Jesse Rodenbiker
Biographic Data
| ID | 355513 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jesse Rodenbiker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jesse |
| FAMILY NAME | Rodenbiker |
| SIGNATURE | RODENBIKER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6889-4958 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 44 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Provincializing ecology
This paper examines the philosophical, historical, and practical differences between two dominant paradigms of human-nature relations: restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism. Restoration ecology, rooted in Euro-American environmental thought, emphasizes historical fidelity, ecological integrity, and human responsibility toward community-based ecosystem relations. In contrast, eco-developmentalism, exemplified by China’s large-scale ecologic…
China and the environment
This introduction analyzes the question of scale in relationships between China and the environment. Scholars across fields have long debated the role of scale, revealing how different scales—from political-economic systems to global processes—shape environmental change. China, with its vast size and global significance, provides a crucial case for investigating these dynamics and relations. First, dominant environmental narratives are interrogat…
From the Gobi to the Sahel
China’s assistance with Africa’s Great Green Wall offers a critical test case for its eco-developmental approach to combating desertification. Unlike Western-backed conservation models, which focus primarily on ecological restoration, China’s strategy—refined through its Three North Shelterbelt Program—focuses on eco-developmentalism, integrating tree planting with large-scale infrastructure, renewable energy, and livelihood transformation throug…
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
Spatiotemporal inequality in green urban transition
How centralizing environmental enforcement affects water quality
Shark Fin City
Hong Kong has historically been the epicenter of the global shark fin trade. Despite this legacy, recent public outreach campaigns highlighting the effects of consumption on marine ecosystems have precipitated shifts in the market. Fish maw and sea cucumber have emerged as substitutes in wildlife markets, marking an understudied phenomenon from urban geographical perspectives. This article investigates the transitional nature of social value syst…
Global China in the American heartland
A specter is haunting the American heartland — the specter of global China. As US-China geopolitical tensions rise, China-related investments in US land have become ground zero for anti-China populist expressions. This article analyzes the role of Chinese land investment in the reconfiguration of local, inter-regional, and national politics. It examines geopolitical imaginaries of Chinese investment through a case study of Fufeng USA's agricultur…
An Ecological History of Modern China
An Ecological History of Modern China takes ecology as a tool for analyzing and reperiodizing China's modern history and development from the mid-twentieth century to the present.1 In this, it departs from much of the work on China's environmental history that focuses on politics, economics, and policies, while holding the environment as a passive backdrop. The deployment of ecological tools in the analysis not only makes this work stand apart fr…
Ecological militarization
Urban oceans
This paper argues that the urban and the ocean are co-constituted through relations that are unevenly classed, gendered, and racialized. This argument is empirically anchored in high-value fish maw markets in Hong Kong, New York City, and the oceanic spaces and lives therein. The global inter-urban trade in Totoaba, an endangered fish endemic to the Gulf of California, serves as a primary example of piscine capital circulation, while supporting e…
Global shark fins in local contexts
We analyze multi-scalar social, economic, and policy dynamics of shark fin production and consumption through Hong Kong, the world's leading shark fin entrepôt, and U.S. Mid-Atlantic artisanal fisheries in New Jersey (NJ), a U.S. state that enacted a shark-fin retail ban in 2021. Trade statistics point to a rise in shark fin circulation to Hong Kong in recent years supplied through global pathways of production. Global discourses of overconsumpti…
Geoengineering the Sublime
If you walked through one of China's megacities in the past few decades, the sky was most likely grey.Air pollution reached record highs; haze was omnipresent.The skies over major cities, including Beijing, exemplified this banal aesthetic feature of urban life.Living with pollution became commonplace-in part because of China's role as a global manufacturing centre.For decades, China has been a factory for the world.Processes of industrial produc…
Adapting participatory research methods for reflexive environmental management
This article discusses methodological adaptations to participatory methods for reflexive environmental management. Reflexive approaches to research methods as process, this article contends, can elucidate social dynamics that standard sampling frames and rote procedures may elide. This argument is supported through a discussion of key insights from scholarship about participatory research methods, as well as auto-reflections on methodical adaptat…
The endowment effect accompanying villagers' withdrawal from rural homesteads
Making Ecology Developmental
Although the science of ecology is often understood in antimodernizing terms, this article shows how ecology in China has become a means to articulate green modernization and sustainable development. As scholars predominantly focus on the policy rhetoric surrounding China’s national modernization and sustainable development program called “ecological civilization building,” the origins of how ecology came to take on developmental meanings remain …
Urban Ecological Enclosures
Across contemporary China, city governments are unevenly territorializing peri-urban villagers' land and housing by creating new urban ecological conservation sites. I analyze this emerging form of what I call 'ecological territorialization' through three interrelated spatial practices: comprehensive urban-rural planning, peri-urban 'ecological migration', and the distribution of institutional responsibility for conservation site financing, const…
Uneven incorporation
Uneven incorporation
Urban Ecological Enclosures
Across contemporary China, city governments are unevenly territorializing peri-urban villagers' land and housing by creating new urban ecological conservation sites. I analyze this emerging form of what I call 'ecological territorialization' through three interrelated spatial practices: comprehensive urban-rural planning, peri-urban 'ecological migration', and the distribution of institutional responsibility for conservation site financing, const…
Making Ecology Developmental
Although the science of ecology is often understood in antimodernizing terms, this article shows how ecology in China has become a means to articulate green modernization and sustainable development. As scholars predominantly focus on the policy rhetoric surrounding China’s national modernization and sustainable development program called “ecological civilization building,” the origins of how ecology came to take on developmental meanings remain …
Ecological militarization
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
Shark Fin City
Hong Kong has historically been the epicenter of the global shark fin trade. Despite this legacy, recent public outreach campaigns highlighting the effects of consumption on marine ecosystems have precipitated shifts in the market. Fish maw and sea cucumber have emerged as substitutes in wildlife markets, marking an understudied phenomenon from urban geographical perspectives. This article investigates the transitional nature of social value syst…
Global China in the American heartland
A specter is haunting the American heartland — the specter of global China. As US-China geopolitical tensions rise, China-related investments in US land have become ground zero for anti-China populist expressions. This article analyzes the role of Chinese land investment in the reconfiguration of local, inter-regional, and national politics. It examines geopolitical imaginaries of Chinese investment through a case study of Fufeng USA's agricultur…
Adapting participatory research methods for reflexive environmental management
This article discusses methodological adaptations to participatory methods for reflexive environmental management. Reflexive approaches to research methods as process, this article contends, can elucidate social dynamics that standard sampling frames and rote procedures may elide. This argument is supported through a discussion of key insights from scholarship about participatory research methods, as well as auto-reflections on methodical adaptat…
The endowment effect accompanying villagers' withdrawal from rural homesteads
How centralizing environmental enforcement affects water quality
Urban oceans
This paper argues that the urban and the ocean are co-constituted through relations that are unevenly classed, gendered, and racialized. This argument is empirically anchored in high-value fish maw markets in Hong Kong, New York City, and the oceanic spaces and lives therein. The global inter-urban trade in Totoaba, an endangered fish endemic to the Gulf of California, serves as a primary example of piscine capital circulation, while supporting e…
Global shark fins in local contexts
We analyze multi-scalar social, economic, and policy dynamics of shark fin production and consumption through Hong Kong, the world's leading shark fin entrepôt, and U.S. Mid-Atlantic artisanal fisheries in New Jersey (NJ), a U.S. state that enacted a shark-fin retail ban in 2021. Trade statistics point to a rise in shark fin circulation to Hong Kong in recent years supplied through global pathways of production. Global discourses of overconsumpti…
Uneven incorporation
Urban Ecological Enclosures
Across contemporary China, city governments are unevenly territorializing peri-urban villagers' land and housing by creating new urban ecological conservation sites. I analyze this emerging form of what I call 'ecological territorialization' through three interrelated spatial practices: comprehensive urban-rural planning, peri-urban 'ecological migration', and the distribution of institutional responsibility for conservation site financing, const…
The endowment effect accompanying villagers' withdrawal from rural homesteads
Making Ecology Developmental
Although the science of ecology is often understood in antimodernizing terms, this article shows how ecology in China has become a means to articulate green modernization and sustainable development. As scholars predominantly focus on the policy rhetoric surrounding China’s national modernization and sustainable development program called “ecological civilization building,” the origins of how ecology came to take on developmental meanings remain …
Geoengineering the Sublime
If you walked through one of China's megacities in the past few decades, the sky was most likely grey.Air pollution reached record highs; haze was omnipresent.The skies over major cities, including Beijing, exemplified this banal aesthetic feature of urban life.Living with pollution became commonplace-in part because of China's role as a global manufacturing centre.For decades, China has been a factory for the world.Processes of industrial produc…
Adapting participatory research methods for reflexive environmental management
This article discusses methodological adaptations to participatory methods for reflexive environmental management. Reflexive approaches to research methods as process, this article contends, can elucidate social dynamics that standard sampling frames and rote procedures may elide. This argument is supported through a discussion of key insights from scholarship about participatory research methods, as well as auto-reflections on methodical adaptat…
Ecological militarization
Urban oceans
This paper argues that the urban and the ocean are co-constituted through relations that are unevenly classed, gendered, and racialized. This argument is empirically anchored in high-value fish maw markets in Hong Kong, New York City, and the oceanic spaces and lives therein. The global inter-urban trade in Totoaba, an endangered fish endemic to the Gulf of California, serves as a primary example of piscine capital circulation, while supporting e…
Global shark fins in local contexts
We analyze multi-scalar social, economic, and policy dynamics of shark fin production and consumption through Hong Kong, the world's leading shark fin entrepôt, and U.S. Mid-Atlantic artisanal fisheries in New Jersey (NJ), a U.S. state that enacted a shark-fin retail ban in 2021. Trade statistics point to a rise in shark fin circulation to Hong Kong in recent years supplied through global pathways of production. Global discourses of overconsumpti…
Global China in the American heartland
A specter is haunting the American heartland — the specter of global China. As US-China geopolitical tensions rise, China-related investments in US land have become ground zero for anti-China populist expressions. This article analyzes the role of Chinese land investment in the reconfiguration of local, inter-regional, and national politics. It examines geopolitical imaginaries of Chinese investment through a case study of Fufeng USA's agricultur…
An Ecological History of Modern China
An Ecological History of Modern China takes ecology as a tool for analyzing and reperiodizing China's modern history and development from the mid-twentieth century to the present.1 In this, it departs from much of the work on China's environmental history that focuses on politics, economics, and policies, while holding the environment as a passive backdrop. The deployment of ecological tools in the analysis not only makes this work stand apart fr…
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
Spatiotemporal inequality in green urban transition
How centralizing environmental enforcement affects water quality
Shark Fin City
Hong Kong has historically been the epicenter of the global shark fin trade. Despite this legacy, recent public outreach campaigns highlighting the effects of consumption on marine ecosystems have precipitated shifts in the market. Fish maw and sea cucumber have emerged as substitutes in wildlife markets, marking an understudied phenomenon from urban geographical perspectives. This article investigates the transitional nature of social value syst…
Provincializing ecology
This paper examines the philosophical, historical, and practical differences between two dominant paradigms of human-nature relations: restoration ecology and eco-developmentalism. Restoration ecology, rooted in Euro-American environmental thought, emphasizes historical fidelity, ecological integrity, and human responsibility toward community-based ecosystem relations. In contrast, eco-developmentalism, exemplified by China’s large-scale ecologic…
China and the environment
This introduction analyzes the question of scale in relationships between China and the environment. Scholars across fields have long debated the role of scale, revealing how different scales—from political-economic systems to global processes—shape environmental change. China, with its vast size and global significance, provides a crucial case for investigating these dynamics and relations. First, dominant environmental narratives are interrogat…
From the Gobi to the Sahel
China’s assistance with Africa’s Great Green Wall offers a critical test case for its eco-developmental approach to combating desertification. Unlike Western-backed conservation models, which focus primarily on ecological restoration, China’s strategy—refined through its Three North Shelterbelt Program—focuses on eco-developmentalism, integrating tree planting with large-scale infrastructure, renewable energy, and livelihood transformation throug…
China (12 works) · Geography (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Ecology (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Social science (4 works) · Sociology (4 works)