Political Risk


Book Description

From New York Times bestselling author and former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Stanford University professor Amy B. Zegart comes an examination of the rapidly evolving state of political risk, and how to navigate it. The world is changing fast. Political risk-the probability that a political action could significantly impact a company's business-is affecting more businesses in more ways than ever before. A generation ago, political risk mostly involved a handful of industries dealing with governments in a few frontier markets. Today, political risk stems from a widening array of actors, including Twitter users, local officials, activists, terrorists, hackers, and more. The very institutions and laws that were supposed to reduce business uncertainty and risk are often having the opposite effect. In today's globalized world, there are no "safe" bets. POLITICAL RISK investigates and analyzes this evolving landscape, what businesses can do to navigate it, and what all of us can learn about how to better understand and grapple with these rapidly changing global political dynamics. Drawing on lessons from the successes and failures of companies across multiple industries as well as examples from aircraft carrier operations, NASA missions, and other unusual places, POLITICAL RISK offers a first-of-its-kind framework that can be deployed in any organization, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Organizations that take a serious, systematic approach to political risk management are likely to be surprised less often and recover better. Companies that don't get these basics right are more likely to get blindsided.




The Artist's Way


Book Description

"With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — The Artist’s Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it."—The New York Times "Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential"—Vogue Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.




Creating Insecurity


Book Description

'Today we are facing extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security. In the course of a gradual neutralisation of politics and the progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security imposes itself as the basic principle of state activity. What used to be one among several decisive measures of public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole criterion of political legitimation. The thought of security entails an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terrorist.'Following the words of Giorgio Agamben (from his 2001 article 'On Security and Terror'), security has become the basic principle of international politics after 9/11, and the 'sole criterion of political legitimation'. But security - reducing plural, spontaneous and surprising phenomena to a level of calculability - also seems to operate against a political legitimacy based on possibilities of dissent, and stands in clear opposition to artistic creativity. Being uncalculable by nature, art is often incompatible with the demands of security and consequently viewed as a 'risk', leading to the arrest of artists, and a neutralisation of innovative environments for the sake of security.Yet precisely the position of art outside the calculable seems to bring about a new politicisation of art, and some speak of art as 'politics by other means'. Has art become the last remaining enclave of a critique of violence? Yet how 'risky' can art be?The contributors to DATA browser 04: CREATING INSECURITY address these questions at the intersection of art, technology, and politics.




Seven Days in the Art World


Book Description

A fly-on-the-wall account of the smart and strange subcultures that make, trade, curate, collect, and hype contemporary art. The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.




Collective Insecurity


Book Description

Africa's notorious civil wars and seemingly endless conflicts constitute one of the most intractable threats to global peace and security in the post-Cold War era. This book provides both a superb analysis of the historical dysfunction of the postcolonial African state generally and, more specifically, a probing critique of the crisis that resulted in the tragic collapse of Liberia. Using a historical deconstruction and reconstruction of the theories and practice of international law and politics, Ikechi Mgbeoji ultimately shows that blame for this endless cycle of violence must be laid at the feet of both the Western powers and African states themselves. He further posits that three measures--a reconstructed regime of African statehood, legitimate governance, and reform of the United Nations Security Council--are imperative for the creation of a stable African polity. Collective Insecurity will be of interest to students and practitioners of international law and international relations, and those with an interest in security studies, politics, and African studies.




Culture Strike


Book Description

A leading activist museum director explains why museums are at the center of a political storm In an age of protest, cultural institutions have come under fire. Protestors have mobilized against sources of museum funding, as happened at the Metropolitan Museum, and against board appointments, forcing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders to resign at the Whitney. That is to say nothing of demonstrations against exhibitions and artworks. Protests have roiled institutions across the world, from the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim to the Akron Art Museum. A popular expectation has grown that galleries and museums should work for social change. As Director of the Queens Museum, Laura Raicovich helped turn that New York muni- cipal institution into a public commons for art and activism, organizing high-powered exhibitions that doubled as political protests. Then in January 2018, she resigned, after a dispute with the Queens Museum board and city officials. This public controversy followed the museum’s responses to Donald Trump’s election, including her objections to the Israeli government using the museum for an event featuring Vice President Mike Pence. In this lucid and accessible book, Raicovich examines some of the key museum flashpoints and provides historical context for the current controversies. She shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding conservative, capitalist values. And she suggests ways museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.




When Home Won't Let You Stay


Book Description

Insightful and interdisciplinary, this book considers the movement of people around the world and how contemporary artists contribute to our understanding of it In this timely volume, artists and thinkers join in conversation around the topic of global migration, examining both its cultural impact and the culture of migration itself. Individual voices shed light on the societal transformations related to migration and its representation in 21st-century art, offering diverse points of entry into this massive phenomenon and its many manifestations. The featured artworks range from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, video, and sound art, and their makers--including Isaac Julien, Richard Mosse, Reena Saini Kallat, Yinka Shonibare MBE, and Do Ho Suh, among many others--hail from around the world. Texts by experts in political science, Latin American studies, and human rights, as well as contemporary art, expand upon the political, economic, and social contexts of migration and its representation. The book also includes three conversations in which artists discuss the complexity of making work about migration. Amid worldwide tensions surrounding refugee crises and border security, this publication provides a nuanced interpretation of the current cultural moment. Intertwining themes of memory, home, activism, and more, When Home Won't Let You Stay meditates on how art both shapes and is shaped by the public discourse on migration.




Language, Culture, Art and Politics in the Changing World


Book Description

Life in the 21th century has already been marked by a changing world in many aspects. The Internet has reached virtually the whole world, neoliberal marketing policies have become more aggressive than ever and alternative economies such as cryptocurrencies have emerged within the first quarter of this century. Adding to the equation the ever-increasing population of the world and the much increased connectedness of its residents, novel definitions of what have already been known have emerged, reflecting the changing life in our time. The changes to life as observed in our century has also made it explicit that the concepts we tend to define continually are far from being stable and static. Instead, the current status of the world we live in prove time and again that those changes are instable, dynamic, non-linear and coadaptive, signifying the difficulty of achieving predictability. In a world that is best defined as dynamic and unpredictable, management becomes a key term for the harmony in life that every person tends to strive for. Efficiency in managing harmony among people, cities, industries, politics, education, arts, organizations or countries stands out as the utmost necessity regardless of the context one might be in. Without the endeavor to manage efficiently, the harmony that we all look for would become even more difficult to achieve. Such a harmony through efficient management, perhaps naturally, necessitates the coadaptation of academic disciplines just as it does the same in other fields in life. For this reason, multidisciplinary academic studies are now more important than ever because the instable, non-linear and dynamic nature of life and its changes are highly unlikely to be explained by a single discipline in isolation. The efficient management of the planet earth undoubtedly requires the efficient coexistence of societies, industries, education, politics and countries. All those structures forming human life in the world should coexist and academic studies are no exception to ensure a proper, scientific understanding of the worldly phenomena. In that respect, this book aims to present multidisciplinary perspectives in respect of the management of the societies, politics, arts, industries, international relations and education. We hope that the chapters within, distinguished works of the mentioned disciplines, will inform the readers regarding the interplay among various branches of science and contribute to the knowledge base of the world regarding language, culture, arts and politics in an ever-changing world.




Empowering Creativity


Book Description