Luxury Arts of the Renaissance
Luxury Arts of the Renaissance

Author: Marina Belozerskaya

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2005-10-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0892367857

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Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

The Performance Economy
The Performance Economy

Author: W. Stahel

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-02-24

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0230274900

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This updated and revised edition outlines strategies and models for how to use technology and knowledge to improve performance, create jobs and increase income. It shows what skills will be required to produce, sell and manage performance over time, and how manual jobs can contribute to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources.

The Healthcare Imperative
The Healthcare Imperative

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2011-01-17

Total Pages: 852

ISBN-13: 0309144337

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The United States has the highest per capita spending on health care of any industrialized nation but continually lags behind other nations in health care outcomes including life expectancy and infant mortality. National health expenditures are projected to exceed $2.5 trillion in 2009. Given healthcare's direct impact on the economy, there is a critical need to control health care spending. According to The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes, the costs of health care have strained the federal budget, and negatively affected state governments, the private sector and individuals. Healthcare expenditures have restricted the ability of state and local governments to fund other priorities and have contributed to slowing growth in wages and jobs in the private sector. Moreover, the number of uninsured has risen from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008. The Health Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes identifies a number of factors driving expenditure growth including scientific uncertainty, perverse economic and practice incentives, system fragmentation, lack of patient involvement, and under-investment in population health. Experts discussed key levers for catalyzing transformation of the delivery system. A few included streamlined health insurance regulation, administrative simplification and clarification and quality and consistency in treatment. The book is an excellent guide for policymakers at all levels of government, as well as private sector healthcare workers.

Global Corruption Report: Sport
Global Corruption Report: Sport

Author: Transparency International

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-05

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1317443756

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Sport is a global phenomenon engaging billions of people and generating annual revenues of more than US$ 145 billion. Problems in the governance of sports organisations, fixing of matches and staging of major sporting events have spurred action on many fronts. Yet attempts to stop corruption in sport are still at an early stage. The Global Corruption Report (GCR) on sport is the most comprehensive analysis of sports corruption to date. It consists of more than 60 contributions from leading experts in the fields of corruption and sport, from sports organisations, governments, multilateral institutions, sponsors, athletes, supporters, academia and the wider anti-corruption movement. This GCR provides essential analysis for understanding the corruption risks in sport, focusing on sports governance, the business of sport, planning of major events, and match-fixing. It highlights the significant work that has already been done and presents new approaches to strengthening integrity in sport. In addition to measuring transparency and accountability, the GCR gives priority to participation, from sponsors to athletes to supporters an essential to restoring trust in sport.

Discourses of Denial
Discourses of Denial

Author: Yasmin Jiwani

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0774840943

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Enriched by its official policies of multiculturalism, gender equality, and human rights, the Canadian public is occasionally shocked by glaring acts of racist and sexist violence brought to their attention by the sensationalist media. But nobody pauses to consider the historical antecedents and root causes of these tragedies. Discourses of Denial uncovers how racism, sexism, and violence interweave deep within the foundations of our society. Using examples from the lives of immigrant girls and women of colour, Yasmin Jiwani considers the way accepted definitions of race and gender shape and influence public consciousness. In linking race, gender, and violence, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complex and interconnected influences that shape the violence of contemporary social reality and that contour the lives of racialized women.

Archaeology of Babel
Archaeology of Babel

Author: Siraj Ahmed

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2017-12-12

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1503604047

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For more than three decades, preeminent scholars in comparative literature and postcolonial studies have called for a return to philology as the indispensable basis of critical method in the humanities. Against such calls, this book argues that the privilege philology has always enjoyed within the modern humanities silently reinforces a colonial hierarchy. In fact, each of philology's foundational innovations originally served British rule in India. Tracing an unacknowledged history that extends from British Orientalist Sir William Jones to Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said and beyond, Archaeology of Babel excavates the epistemic transformation that was engendered on a global scale by the colonial reconstruction of native languages, literatures, and law. In the process, it reveals the extent to which even postcolonial studies and European philosophy—not to mention discourses as disparate as Islamic fundamentalism, Hindu nationalism, and global environmentalism—are the progeny of colonial rule. Going further, it unearths the alternate concepts of language and literature that were lost along the way and issues its own call for humanists to reckon with the politics of the philological practices to which they now return.