Jacob Nerenberg

Biography

Jacob Nerenberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology (socio-cultural) at University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation is titled Terminal Economy: Politics of Distribution in Highlands Papua, Indonesia. His thesis examines popular livelihoods and struggles around commerce and state distribution programs in Papua, also called West Papua—a contested territory where Indonesia encompasses Melanesia. He interprets the ‘terminal economy’, based on routine transactions at peri-urban minivan terminals and markets, as a paradigm of the region’s relegation to a peripheral status in wider national and global economic orders. His writing highlights the way these heterogeneous spaces act as microcosms of recursive processes of encompassment, which incite agendas of disruption, distinction, commercial regulation, and infrastructure extension. His research was supported by the International Development Research Centre, the Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.