Raj Patel

{{about|the British writer|the Twitch streamer formerly known as "RajjPatel"|AustinShow}}

{{Infobox writer

|name = Raj Patel

|image = Raj Patel.jpg

|imagesize = 200px

|birth_date = {{birth year and age|1972}}{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/us/05sfmetro.html|title=In Internet Era, an Unwilling Lord for New Age Followers |last=James|first=Scott |date=4 February 2010 |work = The New York Times |access-date=23 March 2010}}

|birth_place = London, England

|death_date =

|death_place =

|occupation = Economist, writer

|nationality = British, person of Indian origin

|notableworks = The Value of Nothing
Stuffed and Starved; (with Jason Moore)
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet

|education = University of Oxford
London School of Economics
Cornell University{{cite web| url= https://lbj.utexas.edu/directory/faculty/raj-patel | title= Rajeev Patel | publisher= The University of Texas at Austin | access-date= March 19, 2019}}

|website = {{URL|RajPatel.org}}

}}

Rajeev "Raj" Patel (born 1972) is a British academic, journalist, activist and writer{{cite web| url= http://rajpatel.org/meet-raj | title= Meet Raj| website= rajpatel.org | access-date= March 19, 2019}} who has lived and worked in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the United States for extended periods. He has been referred to as "the rock star of social justice writing."{{cite news| title= World Class Intellectual Engagement| first= Imraan |last= Buccus| work= The Mercury| date= 23 March 2011}}

Early life and education

Born to a mother from Kenya and a father from Fiji,{{cite news| url= http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/raj-patel |title= Interview with Raj Patel| work= The New York Times blog| access-date= 8 February 2010}}[http://bigthink.com/rajpatel A Big Think Interview With Raj Patel] From Junior Capitalist to Social Activist (Retrieved on 8 February 2010.)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAF9vmzWye8 About himself at 21 minuti] (Retrieved on 9 February 2010.) he grew up in Golders Green in north-west London where his family ran a corner shop.{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/19/raj-patel-colbert-report-benjamin-creme|title=I'm not the messiah, says food activist – but his many worshippers do not believe him|last=Johnson|first=Bobbie |date=19 March 2010|work=The Guardian|access-date=23 March 2010 | location=London}}

Patel received a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), from Oxford, and a master's degree from the London School of Economics, and gained his PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University in 2002.[http://rajpatel.org/academic Raj about his education] (Retrieved on 8 February 2010.)

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 public critic of all of these organisations, and reports having been tear-gassed on four continents protesting against his former employers.[http://www.citizinemag.com/calendar/details/4-last-sunday-raj-patel-author-of-qstuffed-and-starvedq.html Citizine] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090129075307/http://www.citizinemag.com/calendar/details/4-last-sunday-raj-patel-author-of-qstuffed-and-starvedq.html |date=29 January 2009 }} (Retrieved on 8 February 2010.)

Career

Patel is an educator and academic. He has written articles and books. He is possibly best known for his 2008 book, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.{{cite book|title= Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System|publisher=Melville House Publishing|author=Patel, Raj|year=2008|isbn=978-1-933633-49-7}} In 2009, he published The Value of Nothing{{cite book|title=The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy|author=Patel, Raj|year=2010|publisher=Picador|isbn=978-0-312-42924-9|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/valueofnothingho00pate}} which was on The New York Times best-seller list during February 2010.[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/books/bestseller/bestpapernonfiction.html?scp=1&sq=the%20value%20of%20nothing&st=cse New York Times best-seller (nonfiction)] (Retrieved on 1 March 2010.)[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/books/bestseller/bestpaperbusiness.html?scp=5&sq=the%20value%20of%20nothing&st=cse New York Times best-seller (business)] (Retrieved on 1 March 2010.) In 2017, he published, with co-author {{ill|Jason W. Moore|de}}, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (University of California Press).

He has been a visiting scholar at Yale University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Texas at Austin. Patel is listed as a research professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Austin.

Activism

File:Glen Nayager v Raj Patel.jpg

Patel was one of many organizers in the 1999 protests in Seattle, Washington, and has organised in support of food sovereignty.{{cite web| first= Raj| last= Patel| url= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsDG-0WQM20 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211212/hsDG-0WQM20| archive-date=2021-12-12 |url-status=live|title= Speech at 21 minuti| via= YouTube| location= Milan| date= 21 November 2009| access-date= 20 March 2019}}{{cbignore}} More recently he has resided and worked extensively in Zimbabwe and in South Africa. He was refused a visa extension by the Mugabe regime for his political involvement with the pro-democracy movement. 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{{cite web| url= http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/11-the-politics-of-starving/ |title= The Politics of Starving: An Interview with Raj Patel| work= Upping the Anti|year=2010}} and the now defunct Landless Peoples Movement in South Africa.

Patel has written a number of criticisms of various aspects of the policies and research methods of the World Bank{{cite web| website= rajpatel.info| url= http://rajpatel.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/actionaid.pdf | first= Raj| last= Patel|title= The world bank and agriculture: A critical review at World bank's world development report |year= 2008 | access-date= 10 February 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120723021525/http://rajpatel.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/actionaid.pdf |archive-date=2012-07-23}}{{cite web| first= Raj| last= Patel| url= http://rajpatel.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Shades.pdf |title= Faulty Shades of Green: The World Bank Dissembles the Environment| website= rajpatel.info| access-date= 10 February 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141027191440/http://rajpatel.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Shades.pdf |archive-date=2014-10-27}} and was a co-editor, with Christopher Brooke, of the online leftist webzine The Voice of the Turtle.

Film appearances

In 2012, he appeared in the National Film Board of Canada documentary Payback, based on Margaret Atwood's Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.{{cite news| last= Fulton|first=Ben|title=Sundance: A documentary about debt offers a big 'Payback'|url=http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/sundance/53318829-177/atwood-debt-film-payback.html.csp|access-date=1 March 2012|newspaper=Salt Lake Tribune| date=27 January 2012| url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120124135229/http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/sundance/53318829-177/atwood-debt-film-payback.html.csp|archive-date=24 January 2012|df=dmy-all}} He appears in the documentary film A Place at the Table which opened in the US on 1 March 2013.{{IMDb name| 1736049}}

Honours and awards

In 2007 he was invited to give the keynote address at the university of Abahlali baseMjondolo graduation ceremony. He administers the organisation's website.{{cite web|last=Patel |first=Raj |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raj-patel/off-side-at-the-world-cup_b_607951.html |title=Off-Side at the World Cup |work=The Huffington Post |date=10 June 2010 |access-date=31 October 2011}} In 2008 he was asked to testify on the global food crisis before the House Financial Services Committee in the USA. In 2009 he joined the advisory board of Corporate Accountability International's Value the Meal campaign.{{cite web| url= http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/value-meal-advisory-board |title= Value the Meal Advisory Board| website= stopcorporateabuse.org| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100406004237/http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/value-meal-advisory-board |archive-date=6 April 2010 |access-date= 8 February 2010}}

Claim that Patel is the 'Maitreya'

In January 2010 some adherents of Share International, following an announcement by Benjamin Creme, concluded that Patel could be the Maitreya, a notion that Patel denied.{{cite news| url= https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/us/05sfmetro.html|title=In Internet Era, an Unwilling Lord for New Age Followers |date=4 February 2010|work =The New York Times |access-date=30 May 2010| first= Scott | last= James}}

Political views

Patel is a libertarian socialist and has described himself as "someone who has very strong anarchist sympathies."{{cite news| url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/19/raj-patel-colbert-report-benjamin-creme | location=London | work=The Guardian | title=I'm not the messiah, says food activist – but his many worshippers do not believe him | first=Bobbie | last=Johnson | date=19 March 2010}} In his book The Value of Nothing he praised the grassroots participatory democracy practised in the Zapatista Councils of Good Government in southern Mexico and has advocated similar decentralist models of economic democracy and confederal administration as templates to go by for social justice movements in the global north. He described himself in 2010 as "not a communist [or socialist] ... just open minded".{{cite web| first= Raj| last= Patel| url= http://bigthink.com/ideas/18171 |title=A Big Think Interview With Raj Patel |publisher=Big Think |date=12 January 2010 |access-date=31 October 2011}}{{cite web| url= https://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/201001/20100125.html | url-status= dead| first= Raj| last= Patel| title= Raj Patel| date= January 25, 2010| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100328220856/http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/201001/20100125.html | work= Tavis Smiley| archive-date= March 28, 2010| publisher= KCET| via= PBS.org| quote= Me, I'm not a socialist, I'm just open-minded. But I think that we need to look at solutions that have happened in the past for us adequately to be able to come up with better ideas for the future, because this one, the ideas we have right now, really aren't working.

}}

Nonetheless, the analysis of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, published seven years later, locates its concept of "cheapness" within a Marxist framework. According to the authors, "Capitalism values only what it can count, and it can count only dollars. Every capitalist wants to invest as little and profit as much as possible. For capitalism, this means that the whole system thrives when powerful states and capitalists can reorganize global nature, invest as little as they can, and receive as much food, work, energy, and raw materials with as little disruption as possible."A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (U. of California Press, 2017), p. 21. This extrapolates a key formulation by Marx: “The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of commodities.”Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Vintage, 1977), p. 777.

Personal life

Patel became a US citizen on 7 January 2010.[http://rajpatel.org/2010/01/08/proud-to-be-an-american Raj Patel blog] (Retrieved on 10 February 2010.){{cite web| url= http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/261500/january-12-2010/raj-patel | title= Raj Patel | publisher= Colbert Report | via= colbertnation.com | access-date= 8 February 2010}}

In an interview with The New Yorker's Lauren Collins, he said he considers himself an atheist Hindu.{{cite news| last= Collins| first= Lauren| title= Are you the Messiah?|url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_collins|access-date=29 July 2012|newspaper=The New Yorker|date=29 November 2010|quote=Patel grew up a "God-fearing Hindu," but now calls himself an "atheist Hindu." }}

Books

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (2008)
Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, Eric Holt Giménez, Raj Patel (2009)
Food Rebellions!: Forging Food Sovereignty to Solve the Global Food Crisis (2009)
The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy (2010)
Forward to No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way by the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers (2011)
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (2017), with Jason W. Moore
Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (2021), with Rupa Marya

References

External links

[http://www.rajpatel.org/ Raj Patel's website]
[http://stuffedandstarved.org/ Stuffed & Starved Website]
[http://rajpatel.org/journalism/ A list of journalism available online by Raj Patel]
{{C-SPAN|1029267}}

Category:1972 births

Category:Living people

Category:Abahlali baseMjondolo members

Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics

Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford

Category:Anti-consumerists

Category:Anti-globalization activists

Category:Anti-globalization writers

Category:British atheists

Category:British democracy activists

Category:21st-century British economists

Category:British food writers