Mr Raj Patel (www.http://rajpatel.org), controversial author, professor and global policy expert as a keynote speaker at the Alliance's 'Towards 2020' global conference and General Assembly, to take place in Antalya, Turkey, 10-13 November 2015.
As an activist and policy analyst, Raj Patel continuously challenges people’s presumptions about the global economy. He is regularly featured in major international news publications and media and has been referred to as “the rock star of social justice writing”.
In his books, Mr Patel writer touches upon issues such as the causes of hunger, starvation and famine or inequality. His latest work, The Value of Nothing encourages people to rethink the notions of value by placing a stronger emphasis on resources needed to survive, as opposed to inflating the cost of things one can live without.
Mr Patel looks at the recent economic collapse and how to achieve a fairer, more sustainable economy and society. He argues that the current economic model needs to be rethought but that the failure behind the food, climate and economic crisis is a political one. Economics is about choices, but it is important who gets to make these choices, he points out. Released in 2009, The Value of Nothing became a New York Times best seller a year later.
The first part of the book is focused on how to rebalance society and limit markets while the second part shows how social organisations in the US and across the world are making a difference by enabling grassroots participatory democracy.
Raj Patel is an advocate of decentralised models of economic democracy. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa.
