Books: August 2006 Archives

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.