Peter Vandergeest

Peter Vandergeest (Ph.D., Cornell, 1990) teaches and writes on political ecologies and agrarian studies in Southeast Asia. He has conducted research on topics including the history of scientific forestry in Southeast Asia (with Nancy Peluso); sustainability certification for industrial aquaculture; alternative agriculture in Southeast Asia (with Mary Young); and most recently on market mechanisms and private sector involvement in the governance of fisheries and forestry in Southeast Asia. He is now focusing on the ecologies of labour in the fisheries, working with Melissa Marschke to explore how labour relations in the fisheries have been remade through migration, industrialization and changing marine ecologies, and to find out what the recent controversies around unfree labour in fisheries can tell us about capitalism.