from his parents, who were both geography teachers: “The inspiration or experience that comes … is not tourism but to experience places in their everydayness. … We would travel around and begin to see relationships between the different objects in the landscapes.” The contributor added: “For Tyner, geography may be more than a spot on the map. It’s about understanding the relationship between space and violence.” This relationship operates in contexts ranging from everyday politics to war and genocide. Tyner is the author of more than a dozen books on these subjects.
An early work by Tyner is The Business of War: Workers, Warriors and Hostages in Occupied Iraq. Christopher Parker, contributor to H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, characterized the book as an “engaged and readable synthesis of scholarship and informed polemic produced in response to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq.” As Tyner puts it in the book’s early pages, “My aim is to examine the political subjugation of hostages within Occupied Iraq as a means of articulating the de-humanization of neoliberalism and the business of war.” Parker declared that the book is “useful reading for both students and the informed public” and that the writing is “readable and engaging.”
Tyner’s America’s Strategy in Southeast Asia: From the Cold War to the Terror War focuses on U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia—particularly the ways in which America has furthered its own economic, political, and territorial goals in the region. Sheldon W. Simon, contributor to Contemporary Southeast Asia, assessed the book, calling it a “scholarly polemic, for the most part well researched and written.” He found fault with Tyner’s “ideological baggage” but, even so, called attention to his “fine historical analysis of the relations between the West and Southeast Asia.”
War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count takes a look at population geography with respect to political violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Rwanda. In Choice, L. Yacher appreciated the “direct, strong, and gripping” writing in what he called a “compelling book” with a “rich bibliography.” Elizabeth Lunstrum, critic in Geographic Journal, stated the book’s premise and purpose: “The text fits within a young but growing body of literature, which includes an emerging critical population geography, that examines what a theoretically and politically engaged human geography can tell us about violence and how we might use geographical tools to both address forms of violence and prevent them from materialising.” She deemed Tyner’s “explication . . . exceptionally clear and free from jargon, making the text accessible to a wide audience.”
In Military Legacies: A World Made by War, Tyner argues that military engagements have at their root a profit motive. He looks not just at the causes of war but also at their reverberations, their “legacies”—from destroyed landscapes to traumatized and injured civilians. J.A. Hall, writing in Choice, recommended Tyner’s book to students and general readers alike, saying, “The cumulative impact of his careful accounting is great: the legacies of modern war are truly horrific.”
Genocide and the Geographical Imagination: Life and Death in Germany, China, and Cambodia takes a geographic view of state building, using the examples of the Holocaust, Maoist China, and Cambodia. B. Osborne, writing in Choice, reported that Tyner describes states that have employed a”moral calculus behind policies that determine who lives and who dies during efforts to achieve state-sanctioned utopias.” The reviewer called his discussion “provocative.”
Tyner’s latest offering is Violence in Capitalism: Devaluing Life in an Age of Responsibility. Here Tyner delves into the ways in which capitalism may lead to and indeed foster inequities in society, thus creating conditions that result in violence. L. Yacher, critic in Choice, noted: “Not a typical geographic contribution, this book examines a topic in which geographers are noticeably absent. Tyner’s approach is multidisciplinary in its analysis and conclusions.” In Capital & Class, Guy Lancaster also looked at Tyner’s argument that violence arises out of the constructs of a society: “Drawing heavily from the works of Marx, Tyner illustrates how the emergence of private ownership and the process of enclosure transform social relations.” In this way, people who become “dispossessed” are “denied access to the means of production” and, “to simply survive, must conform to the dictates of the dominant ‘class.’ These relations eventually acquire the appearance of free choice.” Violence is thus part and parcel of capitalism. Lancaster concluded, “This book certainly ranks as a revelation, forcing upon the reader a reconsideration of categories so long taken for granted as well as a reevaluation of the liberal framework that surrounds so many struggles for justice.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Capital & Class, June, 2016, Guy Lancaster, review of Violence in Capitalism: Devaluing Life in an Age of Responsibility, p. 396.
Choice, September, 2009, L. Yacher, review of War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count, p. 157; October, 2010, J.A. Hall, review of Military Legacies: A World Made by War, p. 356; December, 2012, B. Osborne, review of Genocide and the Geographical Imagination: Life and Death in Germany, China, and Cambodia, p. 729; June, 2016, L. Yacher, Violence in Capitalism, p. 1512.
Contemporary Southeast Asia, April, 2008, Sheldon W. Simon, review of America’s Strategy in Southeast Asia: From the Cold War to the Terror War, p. 150.
Geographical Journal, March, 2011, Elizabeth Lunstrum, review of War, Violence, and Population, p. 99.
International Migration Review, winter, 2005, Patricia Pessar, review of Made in the Philippines: Gendered Discourses and the Making of Migrants, p. 968.
Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005, review of Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines’ Will to War, p. 53; May, 2006, review of Oriental Bodies: Discourse and Discipline in U.S. Immigration Policy, 1875-1942; May, 2007, review of America’s Strategy in Southeast Asia; May, 2009, review of War, Violence, and Population.
SciTech Book News, March, 2010, review of Military Legacies.
ONLINE
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, https://networks.h-net.org/ (February 1, 2008), Christopher Parker, review of The Business of War: Workers, Warriors and Hostages in Occupied Iraq.
Kent State University Web site, https://www.kent.edu/ (June 1, 2017), “Geographer Puts Violence in its Place”; author profile.
JAMES TYNER
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HOMEJAMES TYNER
Geographer Puts Violence in its Place
James Tyner - Kent State UniversityJames Tyner has made many expeditions to Cambodia as part of his research on the violence that occurred in Cambodia’s “killing fields.” When he’s not teaching, Tyner, professor of geography, spends most of his professional time helping the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) piece together the locations and conditions that led to the deaths of approximately 2 million Cambodians.
For Tyner, geography may be more than a spot on the map. It’s about understanding the relationship between space and violence. Tyner has examined ties between violence and their associated landscapes for more than 20 years. In addition to his research on Cambodia, Tyner has published geographical works on topics ranging from black radicalism in the U.S. to the exploitation of migrant Filipino workers.
Tyner traces his interest in geography to his parents, who were both geography teachers. When Tyner was a child growing up in California, his parents took him along on road trips across North America as his father prepared for fall classes. They took pictures of grain silos and cornfields rather than tourist attractions.
“The inspiration or experience that comes from that is not tourism but to experience places in their everydayness,” Tyner said. “We would travel around and begin to see relationships between the different objects in the landscapes.”
COLLABORATION IN CAMBODIA
Tyner studied geography in college and received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1995. After receiving his doctorate, Tyner worked as an instructor and lecturer at several California universities before accepting a position at Kent State in 1997.
Over his 20-year career, Tyner has written 12 books and published 48 peer-reviewed articles in major geography and social-science journals. He also has made 76 scholarly presentations around the world. Tyner has received approximately $325,000 in external grants to conduct his research.
The major funding organizations include the United States Geological Society and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Tyner has had an NSF grant for his collaboration with DC-Cam, an independent Cambodian research institute. The goal of his work is to identify the location of various structures present during the period and determine how they were built, why they were built and what happened there.
The structures are either directly or indirectly related to Khmer Rouge’s attempt to boost rice production through irrigation. The regime forced millions of people into the countryside to work on the irrigation systems, which included the construction of dikes, canals and dams. Khmer Rouge also built prisons to discipline workers and mass graves. Some of these sites no longer exist.
As part of his research efforts, Tyner interviews Khmer Rouge survivors or residents who lived during the period. He also uses GPS technology to map the locations. His encounters with the local residents bring to life the horrors the people in that area experienced.
HELPING STUDENTS UNDERSTAND VIOLENCE
One of Tyner’s primary goals as a professor is to raise his students’ awareness and understanding of violence in society. He’s taken two of his students to Cambodia to conduct field research.
Perhaps even more rewarding are the opportunities his research has brought to the Cambodian people. Tyner used part of the NSF funds to bring two Cambodian students to Kent State so they could study for their master’s degrees. The students, Savina Sirik and Sokvisal Kimsroy, enrolled in the geography program at Kent State. They were selected based on their knowledge of the Cambodian genocide.
Both students lost family members during the Khmer Rouge era.
“They will be able to contribute through first-hand research to the documentation and empirical interpretation of the genocide,” Tyner said.
Landscape, Memory, and Post-Violence in Cambodia
JAMES A. TYNER
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Paperback
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Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia enacted a program of organized mass violence that resulted in the deaths of approximately one quarter of the country’s population. Over two million people died from torture, execution, disease and famine. From the commodification of the ‘killing fields’ of Choeung Ek to the hundreds of unmarked mass graves scattered across the country, violence continues to shape the Cambodian landscape.
Landscape, Memory, and Post-Violence in Cambodia explores the on-going memorialization of violence. As part of a broader engagement with war, violence and critical heritage studies, it explores how a legacy of organized mass violence becomes part of a cultural heritage and, in the process, how this heritage is ‘produced’. Existing literature has addressed explicitly the impact of war and armed conflict on cultural heritage through the destruction of heritage sites. This book inverts this concern by exploring what happens when sites of ‘heritage violence’ are under threat. It argues that the selective memorialization of Cambodia’s violent heritage negates the everyday lived experiences of millions of Cambodians and diminishes the efforts to bring about social justice and reconciliation. In doing so, it develops a grounded conceptual understanding of post-violence in conflict zones internationally. « less
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REVIEWS
James A. Tyner is Professor of Geography at Kent State University, Ohio. His research operates at the intersection of political and population geography with a focus on war, violence and genocide. He is the author of 13 books, including War, Violence, and Population (2009) which received the AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contribution to Geography and Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines’ Will to War (2007) which received the Julian Minghi Award for Outstanding Contribution to Political Geography.
James A. Tyner
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.
All titles by James A. Tyner:
War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count
James A. Tyner
Foreword by Chris Philo
Coffee Hour with James Tyner: Conspiratorial Geographies: Power and Paranoia under the Communist Party of Kampuchea
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Time:
Friday, October 28, 2016 - 3:30pm
Place:
Refreshments are offered in 319 Walker Building at 3:30 p.m. The lecture begins in 112 Walker Building at 4:00 p.m.
URL:
Coffee Hour to go webcast
Coffee Hour overview and semester schedule
Coffee Hour to go HELP
S-21 interior
Sponsors
This week's Coffee Hour lecture is co-sponsored by the Rock Ethics Institute.
About the talk
The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK; also known as the ‘Khmer Rouge’) constitutes one of the most violent and inhumane apparatus of state terror in the twentieth-century. Between April 1975 and January 1979, the Khmer Rouge carried out a program of mass violence that is, in many respects, unparalleled in modern history. In just under four years, upwards of two million people and approximately one-quarter of the country’s pre-1975 population died. Many of these deaths resulted from starvation and disease. However, an untold number were executed at numerous security-centers established throughout the country. Among these, the security-center code-named "S-21" is especially notable. Located in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh, S-21 was one of approximately 200 security-centers. However, unlike most security-centers, S-21 is notable because it was established as a military-political facility designed to identify, interrogate, and ultimately execute perceived enemies of the state. Accordingly, most prisoners who were detained and killed were not ‘ordinary’ people but instead Khmer Rouge cadre or relatives of Khmer Rouge cadre. Considerable scholarly attention has focused on S-21; most attention, however, has concentrated either on the symbolic importance of S-21 as a "total institution" or has examined the memorialization of the genocide as reflected by the conversion of the prison into a museum. Apart from David Chandler’s pioneering work, however, minimal empirical analysis of S-21 has been conducted. In response to this lacuna, in this paper I provide an empirical analysis of arrests and execution records compiled at S-21. However, I do so through the theoretical prisms of conspiratorial geographies critical criminology. More specifically, I focus on the interstices between lists of arrests and lists of executions. In so doing, I detail how the CPK employed and archived prisoner lists as particular technologies of ordering.
About the speaker
James TynerJames A. Tyner is professor of geography at Kent State University, Ohio. His research operates at the intersection of political and population geography with a focus on war, violence and genocide. He is the author of 14 books, including War, Violence, and Population (2009) which received the AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contribution to Geography and Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines’ Will to War (2007) which received the Julian Minghi Award for Outstanding Contribution to Political Geography. His latest book, Memory, Landscape, and Post-Violence in Cambodia will be released in November.
Suggested reading
Cambodia’s Political Economy of Violence: Space, Time, and Genocide Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79. James Tyner and Stian Rice. Kent State University
James A. Tyner, Mark Rhodes & Sokvisal Kimsroy (2016): Music, Nature, Power, and Place: An Ecomusicology of Khmer Rouge Songs, GeoHumanities, DOI:10.1080/2373566X.2016.1183464
Emerging data sources and the study of genocide: a preliminary analysis of prison data from S-21 security-center, Cambodia. James Tyner, Xinyue Ye, Sokvisal Kimsroy, Zheye Wang, Chenjian Fu. Published: 8 August 2016 by Springer in GeoJournal. GeoJournal; doi:10.1007/s10708-016-9741-z
Contact us
Penn State encourages qualified persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact Angela Rogers in advance of your participation or visit.
Angela Rogers office: 814-865-2493 email: geography@psu.edu
Coffee Hour
James Tyner
Jim Tyner's research centers on the intersection of political and population geography. His most recent work has addressed war, violence, and genocide. Jim has a regional interest in Southeast Asia; recent travels have taken him to Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, and China. He is the author of 13 books, including War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count, which received the AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contribution to Geography.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Tyner, James A. (2014) Population Geography II: Mortality, Premature Death, and the Ordering of Life, Progress in Human Geography
Tyner, James A. and Henkin, Sam (2014) Feminist geopolitics, everyday death, and the emotional geographies of Dang Thuy Tram, Gender, Place and Culture
Tyner, James A. and Inwood, Joshua (2014) Violence as fetish: geography, Marxism, and dialectics, Progress in Human Geography
Tyner, James A. (2014) Dead labor, landscapes, and mass graves: administrative violence during the Cambodian genocide, Geoforum 52: 70-77
Tyner, James A. and Colucci, Alex R. (2014) Bare life, dead labor, and capital(ist) punishment, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies
Tyner, James A. Henkin, Samuel, Sirik, Savina, and Kimsroy, Sokvisal (2014) Phnom Penh during the Cambodian genocide: a case of selective urbicide, Environment and Planning A
Tyner, James A. (2014) Dead labor, homo sacer, and letting die in the labor market, Human Geography
Tyner, James A. (2013) Population Geography I: surplus populations, Progress in Human Geography
Tyner, James A. (2012) State sovereignty, bioethics, and political geographies: the practice of medicine under the Khmer Rouge, Environment and Planning D 30: 842-860
Tyner, James A. and Rice, Stian (2012) Moving beyond the 'Arab Spring': the ethnic, temporal and spatial bounding of a political movement, Political Geography
Tyner, James A., Brindis Alvarez, Gabriela, and Colucci, Alex R. (2012) Memory and the everyday landscape of violence in post-genocide Cambodia, Social and Cultural Geography
Tyner, James A. (2012) Space, Place, and Violence: Violence and the Embodied Geographies of Race, Sex, and Gender (New York: Routledge)
Tyner, James A. (2012) Genocide and the Geographic Imagination: Life and Death in German, China, and Cambodia (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate)
Tyner, James A. and Joshua Inwood, eds. (2011) Nonkilling Geography (Honolulu: Center for Global Nonkilling)
Tyner, James A. (2010) Military Legacies: A World Made by War (New York: Routledge).
Tyner, James A. (2009) War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count (New York: Guilford).
Tyner, James A. (2009) The Philippines: Mobilities, Identities, and Globalization (New York: Routledge).
Expertise:
Political
Population
War
Genocide
Migration
Print Marked Items
Made in the Philippines: Gendered Discourses and the Making of Migrants
Patricia Pessar
International Migration Review.
39.4 (Winter 2005): p968.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc. http://www.cmsny.org/
Full Text:
Made in the Philippines: Gendered Discourses and the Making of Migrants. By James A. Tyner. New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004. Pp. 161.
In 1969 a total of 3,694 Filipinos were contracted to work abroad. Currently, approximately 4,000 leave each day on a contractual basis. Provocatively, geographer James A. Tyner cautions us against fixing automatically on the numbers. Instead he calls for anterior steps: these involve asking what we mean by such terms as migration and migrant and enquiring how these entities become knowable and are socially produced, embodied, and performed. To aid us in these endeavors, the author presents concepts and an analytical framework drawn from the writings of Foucault and poststructuralist feminists. "Migrants and migrations," he states, "are discursively produced through the exercise of disciplinary. techniques of power" (p. 19).
The book begins with a meaty introduction that lays out the book's central provocations and theoretical moorings. It then proceeds to a fascinating discussion of the manner in which various Philippine regimes since the 1970s have fashioned and controlled meanings and discourses about migration to encourage a positive reading of government strategies. Tyner explores how state officials seek to deploy migrant bodies to ensure continued capital accumulation while at the same time they endeavor to distance the state from accusations of abetting in the exploitation and victimization of migrants abroad. One way of negotiating this conundrum has been a move away from an earlier discursive framing of Filipino migrants as heroes who sacrifice their bodies for national economic development. More recently, Tyner tells us, "migration [is rendered] as an essential feature of one's identity, and to deny individuals from acting upon these 'natural drives,' would be a violation of human rights" (p. 47). This chapter, and indeed the entire study, contributes to that small but growing body of scholarship that examines the complex interplay between migration and state building.
Chapter three moves onto an examination of those discursive formations and nondiscursive practices through which Philippine bodies become commodified into migrants. Here the author rightly insists that researchers need to more carefully interrogate the role of those complex networks of state institutions and private recruitment agencies involved in migration processes. In embarking on this project, Tyner demonstrates how very central gender is to the crafting of migrants as subjects and objects of capital accumulation.
The next two chapters focus on female migrant entertainers. Through the author's nuanced engagement with state discourses, institutions, and the professionalization of entertainment and entertainers, we gain great insight into the construction and disciplining of gendered migrant bodies into producers, commodities, and consumers. Moreover, through the case study of an exentertainer, we also learn how one woman came to both embody and occasionally resist the meanings, expectations, and power hierarchies associated with gendered migration and entertainment. The fourth chapter entitled, "The Professionalization of Entertainment," provides a fascinating account of the efforts of Philippine state officials to shield the government from wellpublicized accounts of the abuses and deaths of female entertainers. In the process, overseas entertainment has been recast into a middleclass profession with an attendant regime of recruitment, training, testing, and moral evaluation. This discursive move, Tyner shows, has helped to shift the blame for abuse from the Philippine government, which explicitly encourages and facilitates migration, to victims who have
allegedly failed to abide by official rules and mentoring. The author's focus on state institutions as sites for the social and political production of knowledge about migration and the constitution of migrant subjects is a welcome complement to previous studies on the Philippines and elsewhere that have engaged these issues from the vantage point of households, labor markets, and workplaces. It remains for others to take Tyner's lead and determine the state's role in the making of migration and migrants in those far more typical instances in which governments are far less involved than the Philippines in the recruitment and management of their migrant populations. Particularly fruitful examples would be those countries that have recently reformed their political ideologies and institutions to permit dual nationality and dual citizenship.
The concluding chapter summarizes major arguments. In doing so, it underscores the author's conviction that the theoretical and empirical study of gendered migration is well served by focusing on discourse, power, knowledge, and institutions. He smartly advises that feminist migration scholars only go halfway in their insistence upon deconstructing gender. What is equally needed is the deconstruction of other related terms, including migrant and migration. He also calls for the repolitization of migration studies through the study and critique of the myriad hegemonic forms of knowledge production.
Tyner is to be applauded for seeking to bring discursive analysis and poststructural feminist theory centrally into scholarship on migration. Although he notes that he builds upon the work of other scholars who also draw upon this body of theory, Tyner's study is, to my knowledge, the most ambitious and elaborated. It is Tyner's hope that others will apply Foucauldian and poststructural feminist frameworks elsewhere to the study of the social and political production of migration and migrants. I share his wish and support his project. I suspect, however, that he will prove most successful among those scholars who are already familiar with, and share an appreciation for, the theorists featured in the book. At the very least, most will leave this study convinced that migration and migrants are socially and politically produced. Yet, I wonder what the more empirically grounded will take away practically from Tyner's urging that we refuse to see migration and migrants as somehow "normal" and "natural." The same skepticism on my part holds for state officials whom, we are told, search erroneously for objective "knowledge" upon which to base migration policy. It is a shame that Tyner did not provide a concluding discussion of how his discursive framework extends and/or challenges central premises and methods employed in neoclassical, structural, and other leading approaches to migration studies.
Tyner sets out to advance the gendered study of migration. Here he is partially successful. For a scholar who is so respectful of discourse, it is surprising that Tyner does not reflect more critically on the fact that he, like so many others, claims to be writing about gender while largely focusing on women. The reader is left to wonder how the state and private recruiting agencies go about making male migrant subjects. We also lack sufficient understanding of how "knowledge" about bodies, production, commodification, and consumption is gendered and contested among and between Filipino women and men. An exploration of discourses and practices of sexuality among the female performers is also absent. Indeed, it is implied that the women are heterosexualan unfortunate misstep in a book that wisely cautions us against naturalizing.
Tyner has written a highly ambitious and challenging book. It surely will inform those seeking to more fully engender migration research and theory. With its showcasing Foucault and poststructural feminism, it urges us to engage the nexus between migration and power in ways that have largely eluded previous scholars. Finally, it enriches the already outstanding body of literature on Philippine migration.
PATRICIA PESSAR
Yale University Pessar, Patricia
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pessar, Patricia. "Made in the Philippines: Gendered Discourses and the Making of Migrants." International Migration Review, vol. 39, no. 4, 2005, p. 968+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA143526055&it=r&asid=fa1cb6da37b45ad01aa7a4225164aa7e. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A143526055
Tyner, James A. Military legacies: a world made by war
J.A. Hall
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
48.2 (Oct. 2010): p356.
COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association CHOICE http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text: 481026 QH545
200928014 CIP
Tyner, James A. Military legacies: a world made by war. Routledge, 2010. 226p bibl index ISBN 9780415995931,
$135.00; ISBN 9780415995948 pbk, $29.95
Geographer Tyner (Kent State) argues that contemporary military conflicts are driven more by profit than by any traditional search for security. This exaggerates: there are still plentiful causes of wars that have little do with profits. Indeed, one sometimes wishes that state elites thought more in economically rational terms. Still, Tyner writes powerfully about the reach and penetration of armament industries. The empirical force of that chapter is present in the bulk of the book, whose concentration is on varied legacies once wars and conflicts have ended. Tyner considers in turn the trauma of those who fight and of those whose lives have been devastated by conflicts on their territory; the varied detritus of war (from ruined fields to, above all, the huge piles of landmines that cause immense damage over the long run); the impact of chemical weapons (on pregnancies as well as on the environment); and the consequences of the testing of nuclear weapons. The cumulative impact of his careful accounting is great: the legacies of modern war are truly horrific. Tyner deserves readers among the general public as well as among students. Summing Up: Essential.
**** All levels/ libraries.J. A. Hall, McGill University Hall, J.A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hall, J.A. "Tyner, James A. Military legacies: a world made by war." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2010, p. 356. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA249220941&it=r&asid=4bbe27d3e18593859a32c2a314eee04c. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A249220941
America's Strategy in Southeast Asia: From the Cold War to the Terror War
Sheldon W. Simon
Contemporary Southeast Asia.
30.1 (Apr. 2008): p150.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/
Full Text:
America's Strategy in Southeast Asia: From the Cold War to the Terror War. By James A. Tyner. Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Softcover: 240pp.
Studies of US foreign policy towards any world region, including Southeast Asia, are usually written by political scientists or historians who focus on decisionmaking conflicts among bureaucracies, the reciprocal impacts of domestic and international politics, and the effects of the personalities and decisionmaking styles of key decision makers. Seldom do other social scientists venture into this arena. It was, therefore, with considerable anticipation that I read James Tyner's America's Strategy in Southeast Asia. Because Professor Tyner is a geographer I expected an assessment of Southeast Asia's spatial and resource characteristics on Washington's foreign policy debates: the differences between insular and mainland Southeast Asia, or an explanation of how and why the US Navy has dominated American strategic policy in Southeast Asia rather than ground and air forces whose roles are more prominent in Northeast Asia. Although some passing attention is paid to these issues, the thrust of the book's argument is quite different.
America's Strategy in Southeast Asia is a scholarly polemic, for the most part well researched and written. It is a condemnation of Western imperialism and neocolonialism (Professor Tyner's description) in general and American depredations in particular from the nineteenth century to the present day. The book belongs in the new left tradition of the 1960s and 1970s and world systems analysis of the 1980s. Its intellectual forebearers are Noam Chomsky, Gabriel Kolko, Walden Bello and Howard Zinn. It is noteworthy that the author's extensive bibliography does not include such prominent scholars on the international politics of Southeast Asia and American policy in the region as Amitav Acharya, Muthiah Alagappa, Tim Huxley, Michael Leifer, William Tow, and Carl Thayer. (Perhaps their assessments do not conform to the author's ideology.)
Briefly, Tyner's underlying argument is that all world regions are social constructs, and these constructs are determined by the most powerful actorssince World War II the United States. More specifically, "the construction of Southeast Asia ... has been a crucial component in the creation of the American empire" (p. 1). (Somehow, I doubt whether the Southeast Asian states which have been organizing their own political, economic and security affairs over the past forty years would recognize this description.) From this beginning, Professor Tyner inserts the concept of metageographies, by which he means the political struggle among dominant states to control what a region means and who will control it (p. 19). The dominating American discourse from the nineteenth century to the present day is based on the Leninist notion of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. That is, because capitalist countries overproduce they must export capital to remain prosperous. US foreign policy, therefore, for the past century has been the handmaiden of capitalist interests manifested through efforts to control Southeast Asia for trade, investment and access to resources (p.137). The major point here is not that countries promote international commercial intercourse for their own benefit after all, that's a primary goal of all foreign policiesbut that the dominant country, that is, the United States, engages in these actions as a zerosum enterprise, extracting Southeast Asian resources, driving the region's populations into penury, insuring that no local industrial competition can flourish, and condemning these countries to an endless cycle of political and economic subordination.
Professor Tyner's Southeast Asia does not square with the region most contemporary analysts studyone that has witnessed over the past twenty five years the rise of educated, entrepreneurial middle classes in several ASEAN states, a significant reduction of the proportion of many of these countries' populations living in poverty, and economic diversification in some, leading to a reduction in dependence on natural resource exploitation for economic livelihood. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and most recently Vietnam, are all on an upward economic trajectory. While this optimistic projection so far is less characteristic of Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, their lagging performance is not a function of Western imperial control but their own political failings.
To be fair, if the reader puts the author's ideological baggage aside, he provides some fine historical analysis of the relations between the West and Southeast Asia; and his chapter on the rise of the US neoconservatives is spot on. For those who continue to fight the battles of the old "new left", this book may serve as a battle cry; for the rest of us, it seems obsolete.
SHELDON W. SIMON is a Professor at Arizona State University, United States. Simon, Sheldon W.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Simon, Sheldon W. "America's Strategy in Southeast Asia: From the Cold War to the Terror War." Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 30, no. 1, 2008, p. 150+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA178944991&it=r&asid=e90547839430aa0513d8c67d9bcbb78c. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A178944991
Tyner, James A.: Violence in capitalism: devaluing life in an age of responsibility
L. Yacher
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.10 (June 2016): p1512.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Tyner, James A. Violence in capitalism: devaluing life in an age of responsibility. Nebraska, 2016. 255p bibl index afp ISBN 9780803253384 cloth, $55.00; ISBN 9780803284562 ebook, contact publisher for price
534443
HM1116 CIP
In this logical succession to previous contributions, such as War; Violence, and Population (CH, Sep'09, 470355), Tyner (geography, Kent State) argues that the definition and use of violence need to be revisited and expanded. Often using rhetorical case studies, he not only questions US views and values on violence but also compels readers to rethink their understanding of the term. Tyner succeeds in forcing the reexamination process by providing examples that result in a reevaluation of how one feels about the issue of viciousness. Readers can come up with potential reasonable solutions to violence in its multiplicity of forms; however, this creates more dilemmas than solutions. Consequently, Tyner directly challenges preconceptions, requiring a modification of one's worldview and, in many cases, one's own idealistic interpretation of space through time in the context of violence. Tyler examines capitalism's important role in creating conditions that cause and encourage societal inequalities that may result in violence in its different forms.
Political policy may contribute to violence through benign neglect while applying accepted legal definitions. Not a typical geographic contribution, this book examines a topic in which geographers are noticeably absent. Tyner's approach is multidisciplinary in its analysis and conclusions. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Upperdivision undergraduates and above.L. Yacher, Southern Connecticut State University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Yacher, L. "Tyner, James A.: Violence in capitalism: devaluing life in an age of responsibility." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1512. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942854&it=r&asid=89f46522c684e5ff29256041876a20f7. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942854
Tyner, James A.: War, violence, and population: making the body count
L. Yacher
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
47.1 (Sept. 2009): p157.
COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association CHOICE http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text: 470355 HV6322 200834366 CIP
Tyner, James A. War, violence, and population: making the body count. Guilford, 2009. 225p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9781606230381, $70.00; ISBN 9781606230374 pbk, $35.00
Tyner (geography, Kent State Univ.) attempts to redefine and expand the traditional method that population geographers have used to describe and analyze demographic data from a spatial perspective. The author argues that moving away from the traditional approach is a logical, necessary path if progress and greater understanding is to be attained. He notes that key population data had been excluded because they were considered the purview of other subfields of geographic inquiry. Using Vietnam, Cambodia, and Rwanda as case studies, Tyner employs data as it relates to each of these countries in time periods in which they experienced episodes of war and violence. Historical background is included when needed and relevant. The language is direct, strong, and gripping. Tyner interprets example after
example of the atrocities that conflict brings in a compelling book designed not only for geographers, but also for anyone interested in the subject. Previous academic training is not imperative to fully benefit from this publication. The rich bibliography includes works from many disciplines, and will benefit readers seeking further appraisal. Summing Up: Recommended. ** All levels/libraries.L. Yacher, Southern Connecticut State University
Yacher, L.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Yacher, L. "Tyner, James A.: War, violence, and population: making the body count." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Sept. 2009, p. 157. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA266635264&it=r&asid=eba8818f9a16ef4144c8a8f1cb4718f8. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A266635264
Tyner, James A.: Genocide and the geographical imagination: life and death in Germany, China, and Cambodia
B. Osborne
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
50.4 (Dec. 2012): p729.
COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association CHOICE http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text: 502215 D804
201212419 CIP
Tyner, James A. Genocide and the geographical imagination: life and death in Germany, China, and Cambodia. Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 181p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442208988, $49.95; ISBN 9781442209008 ebook, $48.99
Tyner (geography, Kent State Univ.) applies a geographic perspective on state building by considering the complex moral calculus behind policies that determine who lives and who dies during efforts to achieve statesanctioned utopias. The introductory chapter examines the psychology of killing and statesanctioned geographic imaginations. The author uses the Holocaust to examine statesponsored violence and expose ideas of sovereignty and the spatiality of life and death. His analysis of Maoist China questions whether allowing 40 million people to die between 1959 and 1961 was intentional genocide or a byproduct of a drive to a utopian worldview. Finally, Tyner explores Cambodia's loss of a third of its 8 million people in the Khmer Rouge's search for a just and egalitarian society through the total erasure of traditional Cambodia. Implicit in these case studies is how the moral geography of the modern bureaucratic state values people. The numbers may be different, but societies still encounter state engagement with contraception, euthanasia, capital punishment, political assassination, and other issues that are part of the moral geography of modern states. The argument is provocative, but the author's welldemonstrated realities of the horrible verities of his three case studies overwhelm his theoretical exercises. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Upperdivision undergraduates and above.B. Osborne, Queen's University at Kingston
Osborne, B.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Osborne, B. "Tyner, James A.: Genocide and the geographical imagination: life and death in Germany, China, and Cambodia." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Dec. 2012, p. 729. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA311049958&it=r&asid=fa03a77b5449d58a629af11769c9f9e5. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A311049958
Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines' Will to War
Reference & Research Book News.
20.3 (Aug. 2005): p53.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text: DS686 2004027382
0742538613
Iraq, terror, and the Philippines' will to war. Tyner, James A.
Rowman & Littlefield, [c]2005 145 p.
$24.95 (pa)
In May of 2003, Philippines President Gloria MacapagalArroyo declared her country's firm alliance with the United States in George W. Bush's "War on Terror." A mere 14 months later, she was ordering the withdrawal of the Filipino contingent of the "Coalition of the Willing" occupying Iraq. Seeking the cause of this apparent foreign policy reversal, Tyner (geography, Kent State U.) analyzes the discourse of MacapagalArroyo, Bush, and other government officials and constructs an explanation based on the belief structures of the policy makers. Simply put, the Catholicinformed political fundamentalism of the President of the Philippines, which shares much with the political fundamentalism of Bush, led her to support the US "War on Terror" and the invasion of Iraq, but by July 2004 her beliefs had become increasingly discordant and caused her to take a stand against an imperial superpower.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines' Will to War." Reference & Research Book News, Aug. 2005, p. 53. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA135654520&it=r&asid=fa1cb6da37b45ad01aa7a4225164aa7e. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A135654520
War, violence, and population; making the body count
Reference & Research Book News.
24.2 (May 2009):
COPYRIGHT 2009 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text: 9781606230374
War, violence, and population; making the body count. Tyner, James A.
Guilford Pr. 2009
225 pages
$35.00
Paperback HV6322
For students and scholars concerned with population geography and social justice, Tyner (geography, Kent State U.) examines how states and other actors use acts of violence to manage, administer, and control space for political and economic purposes. Arguing that the body must be at the center of population geography, he considers how space is manipulated to facilitate the disciplining of people, for what purposes populations are constructed and regulated by institutions, and how fertility, mortality, and migration are modified for political and economic purposes. He draws from poststructural and postcolonial theories of Foucault and others to describe case studies of mass violence and genocide in the Vietnam War, the killing fields of Cambodia, and Rwandan genocide, and topics such as state sanctioned violence, the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians in war, warrelated rapes, and peace education.
([c]2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"War, violence, and population; making the body count." Reference & Research Book News, May 2009. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA199022380&it=r&asid=857691364872a3d727a09db1a2eecd1c. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A199022380
America's strategy in Southeast Asia; from the Cold War to the Terror War
Reference & Research Book News.
22.2 (May 2007):
COPYRIGHT 2007 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text: 9780742553583
America's strategy in Southeast Asia; from the Cold War to the Terror War. Tyner, James A.
Rowman & Littlefield 2007
241 pages
$29.95
Paperback DS526
Tyner (geography, Kent State U.) examines US empirebuilding in Southeast Asia in terms of what he calls "geographic imperatives" that are economic, political, territorial, and moral in scope. His thesis is that the discursive construction among US foreign policy makers of Southeast Asia as a geographic entity following World War II was largely a product of American imperial objectives, including the wish for an economically strong and proWestern Japan able to contain communism. He also contends that postSeptember 11th geographic understandings of Southeast Asia generally share continuities with the previous era. The overarching goal of the work is to demonstrate how the construction of supposedly objective geographic knowledge often masks the hidden state imperatives that are mentioned above.
([c]20072005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"America's strategy in Southeast Asia; from the Cold War to the Terror War." Reference & Research Book News, May
2007. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA162866561&it=r&asid=afc3b607326c13ddd1d46172669aff07. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A162866561
Oriental Bodies: Discourse and Discipline in U.S. Immigration Policy, 18751942
Reference & Research Book News.
21.2 (May 2006):
COPYRIGHT 2006 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text: 9780739112977
Oriental bodies; discourse and discipline in U.S. immigration policy, 18751942. Tyner, James A.
Lexington Books 2006
117 pages
$21.95
Paperback JV6483
Tyner (geography, Kent State U.) argues that US immigration policy was founded on a particular discourse of eugenics and geopolitics, and that the confluence of these two was informed by a greater Orientalist discourse. He considers the implications for the future of immigration.
([c]20062005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Oriental Bodies: Discourse and Discipline in U.S. Immigration Policy, 18751942." Reference & Research Book News,
May 2006. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA145686619&it=r&asid=ec407c4765d6be0f0ec9fd91311d592a. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A145686619
Military legacies; a world made by war
SciTech Book News.
(Mar. 2010):
COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text: 9780415995948
Military legacies; a world made by war. Tyner, James A.
Routledge 2010
226 pages
$29.95
Paperback Global realities QH545
Tiner (geography, Kent State U.) examines the longlasting impacts of the proliferation of industrialized warfare on postconflict societies around the world. He begins by discussing the psychological impacts of war and then offers chapters discussing the lingering human costs of the material legacies of warfare, including landmines and unexploded ordinance, remnants of chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons, including depleted uranium munitions.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Military legacies; a world made by war." SciTech Book News, Mar. 2010. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA220157979&it=r&asid=acf81c9a18c7640a0e484380998dbf22. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A220157979
James A. Tyner: Violence in Capitalism: Devaluing Life in an Age of Responsibility
Guy Lancaster
Capital & Class.
40.2 (June 2016): p396.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309816816661148 COPYRIGHT 2016 Conference of Socialist Economists http://www.cseweb.org.uk
Full Text:
James A. Tyner Violence in Capitalism: Devaluing Life in an Age of Responsibility, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 2016, 255 pp: 9780803253384, US $55.00 (cloth)
Evil masterminds poisoning a city's water supply have long been a staple of popular culture, especially comic books, and growing fears of terrorism in Europe and the United States have led to greater security measures for municipal water systems. However, when an appointed city manager, in the name of saving money, forces poisoned water upon a city, this is not immediately described as an act of violence, despite the outcome being indistinguishable from terrorist schemes. Such distinctions prompt geographer James A. Tyner, in Violence in Capitalism, to ask, '[W]hat if we move beyond an individually oriented and biologically premised understanding of violence to consider how certain policies, practices, and programs may have the same consequences for human survivability?' (4).
Tyner's broad argument is that violence is an abstraction based upon the dominant modes of production. In other words, violence is not an ontological category; rather, acts described as violent 'are historically and geographically contingent and dialectically related to the society from which they emerge' (31). Drawing heavily from the works of Marx, Tyner illustrates how the emergence of private ownership and the process of enclosure transform social relations: 'Thus denied access to the means of production, those dispossessed inhabitants, to simply survive, must conform to the dictates of the dominant "class'" (44). These relations eventually acquire the appearance of free choice, the ostensible ability of workers to sell their labor to whomever they please, thus obscuring the violence that made possible this primitive accumulationand the operation of the current market system. The privatization of land was not only a shift in the modes of production but also produced new abstractions of crime and violence, with traditional acts such as gleaning now being redefined as theft.
Of course, these general propositions are nothing new. In fact, Tyner's book is part of a growing body of scholarly work on the violence inherent in capitalism. Adam Jones, for example, has offered reason to consider global poverty under the heading of genocide, while Garry Leech has gone further and dubbed capitalism a "structural genocide." In a related vein, Patrick Wolfe has done fantastic work linking market relations with racial formationand the violence then allowed by people ascribed specific racial identitiesacross the world. However, what consumes the bulk of Tyner's book is a much more specific propositionnamely, that 'under capitalism, violence is abstracted according to a particular assemblage of market logics, a specific valuation ofand indifference tolife' (79). This, he calls, the 'market logics of letting die,' the deliberate abandonment of lives deemed nonproductive through decisions political, economic, and social, as with the costcutting measures forced upon Flint, Michigan, which have since poisoned an entire population's water. Tyner devotes significant space to exploring the ostensible differences between actively killing and 'passively' letting die, between positive rights and negative rights, to showcase how these divisions are abstracted from the capitalist logic; the systemic and structural violence 'built into the very foundation of capitalist relations ... is
founded on the contradiction that workers are both producers and consumers' and that any denial of access 'to the means of production is also to be denied access to the means of subsistence' (110, 111). Moreover, this system produces a moralizing stance that privileges heteronormativity and monogamy, those relations best equipped to reproduce the next generation of workers, and thus makes the criminalization of 'deviant' populations all the more acceptable, as exemplified by President Bill Clinton's 'welfare reform' bill, which blamed poverty upon 'one presumed category of persons: sexually irresponsible women' (126).
The real showcase for the 'market logics of letting die' relates to healthcare. Tyner begins with the eugenics movement in order to illustrate its foundation in a capitalist logic that privileged those populations deemed productive and then traces this same pattern operating in current debates over the rationing of medical care and the treatment of the disabled. The author also illustrates how positions in support of euthanasia and abortion, too, can be underwritten by
the same logic, by the same devaluation of the disability, observing that 'current biopolitical thinking continues to expand the range of what is considered to be disabled. Accordingly, evershifting definitions of normality or abnormality, disability or difference, will greatly inform what is considered costeffective' (175).
As noted above, many scholars of genocide have worked their way back from mass atrocity to a consideration of market relations. In addition, sociologist Christopher Powell has analyzed the market logic of 'letting die' in his treatment of late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury famine in Britishcontrolled India, during which British rulers outlawed charity toward the starving, even as they oversaw the export of Indian grain across the world, in order to preserve the market from interference. However, the work of these scholars primarily reveals the operations of capital
in events already easily viewed as mass atrocitiesas real acts of violence in the classical formulation. What Tyner does is to offer a close reading of how market logic operates from the level of interpersonal relationships up to national and international politics, fostering a devaluation of life and producing policies that directly result in actual deaths that rival the worst historical genocides (with millions of children each year dying from hunger and malnutrition, to give but one example). In contrast to a moral framework which exculpates society for these deaths, Tyner asserts that 'the morality distinguishing the act of killing from the nonact of letting die actually constitutes two sides of the same coin, that, following Marx, we may look to the unity of these two opposites, and that the presumption of the wrongness to kill hinges on a conservative understanding of agency' (206). This book certainly ranks as a revelation, forcing upon the reader a reconsideration of categories so long taken for grantedas well as a reevaluation of the liberal framework that surrounds so many struggles for justice.
DOI: 10.1177/0309816816661148
References
Jones A (2012) "Genocide and Structural Violence: Charting the Terrain," pp. 132152 in New Directions in Genocide Research, ed. A. Jones. London: Routledge, 2012.
Leech G (2012) Capitalism: A Structural Genocide. London: Zed Books.
Powell C (2011) Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide. Montreal: McGillQueen's University Press. Wolfe P (2016) Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race. London: Verso.
Guy Lancaster is the editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture and author of the awardwinning Racial Cleansing in Arkansas, 18831924: Politics, Land, Labor, and Criminality.
Reviewed by Guy Lancaster, Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture Lancaster, Guy
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lancaster, Guy. "James A. Tyner: Violence in Capitalism: Devaluing Life in an Age of Responsibility." Capital & Class, vol. 40, no. 2, 2016, p. 396+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462685985&it=r&asid=c344d4c7eee34215b3361ec5315f89d4. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A462685985
Parker on Tyner, 'The Business of War: Workers, Warriors, and Hostages in Occupied Iraq'
Author:
James A. Tyner
Reviewer:
Christopher Parker
James A. Tyner. The Business of War: Workers, Warriors, and Hostages in Occupied Iraq. Burlington: Ashgate, 2006. viii + 152 pp. $99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7546-4791-1.
Reviewed by Christopher Parker (Ghent University, Belgium)
Published on H-Levant (February, 2008)
What Kind of War Does Neoliberalism Make?
In The Business of War, James A. Tyner provides an engaged and readable synthesis of scholarship and informed polemic produced in response to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq. He situates this synthesis within a broader intellectual framework that draws on Michel Foucault, as well as on the work of geographers and ethnographers concerned with contemporary configurations of neoliberal globalism (e.g., David Harvey, Derek Gregory, Aiwha Ong, etc.). In line with the method suggested by these sources, Tyner begins by tracing the genealogy of assumptions invoked to naturalize the Bush administration's Iraq project--notably the sense of manifest destiny that has informed so much of America's engagement with the rest of the world over the past 200 years--and by sketching the broader history of corporate involvement in determining U.S. foreign policy interests (these being the subjects of chapter 2, "A War of Neoliberalism"). As Tyner notes, "we should not lose sight that economic ideologies--including but not limited to neoliberalism and neoconservatism--have greatly impacted the role and function of the military" (p. 16).
But this book is ultimately motivated by a more profound sense of purpose. Tyner sets out to explore the nexus of neoliberalism and war by looking at how this intersection has inscribed itself on the bodies of migrant contract laborers held hostage in Iraq. In his own words: "My aim is to examine the political subjugation of hostages within Occupied Iraq as a means of articulating the de-humanization of neoliberalism and the business of war" (p. 4). This is a theme that Tyner appears to have stumbled across while on the heels of the Filipino migrant laborers who were the subject of his previous work. And it is one that is certainly worth exploring. Tyner sees the bodies of these hostages as emblematic of struggles to define the nature of the contemporary global system.
Iraq clearly represents a new phase in "the business of war." Not only have the support functions of state-declared war been privatized to an extent previously unseen; close examination of the practices of private contractors in Iraq reveals the darker side of a world that has gradually been remade over the past three decades to make it amenable to neoliberal modalities of government. The role of the neoliberal model in Iraq's reconstruction is outlined in the first half of chapter 3, "The Business of Occupation." Tyner then calls attention to the contract laborers who have come from the slums of East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America to work for the private firms providing support services to the U.S. Army and other agencies involved in the reconstruction and government of Iraq. Tyner shows how this flow of migrant labor has been made possible by new forms of cooperation between state agencies and a transnational private sector empowered by neoliberal reforms. He also shows that these invisible minions play a crucial role in making the human and financial costs of war acceptable to the U.S. public. Meanwhile, for militant groups, these migrants have--in Tyner's estimation--come to symbolize the militant neoliberal imperialism of the Anglo-American project in Iraq.
Unfortunately, Tyner only begins the serious exploration of his central thesis midway into the fourth and penultimate chapter, "Spaces of Political Subjugation." Here, Tyner brings us to the plight of the hostages themselves by building on analysis of the Philippine government's position in advance of the Iraq war. Philippine authorities hoped, according to Tyner, that participation in the "coalition of the willing" would facilitate employment opportunities for Filipino laborers in the private-sector-led reconstruction effort. Tyner illustrates the consequences of such a policy by exploring the case of Angelo de la Cruz, a Filipino migrant laborer who was held hostage in Iraq for a relatively brief period in the summer of 2004.
Tyner writes: "During de la Cruz's captivity, both the Philippine state, the Iraqi insurgents, and other participants attempted to inscribe their own discourses on to the captive body of de la Cruz. Although powerlessness [sic] himself, de la Cruz continued to be subjected to various interpretations and meanings; his body, in effect, continued to work, albeit for larger political purposes.… From the perspective of the captors, de la Cruz was not an individual [but represented] something else entirely … the Coalition [and] the abstract concepts of modernity and capitalism. This is made clear in the demands made by the abductors" (p. 122).
But Tyner does not in fact provide any convincing evidence that resistance to such abstract concepts lay behind the demands of most hostage-takers in Iraq, and it strikes me as presumptuous to suggest that most Iraqi militants imagine themselves as foes of modernity or capitalism per se. Equally, his subsequent assertion--that "the bodies of workers and warriors, from the perspective of the abductors, are re-scripted as the personification of an illegal and unjustified occupation of their homeland" (p. 123)--seems somehow too easy a conclusion given the ambitious nature of this book. In trying to produce a meditation on the phenomenon of hostage-taking writ large--a political-philosophical polemic in the tradition of George Orwell and Slavoj Zizek (two authors whose inspiration Tyner acknowledges)--Tyner loses touch with local specificities. For example, he does not note that the overwhelming majority of foreigners taken hostage in Iraq have been truck drivers, suggesting that hostage-taking might--for most groups--be a tactic employed in struggles over the control of trade routes. Flying high in search of a profound interpretation, Tyner overlooks the mundane, if not always obvious, alternative. And it is perhaps in the mundane rather than the heroic that we might find and understand the most powerful (and even universal) motivations of the agents in the story.
The Business of War clearly bears the strains of being Tyner's third book in as many years. The relatively large number of typographical errors suggests a lack of careful editing. Some of the literature that he reviews does not seem fully integrated into his argument; and Tyner's occasional reliance on a single source across significant passages of text reinforce the impression of a manuscript hurried to publication before the author had come to a fully digested synthesis. The force of Tyner's central argument is also weakened from the outset by his somewhat rushed (even slightly pedantic) discussions of neoliberalism, neoconservatism, globalization, transnationalism, and security. Given his promise to deliver "a political geographical polemic against the atrocities of a modern-day colonial war" (p. 2), Tyner might have found a more subtle way of integrating this background information into his account. Also, just when Tyner seems poised to take his argument in an interesting direction, he all too often falls back on the words of others, or on restatements of his main thesis that read somewhat like sloganeering. It is precisely because Tyner has an interesting and important argument to make that one would like to hear more of his own voice. Finally, as the critique in the previous paragraph suggests, Tyner would have done well to consult more of the specialist literature on Iraq, together with the available empirical studies of the occupation and the subsequent ongoing violence before meditating on the motivations of insurgent hostage takers.
Nevertheless, in spite of these critical remarks, the individual chapters of this book--and particularly chapter 3--make useful reading for both students and the informed public. Tyner's writing is readable and engaging. Most importantly, however, Tyner is to be commended for calling attention to the large-scale exploitation of migrant labor as a practice enabled by three decades of worldwide neoliberal "reform," and one that ultimately enabled the Bush administration to go to war thinking that the full political costs might be avoided. He is absolutely correct to argue that investigation of this practice will likely offer insight into the nexus of neoliberalism and war, and to the darker side of neoliberal globalism more generally. This reviewer hopes that Tyner will continue to follow through on the important themes addressed by The Business of War in his future research.
In conclusion, I cannot help but wonder what this book might have been had Tyner pursued a different (albeit admittedly longer and more difficult) route in writing it. One could have told the story of how a nineteenth-century ideology of manifest destiny gave rise to twenty-first-century neoliberal militarism--a project that Tyner shows is underwritten by the labor of some of the world's poorest and most politically disempowered inhabitants--through a deep and sustained account of Angelo de la Cruz's personal and family history. What historical forces give rise to conditions that compel someone to travel halfway around the world to work for meager wages in a war zone? What arrangements make possible the linkages and pathways that enable such a journey? What did such a journey entail? And what does the imprisonment and decapitation that awaited some of these migrants upon reaching their destination say about the kind of war neoliberalism makes? As Walter Benjamin wrote: "Only when traveling along the road, can you say something about its force."[1]
Note
[1]. Walter Benjamin, "Berlin Childhood around 1900," in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 352.
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Citation: Christopher Parker. Review of Tyner, James A., The Business of War: Workers, Warriors, and Hostages in Occupied Iraq. H-Levant, H-Net Reviews. February, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14205
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Review
Reviewed Work(s): War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count by James A Tyner
Review by: Elizabeth Lunstrum
Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 177, No. 1 (March 2011), p. 99
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
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Reviews 99
War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count. By JAMES A TYNER
The Guilford Press, New York, 2009, 225 pp. $35.00 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 60623 037 4
In War, violence, and population: making the body count, James A. Tyner takes on the ambitious task of 'reinvigorating' the field of population geography and population studies more generally. The project rests on two main interventions. First, Tyner works to correct the fact that population geography has gener ally paid scant attention to structural forms of injustice and violence. Second, and more ambitious, Tyner works to create a more radical and ethically engaged population geography by breathing social theory - and in particular poststructural and postcolonial insights - into what he sees as a stubbornly conserva tive field. After a lengthy introduction, Tyner works to ground his interventions in three chapters organised respectively around conflict in Vietnam, Cambodia and Rwanda, and closes with a chapter on peace education. The text fits within a young but growing body of literature, which includes an emerging critical population geography, that examines what a theoreti cally and politically engaged human geography can tell us about violence and how we might use geo graphical tools to both address forms of violence and prevent them from materialising (see, for example, Gregory and Pred 2006; Kobayashi 2009). The value of the text lies in the connections Tyner draws between population geography, political violence and critical social theory, and his impassioned call for a more morally engaged population geography and human geography more broadly. His explication of theory, moreover, is exceptionally clear and free from jargon, making the text accessible to a wide audience. Despite the text's strengths, I do see several short comings. First, I never get a strong sense of what scholars who are not population geographers and who are already interested in questions of violence and critical social theory might learn from population geography. This is a promise Tyner makes but ultimately does not deliver on. Second, the case studies often either leave the reader wondering how exactly their particular theoretical insights shed light on the broader concerns of the text or else emerge as overly empirical and atheoretical. The latter is particularly problematic as Tyner misses a prime opportunity to further illustrate how theory could indeed enrich and enliven popula tion geography. Third, and Ithink most serious, despite how lucidly Tyner describes different theoretical con cepts, their translation into the case studies does not always pan out. This is most clearly the case in the chapter on 'Biopower in Vietnam'. In the end, surpris ingly little of the chapter is actually about biopower (with a few short but important exceptions, including the discussion of strategic hamlets). In fact, for much of the chapter, Tyner focuses exclusively on death and destruction, or necropolitics, rather than on how death
© 2011 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
and destruction might be promoted or justified on the grounds that they 'protect' or enable certain lives and certain populations. Grasping this connection, from my perspective, is central to understanding biopower and why we must take it seriously.
Although less of a critique, I have mixed feelings about Tyner' s calIthat we as scholars must act to address forms of violence and injustice and that, in not acting, we 'contribute to an ongoing culture of impunity' (p. 44). My initial reaction is to applaud Tyner for this unapologetic demand for action. At the same time, however, I cannot shake off the stern warning of Mahmood Mamdani from his recent text Saviors and survivors (2009). Using the case of the 'Save Darfur' movement, Mamdani offers an important caution regarding the dangers of acting. He chastises activists, including activist-scholars, for working to 'save' Darfur before understanding the complexity of the situation. From Mamdani's perspective, activists perform their own type of injustice in branding conflict in Darfur a 'genocide', rather than understanding it as a civil war, and in demanding Western military intervention to stop the conflict. I am certainly not accusing Tyner of sug gesting that we act before we have an adequate under standing of the case at hand. My point is that a palpable tension exists between Tyner's impassioned call for action and Mamdani's more cautious - yet equally impassioned - call for restraint. I hope such a tension - rather that installing a type of ethical paralysis -can help promote a wider discussion on the politics of activism and intervention including scholarly intervention.
Despite these several limitations, I applaud Tyner's challenge that we as geographers take seriously ques tions of violence in our work, and in his own eloquent phrasing, that we 'make the body count'.
ELIZABETH LU NSTRUM, York University, Canada
References
Gregory D and Pred A eds 2006 Violent geographies: fear, terror, and political violence Routledge, New York
Kobayashi A ed 2009 Special issue: Geographies of peace and armed conflict Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99 (5)
Mamdani M 2009 Saviors and survivors: Darfur, politics, and the War on Terror Pantheon, New York
Clean Clothes: A Global Movement to End Sweat shops. By LIESBETH SLUITER
Pluto Press, New York, 2009, 310 pp. notes and index
£12.99 (paperback) ISBN 978 0 74532 768 6
A giant in holding the global garment industry accountable to labour rights and conditions against a backdrop of globalisation is the Clean Clothes Cam paign (CCC), which has been in existence since 1988. In Clean Clothes, journalist Liesbeth Sluiter meticu lously traces the story of CCC's birth and transition
The Geographical Journal Vol. 177 No. 1, pp. 97-100, 2011
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