New modes of displaying and viewing African art and material culture. At the heart of SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa is a design-focused question of how to present historical and contemporary works alongside one another. Through the use of a long wall designed by the architectural firm AD-WO for the 2023 exhibition, Bard Graduate Center invited visitors and interlocutors to engage with African art in a variety of ways. As part of the exhibition, the department of public humanities and research at BGC worked with curator Drew Thompson to craft a vigorous and lively series of public programs, inviting guests to create their own sightlines. Participants mary adeogun, JJJJJerome Ellis, Jessica Lynne, Annissa Malvoisin, Maaza Mengiste, and Okwui Okpokwasili offered their vantage points, illuminating various aesthetic, functional, and symbolic uses of the metalworks on view, and highlighting the modes of historical analysis and storytelling behind the contemporary works. This book gathers those sightlines with photographs of the exhibition installation and other illustrations selected by the authors. An introductory essay by curator Thompson grapples with current debates on the display of historical and contemporary art of Africa and the Black diaspora. Exhibition designers and curatorial advisers Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood present a visual essay on the inspiration for and the ideas behind their long-wall display. The book also features an interview between Admassu, Thompson, and Wood. SIGHTLINES marks a different approach to scholarship around exhibitions in two immediate ways. First, it showcases how visitors engaged with the exhibition through its design and display of objects. Second, it provides an opportunity to highlight the kinds of research and cultural insights that a collaborative and design-focused curatorial approach provides. The publication is the first Bard Graduate Center book to explore the visual and material culture of Africa and the Black diaspora, delving into the history of the metalworks as well as larger debates on collecting practices, museum display, gallery education, and provenance.

This study explores three generations of approaches to ending conflict and examines how, in the context of the failings of the Westphalian international system, their peacekeeping, mediation and negotiation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding approaches as well as UN peace operations, and asks via an empirical and theoretical analysis, what role such approaches have played and are playing in replicating an international system prone to intractable forms of conflict.

Peace and War by Raymond Aron is one of the greatest books ever written on international relations. Aron's starting point is the state of nature that exists between nations, a condition that differs essentially from the civil state that holds within political communities. Ever keeping this brute fact about the life of nations in mind and ranging widely over political history and many disciplines, Aron develops the essential analytical tools to enable us to think clearly about the stakes and possibilities of international relations. In his first section, "Theory," Aron shows that, while international relations can be mapped, and probabilities discerned, no closed, global "science" of international relations is anything more than a mirage. In the second part, "Sociology," Aron studies the many ways various subpolitical forces influence foreign policy. He emphasizes that no rigorous determinism is at work: politics—and thus the need for prudent statesmanship—are inescapable in international relations. In part three, "History," Aron offers a magisterial survey of the twentieth century. He looks at key developments that have had an impact on foreign policy and the emergence of what he calls "universal history," which brings far-flung peoples into regular contact for the first time. In a final section, "Praxeology," Aron articulates a normative theory of international relations that rejects both the bleak vision of the Machiavellians, who hold that any means are legitimate, and the naivete of the idealists, who think foreign policy can be overcome. This new edition of Peace and War includes an informative introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson, situating Aron's thought in a new post-Cold War context, and evaluating his contribution to the study of politics and international relations.

If wars are costly and risky to both sides, why do they occur? Why engage in an arms race when it’s clear that increasing one’s own defense expenditures will only trigger a similar reaction by the other side, leaving both countries just as insecure—and considerably poorer? Just as people buy expensive things precisely because they are more expensive, because they offer the possibility of improved social status or prestige, so too do countries, argues Lilach Gilady. In The Price of Prestige, Gilady shows how many seemingly wasteful government expenditures that appear to contradict the laws of demand actually follow the pattern for what are known as Veblen goods, or positional goods for which demand increases alongside price, even when cheaper substitutes are readily available. From flashy space programs to costly weapons systems a country does not need and cannot maintain to foreign aid programs that offer little benefit to recipients, these conspicuous and strategically timed expenditures are intended to instill awe in the observer through their wasteful might. And underestimating the important social role of excess has serious policy implications. Increasing the cost of war, for example, may not always be an effective tool for preventing it, Gilady argues, nor does decreasing the cost of weapons and other technologies of war necessarily increase the potential for conflict, as shown by the case of a cheap fighter plane whose price tag drove consumers away. In today’s changing world, where there are high levels of uncertainty about the distribution of power, Gilady also offers a valuable way to predict which countries are most likely to be concerned about their position and therefore adopt costly, excessive policies.