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A leading figure of the postwar avant-garde, Danish artist Asger Jorn has long been recognized for his founding contributions to the Cobra and Situationist International movements - yet art historical scholarship on Jorn has been sparse, particularly in English. This study corrects that imbalance, offering a synthetic account of the essential phases of this prolific artist?s career. It addresses his works in various media alongside his extensive writings and his collaborations with various artists' groups from the 1940s through the mid-1960s. Situating Jorn's work in an international, post-Second World War context, Karen Kurczynski reframes our understanding of the 1950s, away from the Abstr...
Across the ages, technological developments have been accelerated by the military. This results from the fact that able-bodied vibrant youths are generally involved and are also exposed to high-tech training prevailing at their times for assignments (defence and security) that are essential but not desired. They form the Armed Forces for the nations. Such brilliant military officers like Caesar and Napoleon made their marks; and, in contemporary times, the Armed Forces of United States, France, Britain, Australia, etc are making remarkable contributions to technological developments. Such infrastructure as the Internet, the GPS and the cell phones are products that have significant military ...
Even in well-established democratic societies, the political system currently faces a crisis of civic engagement and participation. Increasingly, this lack of engagement and the accompanying erosion of institutional legitimacy result in antidemocratic, populist currents gaining ground. It is an important challenge for both the humanities and the social sciences to analyse this crisis and discuss possible answers that may contribute to strengthening the position of the democratic public sphere in the political process, thus emphasising the crucial role of civic engagement and participation in renewing democracy. The articles in this volume seek the sources for such democratic innovations in a...
Defence procurement remains a relatively under-researched area, mostly focusing on the USA. This revealing book looks at defence procurement from the point of view of smaller countries such as Israel, Australia, Poland and Spain.
The problems created by metropolitanization have become increasingly apparent. Strategies are needed to improve the world's major cities in the twenty-first century. Tom Angotti is fundamentally optimistic about the future of the metropolis, but questions urban planning's inability to integrate urban and rural systems, its contribution to the growth of inequality, and increasing enclave development throughout the world. Using the concept of 'urban orientalism' as a theoretical underpinning of modern urban planning grounded in global inequalities, Angotti confronts this traditional model with new, progressive approaches to community and metropolis.
The Situationist International (SI) was a Paris-based artistic and political avant-garde group that formed in 1957, went through three distinct phases during its existence, and dissolved in 1972. In 1967, SI leader Guy Debord published his book The Society of the Spectacle, which presents his theory of how “the Spectacle” (i.e., the Capitalist system in its totality) works endlessly (though not always successfully) to transform people into spectators whose sole purposes are to consume commodities and to live de-politicized, passive, isolated, and contemplative lives. To challenge and subvert “the Spectacle,” Debord and his SI associates theorized and practiced the anti-spectacular cr...
This paper is an output of the Sida, DANIDA and DFID funded project entitled: Improving urban water and sanitation provision globally, through information and action driven locally. This project was carried out by IIED and five of its partners in Angola, Argentina, Ghana, India and Pakistan. The project aims to document innovative and inspiring examples of locally-driven water and sanitation initiatives in deprived urban areas. The project provides a basis for better understanding of how to identify and build upon local initiatives that are likely to improve water and sanitation services. The project also looks at how local organisations in those countries have managed to: scale up successful projects; work collaboratively; finance water and sanitation schemes; and use information systems such as mapping to drive local action and monitor improvements.
This text investigates the relationships between what happened the last 20 years on the world stage and how theater life developed on the local level in Western European countries.