I am a human-environment geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist. My work focuses on environmental governance, urbanization, sustainable development, displacement, and social inequality in China and globally. I critically engage with environmental science, policy, and planning, urban geography, and political ecology, as well as other fields. I am the author of the book Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China (2023, Cornell University Press), which was recognized as a Ludwik Fleck Prize Finalist by the Society for Social Studies of Science.
Ecological States critically examines ecological policies in the People's Republic of China to show how campaigns of scientifically based environmental protection transform nature and society. While many point to China's ecological civilization programs as a new paradigm for global environmental governance, I argue that ecological redlining extends the reach of the authoritarian state. Although Chinese urban sustainability initiatives have driven millions of citizens from their land and housing, I show that these migrants are not passive subjects of state policy. Instead, they creatively navigate resettlement processes in pursuit of their own benefit. However, their resistance is limited by varied forms of state-backed infrastructural violence. Through extensive fieldwork with scientists, urban planners, and everyday citizens in southwestern China, Ecological States exposes the ways in which the scientific logics and practices fundamental to China's green urbanization have solidified state power and contributed to dispossession and social inequality.
Ecological States is freely available in an open access edition through the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.
More recently, I have worked on the relationship between urban politics of consumption and biodiversity loss at sea, as well as on global China and the environment. The former project has brought me to urban seafood markets across Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and New York City, as well as the aqueous landscapes that supply them, including Mid-Atlantic fisheries. The latter project has involved research on global biodiversity governance, Southeast Asian marine environments, and Chinese land investment in the American Midwest.
I serve on the advisory committee of the Global Asias Initiative and am affiliated with the Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies. At Rutgers, I teach courses on international and global studies, East Asia, geographical methods, environment, society and justice, and global China.
I have held postdoctoral research fellowships at Princeton University with the Center on Contemporary China at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and at Cornell University with the Atkinson Center of Sustainability and the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment. At Sichuan University, I served as a Visiting Scholar in the School of Public Administration with the Department of Land and Resource Management. I am a Wilson China Fellow and a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations (NCUSCR). I am a Public Intellectual Program (PIP) Fellow with NCUSCR, Cohort IX. Support for my research has come from the American Council of Learned Societies, Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, and the Wilson Center, among others.
Selected Publications:
Book
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
- Ludwik Fleck Prize Finalist, Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)
Refereed Journal Articles
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2025) Shark Fin City: Transitional Marine Wildlife Economies in Global Hong Kong. Urban Geography. 46(1) 155-179.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2024). Global China in the American Heartland: Chinese Investment, Populist Coalitions, and the New Red Scare. Political Geography. (111). 103110.
Jesse Rodenbiker, Nina O. Therkildsen, Erica Ruan, Kelly Su (2024). Advancing One Health in Urban Seafood Markets: A Genetic and Social Analysis of Dried Sea Cucumber in Three New York City Chinatowns. Sustainability. 16(9). 3589.
Jesse Rodenbiker, Nina O. Therkildsen, Cheong Chun Li, (2023). Global Shark Fins in Local Contexts: Multi-scalar Dynamics Between Hong Kong Markets and Mid-Atlantic Fisheries. Ecology and Society. 28(3): 5.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). Urban Oceans: Social Differentiation in the City and the Sea. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 6(1) 412-432.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). Green Silk Roads, Partner State Development, and Environmental Governance: Belt and Road Infrastructures on the Sino-East African Frontier. Critical Asian Studies. 55 (2) 169-192.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). Ecological Militarization: Engineering Territory in the South China Sea. Political Geography. 102932.
Jesse Rodenbiker (2022). Social Justice in China's Cities: Urban-Rural Restructuring and Justice-Oriented Planning. Transactions in Planning and Urban Research. 1 (1-2): 184-198.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2022). Geoengineering the Sublime: China and the Aesthetic State. Made in China Journal. 7(2): 138-143.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2021). Making Ecology Developmental: China's Environmental Sciences and Green Modernization in Global Context. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 111 (7), 1931-1948
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2020). Urban Ecological Enclosures: Conservation Planning, Peri-urban Displacement, and Local State Formations in China. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 44(4), 691-710
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2019). Uneven Incorporation: Volumetric Transitions in Peri-urban China's Conservation Zones. Geoforum. 104, 234-243
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2017). Superscribing Sustainability: The Production of China’s Urban Waterscapes. UPLanD-Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & Environmental Design, 2(3), 71-86.
Public Scholarship and Policy Reports
Jesse Rodenbiker. (Forthcoming) Boundary-Making in the South China Sea: A Geographical and Ecological Landscape. Geography Review.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). Ecological Civilization Goes Global: China's Green Soft Power and South-South Environmental Initiatives. Understanding China Amid Change and Cooperation: 2022-2023 Wilson China Fellowship Report.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). China's Ecological Migration from the Ground Up. New Security Beat 6 (15).
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2022). High Stakes: China's Leadership in Global Biodiversity Conservation. China Environment Forum. 11 (3).
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2020). Hope for Vaquita Lies with Consumers. Dialogue Earth. (8) 6
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2015). Towards an Emancipatory Anthropocene: Climate Change and Everyday Life Human and Nature. (11) 11-17. (Chinese language)
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2015). Globalizing Hexigtan: The Spatial Anomalies of Making a Global Geopark. Human and Nature. (9) 22-27. (Chinese language)
Book Chapters
Jesse Rodenbiker. (Forthcoming). Ecological Civilization: A Technocratic Vision of Sustainability in Chinese Enviromental History: A Reader. Peter Lavelle and Brian Lande (Eds.). New York: Columbia University Press
Jesse Rodenbiker. Global China and Wildlife Trade: Impacts on Biodiversity, Marine Ecosystems, and Racialized Public Health Risks. (Forthcoming). The Sage Handbook on China's Environment. Chris Coggins and Yifei Li (Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023) Political Ecologies of Urban-Rural Conservation Planning and Resettlement. Fulong Wu and Fangzhu Zhang (Eds.) Handbook on China's Urban Environmental Governance. London: Edward Elgar Press.
Woodworth, M. X.F. Ren, J. Rodenbiker, E. Santi, Y. Tan, L. Zhang, Y. Zhou. (2022). Researching China During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Stanley Brunn (Ed.) COVID-19 and Emerging World of ad-hoc Geographies. Springer Publishing. 2705-2721.
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2020). Sustainability as Environmental Justice: Uneven Inclusion into China's Ecological Cities. in Shades of Green: Notes on Eco-Civilisation. (Made in China Notebooks 1). Luigi Tomba and Olivier Krischer (Eds.). Canberra: Australia National University Press.