I am a human-environment geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist. My work focuses on environmental governance, urbanization, sustainable development, and social inequality in China and globally. My published works intersect with environmental science, policy, and planning, urban geography, and political ecology. Support for my research has come from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, and the Wilson Center. I am the author of Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China (2023, Cornell University Press).
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.
Before joining Rutgers, I held a Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Sustainability with the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University. I obtained my Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley where I was affiliated with the Center for Chinese Studies, Global Metropolitan Studies, and Left Coast Political Ecology. At Rutgers, I teach courses on Cities, Conservation, East Asia, and Environment, Society, and Justice.
I am on leave during the 2022-2023 academic year as an Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University with the Center on Contemporary China at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, a fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies, and a China Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Selected Publications:
Jesse Rodenbiker. (2024). Global China in the American Heartland: Chinese Investment, Populist Coalitions, and the New Red Scare. Political Geography. (111). 103110.
Jesse Rodenbiker (2024) Shark Fin City: Transitional Marine Wildlife Economies in Global Hong Kong. Urban Geography. doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2024.2350099
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. (2023). Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China. Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY.
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 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). 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.
