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Vandana Shiva is one of the world's foremost radical scientists and is a leading voice of the anti-globalization movement. As what Gramsci would call an organic intellectual, Shiva has firsthand experience with the issues she writes and speaks about, and how they affect the women of the third world. Here's a podcast-sized lecture she gave last year at MIT. (MP3, 59:00)

Shiva gives us the vocabulary to understand what is going on in with Coke in India: not just corporate misbehavior, but corporate colonialism. Thus, the "Coca-Cola quit India" campaign directly borrows the language of Gandhi's campaign to get the British to "quit India". Like Gandhi, Shiva is convinced that individual acts of conscience connected in organized resistance are the way forward. While most of us will never have the opportunity to physically stand alongside Shiva as she blockades the bottling plants, we are not powerless. As consumers who have the privilege of consumer choice, we can choose to do business only with socially responsible companies. As U.S. citizens who have the privilege of democratic government and freedom of assembly (without getting shot by Coke's thugs), we can lobby our government and our peers to action. And as creative people with the privilege of free expression we can choose not to let our ideas and creative energies get used in service of the corporate ogre. We can refuse to be complicit.

I know how cheesy this sounds, but that's how it goes with irreducible truths, and anyway I am following the instructions of Some Velvet Sidewalk: "Let us fear no cliches!"

If you're interested in hearing more from Shiva, I'd start with Staying Alive, a book which is notable for the way it links ecological crises, colonialism, class & economic "development", and the oppression of women. Of particular interest to me is the way Shiva draws on the religious teachings of her native tradition, showing how Hindu concepts and goddesses function as sources of ecofeminist wisdom, passed down from generation to generation. It's counterintuitive and exciting, if like me you're used to thinking of traditional religion as generally androcentric and patriarchal, especially in the "developing world".

Edit: I initially failed to credit Freeman Z, for generously hosting this recording.

This month, I'm helping run mailorder for my friends' label while they're on tour in Japan. This "company story" manifesto thing is from their forthcoming company catalog.

Our company was formed when we decided to have one name and address for all things we made and all the makers. It is an imaginary general store from a time before figuring out all aspects of one's work became a novelty. In 2003 we started writing the brand name on our projects in order to unify our various objects and to jokingly participate on the uneasy commerce that we all live in, but in the simplest, most direct way we could think of.

Not knowing how to best be useful in a world that increasingly seems to need SOMETHING, some kind of massive sweeping broom and warm embrace, and finding ourselves with enough money to live, we are producing frivolous booklets and records and posters.

It is an uneasy life, living in the dark belly of the modern megastate with any kind of awareness, so we sing and write to keep ourselves and our customers aware and uneasy, not too comfy and not too guilty, awake.

No amount of well-intentioned song-products would be enough work, no matter how home-made or deliberately done. We must encourage each other constantly to nurture our literacies, leave our bubbles, increase our knowledge, refuse to accept stupidity, offer love in gentle ways everywhere. We must participate in real life.

I love this statement, and the way it points us to a mature, nuanced theory of the role of culture in this troubled age. Key ideas:
• Culture matters; it's not just about celebrity, commerce, entertainment, or even self-expression, or art for art's sake.
• Choices about methods of production, manufacture, and distribution are as much a potential space of resistance as the work itself. The way the CD or the book or whatever is made and the way it reaches its audience is as important as the information it contains.
• At the same time, cultural products are not enough. Participation in cultures of resistance is best understood as one component of a broader strategy of mindful living.
• We can be self-aware about the limitations of music-making/book-making/art-making/film-making without falling into cynicism or knee-jerk irony. We just have to remember that admonition from the Upanisads, that this cultural stuff we make is "the finger pointing at the moon, and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond."