Jerry Mander and Vandana Shiva with Amy Goodman
29 June 2001
Lannan Foundation hosted a public forum featuring Jerry Mander and Vandana Shiva, founding members of the International Forum on Globalization, on 29 June 2001. Mander and Shiva spoke about the impact of economic globalization on cultural diversity and cultural freedom. Their talks were followed by a discussion moderated by Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!. The event was open to the public and took place at the Armory for the Arts in Santa Fe.
According to Jerry Mander, executive director of the International Forum on Globalization, economic globalization is as intrinsically destructive of cultural diversity as it is of biological diversity. Referring to globalization as the “juggernaut of homogenization,” Mander says that all indigenous peoples, as well as national cultures, are threatened by this economic trend. “The role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures, and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore, to make them easier for global corporations to control. Global corporations are even now trying to commodify all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention indigenous cultures.” He adds that anyone interested in cultural diversity must be concerned with organizing against economic globalization.
Vandana Shiva, a scientist and activist from India, argues that corporate globalization impacts cultural freedom and cultural diversity by eroding the material base of cultural diversity. “In India, our neem, our rice, our seeds have been saved. Today the biological diversity and diverse knowledge systems associated with it are being hijacked and reduced to patented property of global corporations.”
Shiva’s books include Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, and Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology.
“In India, our neem, our rice, our seeds have been saved. Today the biological diversity and diverse knowledge systems associated with it are being hijacked and reduced to patented property of global corporations. Intellectual property rights and patents on life are forcing diverse cultures to destroy their diverse approaches to our fellow beings — plants and animals. Our freedom to live as an earth family — Vasundhaiva Kutumbkam — is being taken away to force us into being mere consumers on the global marketplace.”
Jerry Mander, executive director of the International Forum on Globalization, has said economic globalization is as intrinsically destructive of cultural diversity as it is of biological diversity. Referring to globalization as the “juggernaut of homogenization,” Mander says that all indigenous peoples, as well as national cultures, are threatened by this economic trend.
Mr. Mander is co-editor of The Case Against the Global Economy, and also author of In the Absence of the Sacred and Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.
Representing over 60 organizations in 25 countries, the International Forum on Globalization associates come together out of a shared concern that the world’s corporate and political leadership is undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may prove as historically significant as any event since the Industrial Revolution. This restructuring is happening at tremendous speed, with little public disclosure of the profound consequences affecting democracy, human welfare, local economies, and the natural world.
Amy Goodman hosts Democracy Now!, an award-winning daily radio program, opens the airwaves to alternative voices traditionally excluded from the political process.
This article continues with a complete written transcript of the event.
Page 2 Jerry Mander
Page 3 Vandana Shiva
Page 4 Jerry Mander and Vandana Shiva in conversation with Amy Goodman
Related Entries
Cultural Freedom
Explore Lannan
Zadie Smith"White Teeth"
September 21, 2000
Young Zadie Smith’s dizzying, comis take on multi-racial London. Her background, she says, was so mixed that P.G. Wodehouse’s pure-bloods seemed to her to eb foreign and “"exotic."”
From Bookworm Interviews