Nancy Lee Peluso

Nancy Lee Peluso is Professor Emerita/Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught Political Ecology classes in the Division of Society & Environment, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management  for 27 years. She is a Geographer, trained at Cornell as a Rural/Development Sociologist. She served as President of the Association of Asian Studies in 2025-26 and is serving as Past President for 2026-27.Peluso held the Rausser College of Natural Resources’ Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professorship of Forest Policy from 2009-2019. Other awards and honors included being named a Harry Frank Guggenheim fellow in 2003 and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in Geography and Environmental Studies in 2006. She won UC Berkeley’s Sarlo Award for Graduate Student Mentoring in 2012, the Al Moumin Award in Environmental Peace Building in 2019, and was selected for a Distinguished Career Award by the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers in 2022. Trained at Cornell, she has been conducting research in Indonesia for over forty years. Peluso has held research grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Humanities Research Institute at UCI, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the Ford Foundation. She was a founding member of the Berkeley Workshop in Environmental Politics in 1996 and served as co-director with Michael Watts from 2001-2008. This morphed into an interdisciplinary lab group that continues today, known on campus as Landlab.Peluso has chaired or been a reader on 83 doctoral dissertations and mentored 33 postdoctoral scholars. She has conducted extensive field research in Central and East Java, the Special Region of Yogyakarta, and both East and West Kalimantan provinces, all in Indonesia. She has authored, co-authored, and co-edited over 93 peer-reviewed publications.

Peluso’s deepest and longest research endeavors have been in Central and East Java and in West Kalimantan. Her research is grounded in place-based ethnography, in-depth interviews, oral histories bolstered by landscape and archival evidence to write socio-natural histories. She has two current projects, both with ongoing fieldwork commitments: “Durian Forests, Rubber plantations, Gold Frontiers, and other Smallholder Territories,” and “Remittance Landscapes and their Mobile Makers.” Both projects are grounded in the life histories of workers and smallholders, following the lives and historical trajectories of families and the working landscapes they help create.With Rachel Silvey, she coedited a special issue of Globalizations on “The Plantation-Migration Nexus in Indonesia” published in February 2026. Her most recent book, The Social Lives of Land, was published in 2024 by Cornell University Press, and co-edited with Wendy Wolford and Michael Goldman. Other books include New Frontiers of Land Control (co-edited with Christian Lund, Routledge, 2012); Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, People and Nature in a Neoliberal Age (co-edited with Joseph Nevins, Cornell University Press, 2008); Violent Environments (co-edited with Michael Watts, Cornell University Press, 2001); Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation, and Development (co-edited with Christine Padoch, Oxford University Press, 1996, second edition 2006). Her first book, a monograph, Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (University of California Press, 1992) is still available on demand, and used widely in political ecology and environmental studies classes. It has been translated to Indonesian and published in two new editions. A new update in Indonesian is due out in 2026.

Research Description

My students and I study the social processes that affect the management of land-based resources, using ethnographic, historical, and other broadly sociological research methods. My work explores various dimensions of resource access, use, and control, while comparing and contrasting local, national, and international influences on management structures and processes. I ground my analysis of contemporary resource management policy and practice in local and regional histories. I am particularly interested in how social difference – ethnic identity, class, gender – affects resource access and control. How do government and non-government institutions and actors define, make claims upon, contest, and attempt to manage natural resources?

These political ecological questions form the core of the topically, geographically, and methodologically diverse research pursued by my group of students and postdocs – a collective we call Land Lab. More information about our group’s participants and research can be found on the Land Lab website.

My work encompasses a broad range of topics in land and forest management, agrarian politics, and socio-environmental change. I have conducted research on the history of political forests in Southeast Asia, linking global geopolitics, professional forestry institutions, and natural resource law to the production of state territories and shifting experiences for forest dwellers. Other work has centered on the everyday politics of resource use, access, and control in Java’s teak forests and among swidden cultivators. In my study of violence in West Kalimantan, I examined how communal conflict, landscape history, and resource claims are entangled in processes of territorialization. My current projects are discussed below.

Current Projects

The Remittance Forest and Gendering Agrarian Change

Mining Smallholders and Gold Territories

Curriculum Vitae

Education

• Ph.D., Cornell University, Sociology of Agriculture and Natural Resources, January 1988
• M.Sc., Cornell University, Rural Sociology, August 1983
• B.A., Friends World College, Anthropology, January 1977

Research interests: political ecology, forest and agrarian politics, small-scale gold mining, agrarian and environmental histories, property and access, frontiers and territories, Indonesia; Southeast Asia; mobilities, labor migration, plantations

Academic Positions

Major Academic Awards

2023 Distinguished Research Lecture, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (to be given in 2024)

2022. Cultural and Political Ecology [CAPE] Distinguished Career Award. Association of American Geographers

2019 Al Moumin Award in Environmental Peacekeeping. Awarded by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, UN Environment, American University’s School of International Service, and the Environmental Law Institute

2009-19 Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professorship in Forest Policy. College of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley. 

2012 Sarlo Prize for Graduate Student Mentoring, University of California, Berkeley

2006 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (Geography and Environmental Studies)

2003 The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation for the study of violence

2017-18 ESPM Graduate Student Mentoring Award

2007 Edward J. Taaffe Distinguished Lecturer. The Ohio State University Department of Geography.

2000 Humanities Research Institute Fellowship University of California, Irvine. Resident Fellow, Winter and Spring quarters. Rainforest Research Group.

1996 Simpson Chair, International and Area Studies Dean's Office, University of California, Berkeley (two years)

1995 Rural Sociological Society Annual Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contribution for Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java.

1994 Award of Merit, Natural Resources Research Group, Rural Sociological Society.

1988 Lauriston Sharp Award for scholarship and community, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program

Language Proficiency

Indonesian (fluent); Javanese (speaking, reading), French (working); Dutch (reading); Italian (barely!); Salako (always learning).

Publications, Films, Exhibits

Photo Exhibits

Peluso, Nancy Lee. February 2025. “Labor, Land, Extraction: Everyday Political Ecologies of Smallholder Goldmining in West Kalimantan.’ Photo Exhibit at Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHM). Kyoto, Japan.

Peluso, Nancy Lee. August-December 2022. Spectacles of Small-Scale Mining in Indonesia. 12 panel exhibit at the Environmental Design Library, Baur-Worster Hall, University of California, Berkeley.

Peluso, Nancy. Sept-Oct. 2021. "The Look" and "Morning Coffee." Two Peluso photos from West Kalimantan Research on Small Scale Gold Mining. Women's Eco-Artist Dialogue (WEAD) Exhibit, Gallery Route One, Point Reyes. "Extraction."

Nov. 2020-present on line. Peluso, Nancy Lee. "Spectacles of Small-Scale Mining in Indonesia" Environmental Design Library, UC Berkeley. Virtual exhibit: One of 100 sites chosen as part of national exhibit: “Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss.” https://exhibits.lib.berkeley.edu/spotlight/gold-farmers

Photo Essay

2015. Peluso, Nancy Lee, with Liam Gammon.  “The gold farmers.” The New Mandala, 17 July, 2015. http://www.newmandala.org/the-gold-farmers

Books and Special Issues

2026, March. Peluso, Nancy Lee and Rachel Silvey (eds). Globalizations. The Plantation-Migration Nexus in Indonesia Geographies of Social Reproduction. Taylor & Francis. 

2024 Wolford, Wendy W., Nancy Lee Peluso, Goldman, Michael, (eds). The Social Lives of Land. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

2012 Peluso, Nancy Lee and Christian Lund (eds). New Frontiers of Land Control. Taylor and Francis. Book version of Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Christian Lund (eds).

2008 Nevins, Joseph and Nancy Lee Peluso (eds.). Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, People and Nature in a Neoliberal Age. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

2006 Peluso, Nancy Lee. (translated by Landung Simatupang). Hutan Kaya, Rakyat Melarat: Penguasaan Sumberdaya dan Perlawanan di Jawa. Yogyakarta: Konphalindo. Printed by INSIST Press. Indonesian Translation of Rich Forests, Poor People with a new introduction based on new research.

2003 Padoch, Christine, and Nancy Lee Peluso (eds). Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation, and Development. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Includes new introduction and updated article, both by: Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Christine Padoch, "Resource Rights in Managed Forests of West Kalimantan, Indonesia." [second edition].

2001 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Michael Watts. Violent Environments. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

1997 Colfer, Carol J. Pierce, with Nancy Peluso and Chin See Chung. Beyond Slash and Burn: Building on Indigenous Management of Borneo’s Tropical Rain Forests. Series: Advances in Economic Botany, Volume 11. Bronx: The New York Botanical Garden.

1996 Padoch, Christine, and Nancy Lee Peluso (eds). Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation, and Development. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.Includes article: Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Christine Padoch, "Resource Rights in Managed Forests of West Kalimantan, Indonesia."

1994 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Matt Turner, and Louise Fortmann (eds). Introducing Community Forestry: Annotated Listing of Topics and Readings. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

1993 Peluso, Nancy Lee. The Impacts of Social and Environmental Change on Indigenous People's Forest Management in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Forest, Trees, and People Monograph Series. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

1992 Peluso, Nancy Lee. Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Paperback 1994).

Refereed Journal Articles and Book Chapters

2024 Goldman, Michael, Wolford. Wendy, Nancy Peluso, Land's Social Lives. Introduction in Wolford, W.W., Peluso, N.L., Goldman, M. (eds., The Social Lives of Land. Ithaca: CU Press.

2024 Peluso, Nancy Lee. Mobile Labor, Shifting Land Regimes, and Social Reproduction in East Java, Indonesia. Chapter 13 in Wolford, W.W. ,Peluso, N.L., Goldman, M. (eds), The Social Lives of Land. Cornell University Press. (in press)

2022 Borras Jr., Saturnino M, Ian Scoones, Amita Baviskar, Marc Edelman, Nancy Lee Peluso, and Wendy Wolford. Climate Change and Agrarian Struggles: An Invitation to Contribute to a JPS Forum. Journal of Peasant Studies 49:1:1-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2021.1956473

2021 Shattuck, A., and Peluso, N.L. Territoriality. Pp. 197-204 in Akram-Lodi, Haroon, Kristina Dietz, Bettina Engels, and Ben M. McKay (eds). Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies. Routledge.

2020 Zhu, A., and Peluso, N.L. Flexible Frontier Makers. The Routledge Handbook of Critical Resource Geography. M. Himley, E. Havice, and G Valdivia, eds. London and New York: Routledge.

2020 Kelley, LC, Peluso, NL., Carlson, K., Afiff, S. Circular Labor Migration And Land Livelihood Dynamics In Southeast Asia’s Concession Landscapes. Journal of Rural Studies 73: 21-33.

2020 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Peter Vandergeest. Writing Political Forests. Antipode Special Forum on Political Forests 52:4:1-21.

2020 Lukas, Martin, and Nancy Lee Peluso. Transforming the Classic Political Forest: Contentious territories in Java. Antipode 52:4: 971-995.

2020 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Jesse Ribot. Postscript: A Theory of Access Revisited. Society & Natural Resources 33:2:300-306.

2020 Peluso, Nancy Lee. The Spectacle of Small-scale Gold Mining in Indonesia. Extraction Megazine

2018 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Frontier Cultivations and Materialities.” Framing Essay for section by the same name in Michael Eilenberg and Jason Cons, (eds) Frontier Assemblages: The Emergent Politics of Resource Frontiers in Asia. Wiley.

2018 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Agus Budi Purwanto. “The Remittance Forest: Turning Mobile Labor into Agrarian Capital.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography .39 (2018): 6–36. doi:10.1111/sjtg.12225

2018 “Entangled Territories in Small-scale Gold Mining Frontiers: Labor Practices, Property and Secrets in Indonesian Gold Country.” World Development 101 (2018): 400–416. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.11.003

2017. Invited Review Essay, one of three invited pieces for Sojourn symposium, “On Mobilizing Labour for the Global Coffee Market: Profits from an Unfree Work Regime in Colonial Java,” by Jan Breman. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024. In Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 32 (3): 719-727.

2017 “Plantations and Mines: Resource Frontiers and the Politics of the Smallholder Slot.” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44:4: 834-869. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2017.133969

2017 “Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act.” Invited review essay in, Classic Reviews in Agrarian Studies Series. [peer reviewed] Journal of Peasant Studies 44 (1): 309-321. DOI: 10.1080/0366150.2016.1264581.

2016 Libassi, Matthew, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Undergrounds Above Ground: Four Views of Mining, Development, and Society.” Invited Review Essay (peer-reviewed) Development and Change 47(5): 1180–1195. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12255

2016 “The Plantation and the Mine: Agrarian transformation and the re-makings of land andsmallholders in Indonesia.” Indonesia Update 2015, Canberra: The Australian National University.

2015 Vandergeest, Peter, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Political Forests.” In Raymond Bryant, ed., The International Handbook of Political Ecology. (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar), pp. 162-175.

2015 Mathevet, Raphaël, Nancy Lee Peluso, Alexandre Couespel, and Paul Robbins. “Using Historical Political Ecology to Understand the Present: Water, Reeds, and Biodiversity in the Camargue Biosphere Reserve, Southern France. Ecology and Society 20: 4:17.URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss4/art17/

2015 Kelly, Alice, and Nancy Peluso. “Frontiers of commodification: State lands and their formalization.” Society and Natural Resources 28:5:473-495.

2015 Sowerwine, Jennifer, Christy Getz, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “The Myth of the Protected Worker: Southeast Asian Farmers in California Agriculture.” Agriculture and Human Values 1:36. Published online at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-014-9578-3#

2014 Fairbairn, Madeleine, Jonathan Fox, S. Ryan Isakson, Michael Levien, Nancy Peluso, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones & K. Sivaramakrishnan. Introduction: New directions in agrarian political economy. Journal of Peasant Studies 41: 5: 653-666.

2014 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Peter Vandergeest. In Susanna B. Hecht, Kathleen D. Morrison and Christine Padoch (eds), " Jungles, Forests and the Theatre of Wars: Insurgency, Counter-insurgency, and the Political Forest in Southeast Asia," in The Social Lives of Forests: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Resurgence. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

2013 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Michael Watts. "Resource Violence." Chapter 19 in Carl Death, Editor, Critical Environmental Politics. London: Routledge.

2012 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “What’s Nature Got to Do With it? A Situated Historical Perspective on Socio-natural Commodities.” Development and Change, 43(1):79-104.

2012 Peluso, Nancy Lee. "Situer les 'political ecologies' : l'exemple du caoutchouc." pp 37-64 in Gautier, Denis and Benjaminsen, Tor A. (Eds.) Environnement, Discours et Pouvoir. L'approche 'Political Ecology. Versailles, France: Quae.

2011 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Christian Lund. “New Frontiers of Land Control: Introduction.” In New Frontiers of Land Control, Nancy Lee Peluso and Christian Lund, eds. Special Issue of Journal of Peasant Studies 38:4 (Sept.) 667-681.

2011 Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne, Nancy Peluso, Jennifer Sowerwine, and Christy Getz. “Race and Regulation: Asian Immigrants in California Agriculture,” pp. 65-86. In Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability, Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman, eds. Cambridge: MIT Press.

2011 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Emergent Forest and Land Regimes in Java.” In Journal of Peasant Studies 38:4 (Sept.) 811-836.

2011 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Edi. Suprapto, and Agus Budi Purwanto. ”Urbanizing Java’s Political Forest? Agrarian Struggles and the Reterritorialization of Natures,” pp. 157-178. In Revisiting Agrarian Transformations in Rural Southeast Asia, Peter Vandergeest and Jonathan Rigg, eds. Singapore: NUS Books.

2011 Peluso, Nancy and Peter Vandergeest. “Taking the Jungle out of the Forest: Counter-Insurgency and the Making of National Natures,” pp. 254-284. In Global Political Ecology, Richard Peet, Paul Robbins, and Michael J. Watts, eds. New York: Routledge.

2011 Peluso Nancy Lee, and Peter Vandergeest. “Political Ecologies of War and Forests: Counterinsurgencies and the Making of National Natures.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101:3 (May) 587-608.

2010 Vandergeest, Peter, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Political Violence and Scientific Forestry: Emergencies, Insurgencies, and Counterinsurgencies in Southeast Asia” pp. 152-166. In Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies, Mara J., Goldman, Paul Nadasdy, and Matthew Turner, eds. New York: Routledge.

2009 Cramb, R.A., Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Wolfram Dressler, Pinkaew Laungaramsri, Quang Trang Le, Elok Mulyoutami, Nancy L. Peluso, and Reed L. Wadley. “Swidden Transformations and Rural Livelihoods in Southeast Asia.” Human Ecology 37:3 (June) 323-346.

2009 Fox, Jefferson, Yayoi Fujita, Dimbab Ngidang, Nancy Peluso, Leslie Potter, Niken Sakuntaladewi, Janet Sturgeon, and David Thomas. “Policies, Political Economy, and Swidden in Southeast Asia.” Human Ecology 37:3 (June) 305-322.

2009 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Rubber Erasures, Rubber Producing Rights: Making Racialized Territories in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Special issue on "Property and Authority." Christian Lund and Thomas Sikor, guest eds. Development and Change 40:1 (47-80).

2008 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Suraya Afiff, Noer Fauzi Rachman. “Claiming the Grounds for Reform: Agrarian and Environmental Movements in Indonesia.” Journal of Agrarian Change, 8: 2/3 (April/July) 377-407.

2008 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “A Political Ecology of Violence and Territory in West Kalimantan.” Asia-Pacific Viewpoint, 49: 1 (48-67).

2007 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Enclosure and Privitazation of Neoliberal Environments: Some comments,” pp. 89-93. In Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences. Nick Heynton, James McCarthy, Scott Prudham and Paul Robbins, eds. New York: Routledge.

2007 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Violence, Decentralization, and Resource Access in Indonesia,” Saturnino M. Borras Jr. and Eric Ross, eds. Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice. 19:23-32.

2006 Vandergeest, Peter, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Parts 1 and 2.” Environment and History 12 (1):31-64;

2006 Vandergeest, Peter and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 2. Environment and History 12 (4): 359-393.

2006 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Fruit Trees and Family Trees in an Anthropogenic Forest: Ethics of Access, Property Zones, and Environmental Change in Indonesia,” pp. 54-102. Re-print in Nature’s Past: The Environment and Human History, edited by Paolo Squatriti. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

2006 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Passing the Red Bowl: Creating Community through Violence in West Kalimantan, Indonesia,” pp. 106-128. In Violent Conflict in Indonesia: Analysis, Representation, Resolution, Charles Coppel, ed. New York: Routledge.

2006 Peluso, Nancy. Review for Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. The Politics and Economics of Indonesia’s Natural Resources. Budy P. Resosudarmo, editor, Indonesia Update Series, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

2005 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Seeing Properties in Land Use: Local Territorializations in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Geografisk Tidsskrift: Danish Journal of Geography, 105:1 (1-15).

2005 Hart, Gillian, and Nancy Lee Peluso. "Revisiting Rural Java: Agrarian Research in the Wake of Reformasi: A Review Essay." Indonesia Number 80, (October):177-197.

2005 Peluso, Nancy Lee. "From Common Property Resources to Territorializations: Resource Management in the Twenty-First Century," pp. 1-11. In Commonplaces and Comparisons: Remaking Eco-Political Spaces in Southeast Asia. Peter Cuasay and Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, eds. Chiangmai, Thailand: Chiang Mai University.

2004 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Weapons of the Wild: Strategic Deployment of Violence and Wildness in Borneo Rainforests of Indonesia,” pp. 204-245. In, In Search of the Rainforest Candace Slater, ed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

2003 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “The Politics of Specificity and Generalization in Conservation Matters.” Conservation and Society, 1:1 (61-64).

2003 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Territorializing Local Discourses of Property Rights in Resources,” pp. 231-252. In Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia, Paul Greenough and Anna Tsing, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

2003 Ribot, Jesse, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “A Theory of Access.” Rural Sociology 68:2 (153-181).2003 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Michael Watts. Critique of Homer-Dixon Resources, Scarcity and Environment. Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environment and Security Report. Issue 9 (June).

2003 Peluso, Nancy Lee, “Fruit Trees and Family Trees in an Anthropogenic Forest.” [revised] Pp. 184-218. In, Culture and the Question of Rights in Southeast Asia, Charles Zerner, ed. Smithsonian, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

2002 Zinoman, Peter and Nancy Lee Peluso, Co-authors and guest editors. Special Issue Introduction: “Rethinking Aspects of Political Violence in Twentieth Century Indonesia and East Timor.” Asian Survey 42: 4 (July-August) 545-549.

2001 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Peter Vandergeest. “Genealogies of the Political Forest and Customary Rights in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.” The Journal of Asian Studies 60: 2 (August) 761-812.

2000 Peluso, Nancy Lee and Michael Watts, “Introduction: Violent Environments,” pp. 3-38. In Violent Environments. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

2000 Peluso, Nancy Lee and Emily Harwell. “Territory, Custom, and the Cultural Politics of Ethnic War in West Kalimantan Indonesia.” In Violent Environments. Nancy Lee Peluso, Michael Watts, eds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

2000 Peluso, Nancy Lee, “The Role of Government Intervention in Creating Forest Landscapes and Resource Tenure in Indonesia.” In, Landscapes and Communities on the Pacific Rim, Karen K. Gaul and Jackie Hiltz eds. London; New York: M.E. Sharpe.

1999 Fairfax, Sally K., Fortmann, Louise P., Hawkins, Ann, Huntsinger, Lynn, Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Wolf, Steven A. “The Federal Forests Are Not What They Seem: Formal and Informal Claims to Federal Lands.” Ecology Law Quarterly 25(4):630-646.

1998 Peluso, Nancy Lee. “Counter-Institutions and Environmental Justice.” Forest Policy: Ready for Renaissance. Seattle, Washington: College of Forest Resources, University of Washington.

1998 Peluso, Nancy Lee. "The Role of Forests in Sustaining Smallholders." In Creating Integrated Forest Strategies, John Gordon, Ralph Schmidt, and Joyce Berry, eds. New Haven: Yale University Press.

1995 Peluso, Nancy Lee. "Fruit Trees and Family Trees in an Indonesian Rainforest: Property Rights, Ethics of Access, and Environmental Change." Comparative Studies in Society and History 38:3: 510-548.

1996 Vandergeest, Peter, and Nancy Lee Peluso, "Territorialization and State Power in Thailand," Theory and Society 35:385-426.

1995 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Reserving Value: Conservation Ideology and State Protection of Resources." In Creating the Countryside: Concepts of Rurality, Country, and Wilderness. Peter Vandergeest and Melanie Dupuis, eds. Chapel Hill: Temple University Press.

1997 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Whose Woods are These? Counter-Mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia." Antipode 27 (4): 383-406.

1995 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Peter Vandergeest, and Lesley Potter, "Social Aspects of Forestry in Southeast Asia: A Review of the Trends in the Scholarly Literature.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 26 (1):196-218.

1994 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Craig Humphrey, and Louise P. Fortmann, "The Rock, the Beach, and the Tidal Pool: People and Poverty in Natural Resource-Dependent Areas of the United States," Society and Natural Resources 7:1:23-38.

1993 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Coercing Conservation?: The Politics of State Resource Control" Global Environmental Change 3:2 (June):199-218. Reprinted in: Ronald Lipschultz and Ken Conca (eds.) The State and Social Power in Global Environmental Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. (1993).

1992 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "The Ironwood Problem: (Mis)-Management and Development of an Extractive Rainforest Product." Conservation Biology 6:1 (June): 210-219.

1992 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "The Political Ecology of Extraction and Extractive Reserves in East Kalimantan, Indonesia." Development and Change 23:4 (October):49-74.

1992 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Traditions of Forest Control in Java: Implications for Social Forestry and Sustainability." Natural Resources Journal 32 (4) (October):883-918. Reprinted in Raymond Bryant (ed.), "The Political Ecology of Resource Management in Southeast Asia" special issue, Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters 3 (1993):138-157.

1992 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Non-timber Forest Products in East Kalimantan, Indonesia: Can Extraction be Reserved?" In The Role of Non-timber Forest Products in the Tropics: Conservation and Development Strategies, Stephen Schwartzman and Dan Nepstad, eds. Advances in Economic Botany Series. New York: The New York Botanical Garden.

1992 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Rattan Industries in East Kalimantan, Indonesia." In Case Studies in Small-Scale Forest-Based Industries in Asia. Rattan, Matchmaking, and Handcrafts, Jeff Campbell ed. Community Forestry Case Study 4. Bangkok: Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations.

1991 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Women and Natural Resources in Developing Countries." Society and Natural Resources 4:4 (June):1-3.

1991 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Women and Natural Resources in Developing Countries," (Guest Editor) Society and Natural Resources 4: 4 (June).

1991 Menzies, N.K., and Nancy Lee Peluso, "Rights of Access to Upland Forest Resources in Southwest China." Journal of World Forest Resources 6:1 (September): 1-20.

1991 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Colonial Forest Management in Java." Forest and Conservation History (April):65-75.

1990 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "The History of State Forest Management in Java," pp. 27-55. In Keepers of the Forest: Land Management Alternatives in Southeast Asia, Mark Poffenberger, ed. Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.

1989 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Mark Poffenberger, "Social Forestry on Java: Reorienting Management Systems." Human Organization 48:4 (Winter):333-344.Reprinted in Keepers of the Forest: Land Management Alternatives in Southeast Asia Mark Poffenberger, ed. Hartford, CT: Kumarian. 1992.

1986 Jessup, Timothy C., and Nancy Lee Peluso, "Minor Forest Products as Common Property Resources in East Kalimantan, Indonesia," pp. 505-32 in Common Property Resource Management, edited by the Panel on Common Property Resource Management. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences.

1983 Peluso, Nancy Lee`, "Networking in the Commons: A Tragedy for Rattan?" Indonesia No. 35 (April): 95-108.

1982 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Occupational Mobility and the Economic Roles of Rural Women in Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Population Studies Center Monograph, Gadjah Mada University, 1982 (reprinted 1984).

1980 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Suku Kenyah yang Masih Tertinggal: Migrasi Temporer untuk Mencari Nafkah." ("The Kenyah who Stayed Behind: Temporary Migration for Subsistence." pp. 303-310 in Laporan Lokakarya Rapat Kerja Resetelmen Penduduk di Samarinda, Kalimantan Timur 8-12 April 1980, edited by Team Pusat Resetelmen Penduduk, Direktorat Jenderal Kehutanan, Departemen Pertanian. Jakarta.

1979 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Collecting Data on Women's Employment in Rural Yogyakarta." Learning About Rural Women: Studies in Family Planning Special Issue. New York: The Population Council, November.

1979 Peluso, Nancy Lee, "Putting People into Boxes or Building Boxes Around People? Approaches to Designing Occupational Categories for Women in Java." Gadjah Mada University Working Papers Series No. 19. Yogyakarta: Population Institute, Gadjah Mada University, March.

Selected Non-refereed Publications 

2015 Hecht, Susanna B., Yang, Anastasia Lucy, Bimbika Sinjapati Basnet, Christine Padoch, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “People in Motion, Forests in Transition: Trends in Migration, Urbanization, and Remittances and their Effects on Tropical Forests.” Center for International Forestry Research. Bogor, Indonesia.

2015 Tribute to Noer Fauzi Rachman, Agrarian Reform Activist (and ESPM PhD), at his half century mark. Published in Indonesia.

2012 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Alice B. Kelly, and Kevin Woods. "Context in Land Matters: Access Effects and History in Land Formalization." (Cases in Vietnam, Thailand, Tanzania, and Ethiopia). Research report to CIFOR (Center for International Forestry Research). Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR

2008 Peluso, Nancy Lee, Wang Yi, Zheng Yi Sheng, Zhang Qian. "Social Forestry in China: A Review." Consultant’s report to Ford Foundation, Beijing.

2005 Afiff, Suraya, Noer Fauzi, Gillian Hart, Lungisile Ntsebeza, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Redefining Agrarian Power: Resurgent Agrarian Movements in West Java, Indonesia.” http://repositories.cdlib.org/cseas/

2003 Affiff, Suraya, Noer Fauzi, N.L. Peluso, and N.F. Rachman. “Redefining Agrarian Power: Notes on a Traveling Seminar in Java and Comparative Reflections with South Africa.” Working Paper, Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Professional Organization Memberships

Association of American Geographers (AAG) 

Association for Asian Studies (AAS)

Editorial Advisory Board Member:

Journal of Development and Change, February 2018-present.

Journal of Peasant Studies Editorial Collective