ARTICLES

  • Gaikwad, Nikhar, Erin Lin, and Noah Zucker (2023). “Gender After Genocide: How violence shapes long-term political representation.” World Politics 75(3): 439-481. Lead Article. Award (APSA - Democracy and Autocracy). Award (APSA - Comparative Politics). Award (APSA - Political Economy).

    Abstract

    What are the legacies of violence on gendered patterns of political representation? We examine the long-term effects of a watershed conflict of the twentieth century: the Khmer Rouge genocide, during which 50–70% of Cambodia’s working-age men were killed. Using original data on mass killings and economic and political conditions in Cambodian communes, we find that genocide exposure is positively associated with women’s economic advancement and present-day indicators of women’s representation in local-level elected office. We conduct in-depth, ethnographic interviews with genocide survivors to explore the mechanisms by which violence spurred women into elected office. A crucial finding emerges: In areas that suffered the genocide’s worst killings, widows obtained economic autonomy, providing a template for the economic advancement of women in households maintaining conventional gender roles. The shift in norms regarding the sexual division of labor created intra-communal and intergenerational pathways by which women adopted larger public roles over time.

  • Lin, Erin (2022). “How War Changes Land: Soil fertility, unexploded bombs, and the underdevelopment of Cambodia.” American Journal of Political Science 66(1): 222-237. Article. Online appendix. Replication archive. Press release. Award (MPSA - International Relations). Media coverage in The Economist and NPR.

    Abstract

    How does past political violence impact subsequent development and practices, long beyond the life of the regime that perpetrated violence? Prior research focuses on physical destruction without much attention to weapons left behind in conflict zones. I contend that unexploded ordnance create direct and imminent threats to rural livelihoods. Individuals respond by shortening time horizons and avoiding investment in activities for which there is an immediate security cost but a distant return. Short-term adjustments in agricultural methods accumulate to long-term underdevelopment and poverty. In Cambodia, I find that the historic bombing of high-fertility land, where impact fuses hit soft ground and were more likely to fail, reduces contemporary household production and welfare. Counterintuitively, the most fertile land becomes the least productive. This reversal of fortune qualifies the presumption that post-war economies will eventually converge back to steady-state growth

  • Lin, Erin, Rongjun Qin, Jared Edgerton, and Deren Kong (2020). “Crater detection from commercial satellite imagery to estimate unexploded ordnance in Cambodian agricultural land.” PLoS ONE 15(3): e0229826. Article. Data. Press release. Media coverage in Gizmodo, Fox News, the Batch, Science Daily, AZo Robotics, New Atlas, and Inverse.

Abstract

Unexploded ordnance (UXO) pose a significant threat to post-conflict communities, and current efforts to locate bombs rely on time-intensive and dangerous in-person enumeration. Very high resolution (VHR) sub-meter satellite images may offer a low-cost and high-efficiency approach to automatically detect craters and estimate UXO density. We customize machine-learning methods from the meteor crater literature to find bomb craters, which are smaller than meteor craters and have high appearance variation, particularly in spectral reflectance and shape, due to the complex terrain environment.

To address these challenges, we create a two stage learning-based framework: we start with a simple and loose statistical classifier based on histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) and spectral information for a first pass of crater recognition, and in a second stage, we develop a patch-dependent novel spatial feature through dynamic mean-shift segmentation and SIFT descriptors. We apply the model to a multispectral Worldview-2 image of a Cambodian village, which was heavily bombed during the Vietnam War. The proposed method increased true bomb crater detection by over 160 percent. Comparative analysis demonstrates that our method significantly outperforms typical object-recognition algorithms and can be used for wide-area bomb crater detection. Our model, combined with declassified records and demining reports, suggests that 44 to 50 percent of the bombs in the vicinity of this particular Cambodian village may remain unexploded.

  • Lin, Erin, Christine Sprunger, and Jyhjong Hwang (2021). “The Farmer’s Battlefield: Traditional ecological knowledge and unexploded bombs in Cambodia.” Agriculture and Human Values 38(3): 827-837. Article.

Abstract

What role does traditional ecological knowledge play in the lives of smallholder farmers in post-conflict communities as they cope with the destructive impacts of war? In many cases, military weapons, such as unexploded bombs, are left behind in the surrounding landscape, forcing farmers to adapt their livelihood practices to the increased risk of death and injury. We analyze trends in the local production of knowledge in Ratanak Kiri province, Cambodia, an area heavily bombarded by the US Air Force during the Vietnam War. We argue that the system of traditional ecological knowledge has adapted to include basic information on bomb identification, location, and management strategies. This factual approach gives individuals the flexibility to generate their own views on whether they perceive unexploded ordnance as a violent hazard and/or an economic commodity. In a relatively short fifty-year time period, the body of knowledge has been quickly accumulated and culturally transmitted to family and neighbors. Our findings qualify the presumption that traditional ecological knowledge is a static and ancient form of collective memory. We call for the expansion of the concept of traditional ecological knowledge to include short-term and dynamic processes of knowledge generation.