Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China
A China Planning Research Group Seminar
Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China
23 Nov 2022, 14:00 – 15:00
The event will be held online. Please joing via Zoom.
Zoom meeting ID: 993 3185 3302
This talk considers the politics of science and nature in China's urban conservation. Within this context, particular logics of ecological integrity and socio-environmental improvement underlie practices of conservation planning and human resettlement. These logics, often framed as part of "building an ecological civilization," laid a foundation for ecological protection zoning across municipalities and contributed to normalizing processes of ecological migration across the peri-urban fringe. This talk provides historical context for these logics and practices rooted in China's ecological thought. And it discusses how these logics shape contemporary ecological protection practices in municipal regions and uneven socio-economic trajectories for peri-urban ecological migrants. In considering the logics, techniques, and trajectories that undergird ecological urbanization, the talk examines how scientific planning to improve nature and society extend municipal state power and unevenly reconfigure China's citizenry.
Jesse Rodenbiker
Associate Research Scholar
Center on Contemporary China, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University
He is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Previously, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University, as well as a Visiting Scholar at Sichuan University's School of Public Administration and Department of Land Resource Management. His book manuscript, titled Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China, is forthcoming with Cornell University Press in 2023.