Raj Patel

Raj Patel is a British academic, journalist, activist and writer. [ [http://www.rajpatel.org/node/3 RajPatel.com] - About. Retrieved on March 30, 2008.] He is best known for his 2008 book, "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System".

Biography

Born in London, Patel received a B.A in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, from Oxford, a Masters Degree from the London School of Economics and gained his PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell university in 2002. He has been a visiting scholar at Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. As part of his academic training, Patel worked at the World Bank, World Trade Organization and the United Nations. He has since become an outspoken and noted critic of all of these organizations, and has been teargassed on four continents protesting against his former employers.Fact|date=October 2008 Patel was one of many organizers in the 1999 protests in downtown Seattle, WA, and has organized in support of Food sovereignty. More recently he has lived and worked extensively in Zimbabwe and in South Africa. He was refused a visa extension by the the Mugabe regime for his political involvement with the pro-democracy movement.Fact|date=October 2008 He is associated through his work on food with the Via Campesina movement, and through his work on urban poverty and resistance with Abahlali baseMjondolo.Fact|date=October 2008 He has written a number of influentialFact|date=October 2008 criticisms of various aspects of the policies and research methods of the World Bank and was a co-editor, with Christopher Brooke, of the online leftist webzine [http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org The Voice of the Turtle] .

He is currently a visiting scholar in the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, a Fellow at Food First, also known as the Institute of Food and Development Policy, and a Research Associate at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

In 2007 he was invited to give the keynote address at the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo graduation ceremony. In 2008 he was asked to testify on the global food crisis before the House Financial Services Committee in the USA. He is regularly interviewed on the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, NPR etc.Fact|date=October 2008

Writing

* [http://rajpatel.org/files/ThirdWorldQuarterlypatelmcmichael2004.pdf 'Third Worldism and Lineages of Global Fascism: Neo-liberalism and the Regrouping of the Global South' (with Philip McMichael), 2004]
* [http://rajpatel.org/files/development%20article%2048-2%20final.pdf 'Global Fascism, Revolutionary Humanism and the Ethics of Food Sovereignty', 2005]
* [http://www.abahlali.org/files/Pages%20from%20CCS%20Report%20New%20Work%20From%20Durban_Patel.pdf 'A Short Course in Politics at the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo']
* [http://www.foodfirst.org/promisedland' Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform', Book, Co-edited with Peter Rosset and Michael Courville, 2006]
* [http://www.rajpatel.org/files/actionaid.pdf 'The World Bank and Agriculture: A Critical Review of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2008', 2007.]
* [http://rajpatel.org/files/Feminist%20economics%20final%202007.pdf 'Transgressing rights: La Vía Campesina’s call for Food Sovereignty', 2007]
* [http://abahlali.org/files/Patel%202007%20Electing%20Land%20Questions%20CODESRIA.pdf Electing Land Questions: A Methodological Discussion with Reference to Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban Shack Dwellers' Movement, 2007]

References

See also

*Abahlali baseMjondolo
*Via Campesina
*MST
*Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Zapatistas)
*Slow Food

External links

* [http://www.rajpatel.org/ Raj Patel's website]
* [http://stuffedandstarved.org/ Stuffed & Starved Website]
* [http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=2028 Raj Patel interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos on the Today Show in Canada]
* [http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/media/200803/20080313thecurrent_sec3.ram Raj Patel interview by Anna Maria Tremonti on Canadian TV]
* [http://www.bbcworld.com/Pages/Programme.aspx?id=156 Raj Patel debating the World Bank on BBC]
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90570212 Raj Patel on National Public Radio, 18 May 2008]
* [http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/ Voice of the Turtle]
* [http://wwww.viacampesina.org Via Campesina]
* [http://www.abahlali.org Abahlali baseMjondolo]