Amateurs without Borders examines the rise of new actors in the international development world: volunteer-driven grassroots international nongovernmental organizations. These small aid organizations, now ten thousand strong, sidestep the world of professionalized development aid by launching projects built around personal relationships and the skills of volunteers. This book draws on fieldwork in the United States and Africa, web data, and IRS records to offer the first large-scale systematic study of these groups. Amateurs without Borders investigates the aspirations and limits of personal compassion on a global scale.
People all over the world make art and take pleasure in it, and they have done so for millennia. But acknowledging that art is a universal part of human experience leads us to some big questions: Why does it exist? Why do we enjoy it? And how do the world’s different art traditions relate to art and to each other? Art Without Borders is an extraordinary exploration of those questions, a profound and personal meditation on the human hunger for art and a dazzling synthesis of the whole range of inquiry into its significance. Esteemed thinker Ben-Ami Scharfstein’s encyclopedic erudition is here brought to bear on the full breadth of the world of art. He draws on neuroscience and psychology to understand the way we both perceive and conceive of art, including its resistance to verbal exposition. Through examples of work by Indian, Chinese, European, African, and Australianartists, Art Without Borders probes the distinction between accepting a tradition and defying it through innovation, which leads to a consideration of the notion of artistic genius. Continuing in this comparative vein, Scharfstein examines the mutual influence of European and non-European artists. Then, through a comprehensive evaluation of the world’s major art cultures, he shows how all of these individual traditions are gradually, but haltingly, conjoining into a single current of universal art. Finally, he concludes by looking at the ways empathy and intuition can allow members of one culture to appreciate the art of another. Lucid, learned, and incomparably rich in thought and detail, Art Without Borders is a monumental accomplishment, on par with the artistic achievements Scharfstein writes about so lovingly in its pages.
In his New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon showed readers how to unlock their creativity by “stealing” from the community of other movers and shakers. Now, in an even more forward-thinking and necessary book, he shows how to take that critical next step on a creative journey—getting known. Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.” It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery—let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive. In chapters such as You Don’t Have to Be a Genius; Share Something Small Every Day; and Stick Around, Kleon creates a user’s manual for embracing the communal nature of creativity— what he calls the “ecology of talent.” From broader life lessons about work (you can’t find your voice if you don’t use it) to the etiquette of sharing—and the dangers of oversharing—to the practicalities of Internet life (build a good domain name; give credit when credit is due), it’s an inspiring manifesto for succeeding as any kind of artist or entrepreneur in the digital age.
Not all international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) are created equal, Some have emerged as "leading INGOs" that command deference from various powerful audiences and are well-positioned to influence the practices of states, corporations, and other INGOs. Yet Sarah S. Stroup and Wendy H. Wong make a strong case for the tenuous nature of this position: in order to retain their authority, INGOs such as Greenpeace, Oxfam, and Amnesty International refrain from expressing radical opinions that severely damage their long-term reputation. Stroup and Wong contend such INGOs must constantly adjust their behavior to maintain a delicate equilibrium that preserves their status. Activists, scholars, and students seeking to understand how international organizations garner and conserve power—and how this affects their ability to fulfill their stated missions—will find much of value in The Authority Trap. The authors use case studies that illuminate how INGOs are received by three main audiences: NGO peers, state policymakers, and corporations. In the end, the authors argue, the more authority an INGO has, the more constrained is its ability to affect the conduct of world politics.
In Soccer Without Borders, journalist Erik Kirschbaum lays out Klinsmann's vision for making the U.S. men's soccer team a dominant world power for the first time in its history. Featuring fascinating insights gleaned from Klinsmann's decades of dedicated study - both as a professional striker and as coach of the German national team - this book is an immersive and unparalleled road map for how to build a winning team in the most competitive professional sport on the globe.
"Art is the great connector, as proven here in the stories these seven Eastern European female artists share about their work, their immigration experiences, and their acclimation into American culture. "Victoria Averbukh, of Russian and Jewish descent, journalist by profession, knows firsthand what these women have faced, having come to the United States and raised American children while successfully keeping their Russian heritage alive. "These seven artists all work in different mediums. Their work could not be more different; however, their shared experiences create a common thread, weaving their Eastern European roots into their American lifestyles. Their work on a whole is vibrant, colorful, and passionate. Victoria has chosen a group of women whose stories are as fascinating and powerful as the work they create. She has chosen well. Each of them makes the world a brighter, more beautiful place, and for that, we all must stand up and applaud!" Nina Seigenfeld Velazquez, visual artist and curator, New York
This collection of articles contains the English contributions to the 4th Austrian Students’ Conference of Linguistics (Österreichische Studierenden-Konferenz der Linguistik, ÖSKL), which was held in November 2011 at the University of Innsbruck. With this collection, the editors want to make the insights and the knowledge presented at the 4th ÖSKL available in written format to a wider public. The contributions present in this collection are excerpts from PhD as well as diploma theses and seminar papers. The fifteen papers collected in this volume are very diverse, as are the authors themselves, who come from nine different countries, from Portugal in the West, Iran in the East and Norway in the North. The papers come from a variety of linguistic subdisciplines. Besides a strong focus on syntax, cognitive and historical linguistics, there are papers exploring pragmatics, foreign language acquisition, phonology and sociolinguistics. This volume of collected essays brings together conversations, papers, and debates from the Third Annual North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nathan Jun and Jorell A. Meléndez aspire to go beyond a simple collection of papers and instead aim to maintain a dialogue among different academic fields with the sole task of comprehending and re-thinking anarchist studies. With over twenty-one chapters written by a diverse range of activists, organizers, musicians, artists, poets, and academics, this book transgresses the apparent simplicity of the study of anarchism with a dynamic and interdisciplinary approach that crystallizes and emulates the heterogeneous nature of the anarchist ideal. From theory and philosophy to historical analyses, methodologies, and perspectives, from different manifestations in the arts, media, and culture to religion, ethics, and spirituality, from the intersectionality of animal liberation and queer struggles to contemporary praxis and organizing, the authors explore different topics from a critical perspective that is often lacking in their respective academic fields. This book is a must-buy for critical teachers, students, and activists interested in studying anarchism and the different ways in which we can transform our reality.
Faced with the scale of global challenges such as poverty and inequality, one question is where to start. Humanitarian efforts can only ever have limited reach. Among all of human suffering, whom should we support? And what shapes our choices? Such questions are at the core of this book. Through an ethnographic account of moralities, it traces how everyday humanitarian practitioners challenge entrenched values of what matters, upending the notion that the large-scale is inherently important, and even questioning what ‘large’ means in the first place. Instead, these practitioners typically aim to create a difference in the life of a particular person, situating their limited actions within pervasive poverty.
The commons theory, first articulated by Elinor Ostrom, is increasingly used as a framework to understand and rethink the management and governance of many kinds of shared resources. These resources can include natural and digital properties, cultural goods, knowledge and intellectual property, and housing and urban infrastructure, among many others. In a world of increasing scarcity and demand - from individuals, states, and markets - it is imperative to understand how best to induce cooperation among users of these resources in ways that advance sustainability, affordability, equity, and justice. This volume reflects this multifaceted and multidisciplinary field from a variety of perspectives, offering new applications and extensions of the commons theory, which is as diverse as the scholars who study it and is still developing in exciting ways.
