March 30, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Global activist, feminist and philosopher Vandana Shiva delivers the powerful lecture Planting Seeds for Change: Women’s Struggle against Corporate Control of Biodiversity at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- Vandana Shiva
- Planting Seeds for Change: Women’s Struggle against Corporate Control of Biodiversity
- Shiva is a powerful voice for global environmental justice and cultural and ecological diversity
- She is the author of numerous books including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
- Shiva is a Regents’ Lecturer in the Women, Culture and Development Program at UCSB
- Sunday, May 9 / 3 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- Free event
- Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535
Dr. Vandana Shiva, a 1993 winner of the Right Livelihood Award, known as the alternative Nobel Prize, will deliver the lecture Planting Seeds for Change: Women’s Struggle against Corporate Control of Biodiversity on Sunday, May 9 at 3 pm at UCSB Campbell Hall. This is a free event. She is visiting UCSB as a Regents’ Lecturer in the Women, Culture & Development Program.
Vandana Shiva is the founding director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), based in New Delhi, India. RFSTE works on biodiversity conservation and protecting people’s rights from threats to their livelihoods and environment by centralized systems of monoculture in forestry, agriculture and fisheries. On the foundation’s website Shiva explains, “Sixteen years ago I founded the Research Foundation as a small independent initiative to do research in a participatory mode with people, not on them—and to do research with an interdisciplinary approach—reflecting the interconnections in the web of life, not tearing them apart with reductionist violence.”
Trained as a physicist, Dr Shiva is an adviser to governments in India and abroad and a member of non-government organizations (NGOs) such as the International Forum on Globalization, Women’s Environment and Development Organization and Third World Network.
Shiva has contributed in fundamental ways to changing the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food. Her books The Violence of the Green Revolution and Monocultures of the Mind have become basic challenges to the dominant paradigm of industrial agriculture. The Violence of the Green Revolution, published in 1992, examines the impact of the first Green Revolution on India’s breadbasket. Shiva argues that the quick fix promise of large gains in output pushed aside serious pursuit of an alternative agricultural strategy grounded in respect for the environmental wisdom of egalitarian peasant systems. In Monocultures of the Mind, published in 1993, Shiva establishes a connection between the winnowing down of agricultural diversity with a more fundamental problem—a homogenization of world thought.
Shiva’s most recent work Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply charts the impacts of globalized, corporate agriculture on small farmers, the environment, and the quality of the food we eat. Her impassioned and inspiring book looks at everything from genetically engineered seeds to patents on life, from mad cows to sacred cows.
Ms. Magazine writes, “Shiva has devoted her life to fighting for the rights of ordinary people in India. Her fierce intellect and her disarmingly friendly, accessible manner have made her a valuable advocate for people all over the developing world.”
Courtesy of Borders, books by Vandana Shiva will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
Vandana Shiva is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, the Women, Culture & Development Program at UCSB, and the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life in conjunction with the Institute of Reverential Ecology Intergenerational Forum on “Hidden Connections: Science, Spirituality and Sustainable Living” and the UC Education for Sustainable Living Program.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.