Assistant Teaching Professor Jesse Rodenbiker was awarded the American Council of Learned Societies and Henry Luce Foundation China Program Early Career Fellowship for 2022-2023. The award will support work on his book manuscript Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China, which will be published with Cornell University Press. Dr. Rodenbiker is one of twelve faculty selected for this award. ACLS website announcement
Ecological States details the relationship between ecology, state power, and an uneven citizenry. The project traces the roots of land classification policies through global interconnections of China's premier ecologists into programs of state-led green modernization collectively referred to as "ecological civilization building." The logics of this green development platform lay the groundwork for techniques of ecological protection zoning that extend municipal state power and facilitate the uneven incorporation of peri-urban villagers’ land and housing, spurring ecological migrations. Holding in tension the biophysical, governmental, and aesthetic articulations of “ecological states,” the book illustrates how ecology becomes a means of constituting local state power and social inequality. "
