Social works Jackson, Shannon
2011., 2011, 20110228, 2011-02-28
eBook
‘a game-changer, a must-read for scholars, students and artists alike’ – Tom Finkelpearl
At a time when art world critics and curators heavily debate the social, and when community organizers and ...civic activists are reconsidering the role of aesthetics in social reform, this book makes explicit some of the contradictions and competing stakes of contemporary experimental art-making.
Social Works is an interdisciplinary approach to the forms, goals and histories of innovative social practice in both contemporary performance and visual art. Shannon Jackson uses a range of case studies and contemporary methodologies to mediate between the fields of visual and performance studies. The result is a brilliant analysis that not only incorporates current political and aesthetic discourses but also provides a practical understanding of social practice.
1. Performance, Aesthetics, and Support 2. Quality Time: Social Practice Debates in Contemporary Art 3. High Maintenance: The Sanitation Aesthetics of Mierle Laderman Ukeles 4. Staged Management: Theatricality and Institutional Critique 5. Tech Support: Labor in the Global Theatres of The Builders Association and Rimini Protokoll 6. Welfare Melancholia: The Public Works of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset 7. Unfederated Theatre: Paul Chan Waiting in New Orleans
'Social Works takes an interdisciplinary look at the forms, goals, and histories of innovative social practice in contemporary performance and visual art. Shannon Jackson presents a range of case studies and contemporary methodologies to examine the fields for performative and visual art studies.' – Public Art Review, 2011, Issue 45
‘Shannon Jackson offers vivid close readings of art and performance … and she considers social issues relating to welfare, sanitation, urban planning, and globalisation, and how they coincide with class, gender, race, and – especially – labour…This will be a useful, enriching, and stimulating book for artists, students, and academics across art, performance, and social theory.’ – Jen Harvie, Contemporary Theatre Review
'Throughout the various studies that comprise Social Works , Jackson demonstrates the critical mobility across psychoanalysis, feminist, queer, and critical race theory needed to produce interpretations that trouble the very grounds of what constitutes art, life, and the public.' – Jennifer Cayer, e-misférica
'Jackson presents an informed and critical exploration of the 'social turn' in contemporary art, and overall, what is offered here is a thorough re-visioning of how the social phenomena of theatre and performance might be thought about and understood...This brilliant book asks us to think about art and performance as forms of human welfare, performatively creating and sustaining systems of social support, and working in ways that secure the maintenance of life.' – Jenny Hughes, New Theatre Quarterly
'Shannon Jackson's superb new book is, in a very challenging way, about vocabulary. Bypassing–even eschewing–language sometime dissed as "jargon," Jackson forces readers to think and think again about basic terms such as "performance," "social practice," "art," "politics," and "public"...Jackson's book is an invitation to consume art promiscuously but to choose words as if the future of the world depended upon them." – Dorothy Chansky, TDR: The Drama Review
'This is a subtle, nuanced and socially committed book that should be widely read.' – Stephen Bottoms, Theatre Research International
'Amidst the upheaval of the 'social turn', Social Works is a pivotal landmark. As we attempt to conceive of 'the aesthetic' and 'the social' together in performance and across the arts, Jackson's articulation of what she calls the "support" of a performance, that is, the real social, economic, and even logistical conditions that allow it to come to be, is a great contribution to the debate. In her distinctive voice, Jackson offers pertinent and noteworthy examples to unfold a sophisticated framework for understanding the political, ethical, and aesthetic implications of the social turn. She 'explores the social aspirations of socially engaged projects less as the extra-aesthetic milieu that legitimates or compromises the aesthetic act and more as the unraveling of the frame that would cast "the social" as "extra"' (16). This stance subtly rewrites the grounding of performance studies, and Jackson's far-reaching book is thus a vital reference at this moment of transition.' – James Andrew Wilson, PhD Candidate, University of Warwick
'Jackson's phenomenal book shifts the discussion from taste to ethnography in her critical examination of the intersection of social art, performance and theater. Not only a must read for those interested in the intersections of art and social change, but perhaps more importantly, for those searching for a calibrated compass in the age of vast interdisciplinary art production.' Nato Thompson, Chief Curator, Creative Time
' Social Works is a thrilling encounter: a politically important and intellectually innovative book. Shannon Jackson's exploration of the social work that underpins and enables the making of art is wonderfully judged. She draws out the ways in which art, politics and the public realm are intimately interwoven. The book is itself a vital and generous piece of social work.' John Clarke, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University
' Social Works is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present and future of art at the intersection of performance and social practice. Shannon Jackson combines impeccable research and rigorous critical thinking with a lucid, approachable writing style. I have found this book invaluable in my work as both a curator and a critic.' Andy Horowitz, Founder, Culturebot.org
Shannon Jackson is the director of the Arts Research Center at University of California at Berkeley where she is also Professor of Rhetoric and of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. Her award-winning previous publications include Professing Performance (2004) and Lines of Activity (2000).
In recent years the European Union (EU) has played an increasingly important role as a manager of global conflicts. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of how the EU has performed in ...facilitating mediation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding across the globe.
Offering an accessible introduction to the theories, processes and practice of the EU's role in managing conflict, the book features a broad range of case studies including Afghanistan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cyprus, Israel-Palestine, Macedonia and Moldova and examines both the institutional and policy aspects including the common foreign, security and defence policy.
Drawing together a wide range of contributors, this will be of great interest to students of European Foreign Policy, the EU as a global actor and conflict resolution and management.
The confidence trap Runciman, David; Runciman, David
2014., 20150322, 2015, 2014-02-20, 2015-03-22
eBook
Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. ...In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008.
A global history with a special focus on the United States,The Confidence Trapexamines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama.
InThe Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them-and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything-a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.
An eye-opening look at collecting and investing in today's art market Art today is defined by its relationship to money as never before. Prices have been driven to unprecedented heights, conventional ...boundaries within the art world have collapsed, and artists think ever more strategically about how to advance their careers. Art is no longer simply made, but packaged, sold, and branded. In Art of the Deal, Noah Horowitz exposes the inner workings of the contemporary art market, explaining how this unique economy came to be, how it works, and where it's headed. In a new postscript, Horowitz reflects on the market's continued ascent as well as its most urgent challenges.
In the spring of 2004, army reservist and public affairs officer Steven J. Alvarez waited to be called up as the U.S. military stormed Baghdad and deposed Saddam Hussein. But soon after President ...Bush's famous PR stunt in which an aircraft carrier displayed the banner "Mission Accomplished," the dynamics of the war shifted.Selling Warrecounts how the U.S. military lost the information war in Iraq by engaging the wrong audiences-that is, the Western media-by ignoring Iraqi citizens and the wider Arab population, and by paying mere lip service to the directive to "Put an Iraqi face on everything." In the absence of effective communication from the U.S. military, the information void was swiftly filled by Al Qaeda and, eventually, ISIS. As a result, efforts to create and maintain a successful, stable country were complicated and eventually frustrated.Alvarez couples his experiences as a public affairs officer in Iraq with extensive research on communication and government relations to expose why communications failed and led to the breakdown on the ground. A revealing glimpse into the inner workings of the military's PR machine, where personnel become stewards of presidential legacies and keepers of flawed policies,Selling Warprovides a critical review of the outdated communication strategies executed in Iraq. Alvarez's candid account demonstrates how a fundamental lack of understanding about how to wage an information war has led to the conditions we face now: the rise of ISIS and the return of U.S. forces to Iraq.
"Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China have become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this ...happen? This book shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the Internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China--one the state must now endeavor to control. The author examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded. Using interviews, newspaper articles, online texts, official documents, and national surveys, the author shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. The author demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, how legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and how existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the Internet. The emergence of this public sphere--and its uncertain future--is a pressing issue with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people. Investigating how individuals learn to use public discourse to influence politics, this book offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state-society relations."--.
In an era where church attendance has reached an all-time low, recent polling has shown that Americans are becoming less formally religious and more promiscuous in their religious commitments. Within ...both mainline and evangelical Christianity in America, it is common to hear of secularizing pressures and increasing competition from nonreligious sources. Yet there is a kind of religious institution that has enjoyed great popularity over the past thirty years: the evangelical megachurch. Evangelical megachurches not only continue to grow in number, but also in cultural, political, and economic influence. To appreciate their appeal is to understand not only how they are innovating, but more crucially, where their innovation is taking place. In this groundbreaking and interdisciplinary study, Justin G. Wilford argues that the success of the megachurch is hinged upon its use of space: its location on the postsuburban fringe of large cities, its fragmented, dispersed structure, and its focus on individualized spaces of intimacy such as small group meetings in homes, which help to interpret suburban life as religiously meaningful and create a sense of belonging. Based on original fieldwork at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, one of the largest and most influential megachurches in America, Sacred Subdivisions explains how evangelical megachurches thrive by transforming mundane secular spaces into arenas of religious significance.
The Jewish Labor Bund was one of the major political forces in early twentieth-century Eastern Europe. But the decades after the Second World War were years of enormous difficulty for Bundists. Like ...millions of other European Jews, they faced the challenge of resurrecting their lives, so gravely disrupted by the Holocaust. Not only had the organization lost many members, but its adherents were also scattered across many continents. In this book, David Slucki charts the efforts of the surviving remnants of the movement to salvage something from the wreckage.Covering both the Bundists who remained in communist Eastern Europe and those who emigrated to the United States, France, Australia, and Israel, the book explores the common challenges they faced-building transnational networks of friends, family, and fellow Holocaust survivors, while rebuilding a once-local movement under a global umbrella. This is a story of resilience and passion-passion for an idea that only barely survived Auschwitz.
Thinking Barcelona studies the ideological work that redefined Barcelona during the 1980s and adapted the city to a new economy of tourism, culture, and services. The 1992 Olympic Games offered to ...the municipal government a double opportunity to establish an internal consensus and launch Barcelona as a happy combination of European cosmopolitanism and Mediterranean rootedness. The staging of this municipal “euphoric postpolitics,” which entailed an extensive process of urban renewal, connects with the similarly exultant contexts of a reviving Catalan nation, post-transitional Spain, and post-Cold War globalization. The transformation of Barcelona, in turn, contributed to define the ideologies of globalization, as the 1992 Games were among the first global mega-events that celebrated the neoliberal “end of history.” Three types of materials are examined: political speeches and scripts of the Olympic ceremonies, with special focus on Xavier Rubert de Ventós’s screenplay for the reception of the flame in Empúries; the urban renewal of Barcelona directed by architect Oriol Bohigas; and fictional narratives by Quim Monzó, Francisco Casavella, Eduardo Mendoza, and Sergi Pàmies. This juxtaposition of heterogeneous materials pursues some type of postdisciplinary decoding linked to a strictly Marxist premise: the premise that correlations between different superstructural elements shed light on the economic instance. In this study, Barcelona emerges as a singular conjuncture overdetermined by global capitalism, but is also a space to reflect on three main problematics of postmodern globalization: the spectralization of the social in a fully commodified world; the contradiction between cosmopolitanism and the state; and the vanishing essence of the city.
For much of the twentieth century, the iconic figure of the U.S. working class was a white, male industrial worker. But in the contemporary age of capitalist globalization new stories about work and ...workers are emerging to refashion this image. Living Labor examines these narratives and, in the process, offers an innovative reading of American fiction and film through the lens of precarious work. It argues that since the 1980s, novelists and filmmakers—including Russell Banks, Helena Víramontes, Karen Tei Yamashita, Francisco Goldman, David Riker, Ramin Bahrani, Clint Eastwood, Courtney Hunt, and Ryan Coogler—have chronicled the demise of the industrial proletariat, and the tentative and unfinished emergence of a new, much more diverse and perilously positioned working class. In bringing together stories of work that are also stories of race, ethnicity, gender, and colonialism, Living Labor challenges the often-assumed division between class and identity politics. Through the concept of living labor and its discussion of solidarity, the book reframes traditional notions of class, helping us understand both the challenges working people face and the possibilities for collective consciousness and action in the global present.
