Raj Patel will be discussing his first book, Stuffed & Staved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.

From Raj's Website, here is a description of his background:

"I'm currently a visiting scholar in the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, a Fellow at the Institute of Food and Development Policy and a Research Associate at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. I've just returned from two years working in South Africa, based out of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Before that, I was a Policy Analyst at the Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, where I learned about the importance of land struggles, and got involved with The Land Research Action Network. The book that I co-edited with the network has just come out, and is available online, free, at Food First/promisedland.

Land reform politics are a new way for me to look at institutions like the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the IMF. Of these three, I have in the past worked for two. Before Food First, I volunteered with SEATINI (Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Initiative), in Harare, Zimbabwe where I was doing my PhD research, and working with some fine activists including men from Padare, a pro-feminist men's group.

All of this was in the service of a PhD, which I gained from Cornell University's Department of Development Sociology. Before that, I was a researcher in UNCTAD's Least Developed Countries Programme, to which I arrived with a Masters Degree from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Philosophy Politics and Economics, from Balliol College, Oxford."