Raj Patel

The Value of Nothing

Friday, February 4, 2011
8:00–9:45 AM 

Raj Patel, researcher and author, is discovering ways in which people, and not simply governments, can decide how to share our world and its resources.

Raj Patel believes that our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced—and he has the international credibility to back it up.

In this deeply thought-provoking presentation, based on his book The Value of Nothing, Raj reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place.

Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Raj argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system.  He gives real examples of how social organizations around the globe are finding new ways to describe the world’s worth.
Author of the acclaimed book Stuffed and Starved, he has worked for the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations; and has waged international campaigns against each. He is currently a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

If you want to stop the market from pricing every aspect of your life, this talk is the place to start.