In recent years, the term global art has become a catchphrase in contemporary art discourses. Going beyond additive notions of canon expansion, this volume encourages a differentiated inquiry into the complex aesthetic, cultural, historical, political, epistemological and socio-economic implications of both the term global art itself and the practices it subsumes. Focusing on diverse examples of art, curating, historiography and criticism, the contributions not only take into account (new) hegemonies and exclusions but also the shifting conditions of transcultural art production, circulation and reception.

The book examines some of the ways in which contemporary forms of political dissent are situated within processes of global ordering. Grounded in analysis of concrete practices of discipline and dissent in specific contexts, it explores the ways in which resistance can be shaped by dominant ways of thinking, seeing or enacting politics and by the multiform relations of power at play in the making of global order. The contributions, written from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, address themes such as the processes through which particular sorts of resisting subjects are produced; the politics of knowledge in which resisting practices are embedded; the ways in which visual technologies are deployed within and towards oppositional practices; and the politics of gender, race and class within spaces of contestation. The volume thus opens up space for critical reflection and inter-disciplinary dialogue on what it means to be a resisting subject and on the interplay between the power and counter-power in global order. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Art is a multi-faceted part of human society, and often is used for more than purely aesthetic purposes. When used as a narrative on modern society, art can actively engage citizens in cultural and pedagogical discussions. Convergence of Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Global Civic Engagement is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the relationship between popular media, art, and visual culture, analyzing how this intersection promotes global pedagogy and learning. Highlighting relevant perspectives from both international and community levels, this book is ideally designed for professionals, upper-level students, researchers, and academics interested in the role of art in global learning.

Are artistic engagements evolving, or attracting more attention? The range of artistic protest actions shows how the globalisation of art is also the globalisation of art politics. Here, based on multi-site field research, we follow artists from the MENA countries, Latin America, and Africa along their committed transnational trajectories, whether these are voluntary or the result of exile. With this global and decentred approach, the different repertoires of engagement appear, in all their dimensions, including professional ones. In the face of political disillusionment, these aesthetic interventions take on new meanings, as artivists seek alternative modes of social transformation and production of shared values. Contributors are: Alice Aterianus-Owanga, Sébastien Boulay, Sarah Dornhof, Simon Dubois, Shyam Iskander, Sabrina Melenotte, Franck Mermier, Rayane Al Rammal, Kirsten Scheid, Pinar Selek, and Marion Slitine. The Global Politics of Artistic Engagement: Beyond the Arab Uprisings is now available in paperback for individual customers.

The book responds to the challenge of the global turn in the humanities from the perspective of art history. A global art history, it argues, need not follow the logic of economic globalization nor seek to bring the entire world into its fold. Instead, it draws on a theory of transculturation to explore key moments of an art history that can no longer be approached through a facile globalism. How can art historical analysis theorize relationships of connectivity that have characterized cultures and regions across distances? How can it meaningfully handle issues of commensurability or its absence among cultures? By shifting the focus of enquiry to South Asia, the five meditations that make up this book seek to translate intellectual insights of experiences beyond Euro–America into globally intelligible analyses.

A trailblazing look at the historical emergence of a global field in contemporary art and the diverse ways artists become valued worldwide Prior to the 1980s, the postwar canon of “international” contemporary art was made up almost exclusively of artists from North America and Western Europe, while cultural agents from other parts of the world often found themselves on the margins. The Global Rules of Art examines how this discriminatory situation has changed in recent decades. Drawing from abundant sources—including objective indicators from more than one hundred countries, multiple institutional histories and discourses, extensive fieldwork, and interviews with artists, critics, curators, gallerists, and auction house agents—Larissa Buchholz examines the emergence of a world-spanning art field whose logics have increasingly become defined in global terms. Deftly blending comprehensive historical analyses with illuminating case studies, The Global Rules of Art breaks new ground in its exploration of valuation and how cultural hierarchies take shape in a global context. The book’s innovative global field approach will appeal to scholars in the sociology of art, cultural and economic sociology, interdisciplinary global studies, and anyone interested in the dynamics of global art and culture.

The focus on concepts of power and domination in societal structures has characterized sociology since its beginnings. Max Weber’s definition of power as “imposing one’s will on others” is still relevant to explaining processes in the arts, whether their production, imagination, communication, distribution, critique or consumption. Domination in the arts is exercised by internal and external rulers through institutionalized social structures and through beliefs about their legitimacy, achieved by defining and shaping art tastes. The complexity of how the arts relate to power arises from the complexity of the policies of artistic production, distribution and consumption—policies which serve to facilitate or hinder an aesthetic object from reaching its intended public. Curators, critics and collectors employ a variety of forms of cultural and artistic communication to mirror and shape the dominant social, economic and political conditions. Arts and Power: Policies in and by the Arts brings together diverse voices who position the societal functions of art in fields of domination and power, of structure and agency—whether they are used to impose hegemonic, totalitarian or unjust goals or to pursue social purposes fostering equal rights and grassroots democracy. The contributions in this volume are exploratory steps towards what we believe can be a more systematic, empirically and theoretically founded sociological debate on the arts and power. And they are an invitation to take further steps.