This chapter provides a reading of precarious practices developed in the 1990s by artists Francis Alÿs, Gabriel Orozco, Thomas Hirschhorn and Martin Creed as both responses to forms of aggressive capitalism that had become widespread since the 1980s, and reactions to some of the more visible art practices that had emerged during that decade.Zygmunt Bauman’s 2000 analysis of the ‘liquid’ characteristics of contemporary capitalism is shown to extend Arendt’s earlier discussion of the modern human condition in its emphasis on ever-faster cycles of consumer gratification at the expense of durable products and stable social relations. This chapter demonstrates some of the ways in which 1990s practices extended the dematerialisation of 1960s assemblage and ‘borderline’ practices, through explorations of a ‘join’ between art and the world, as Martin Creed called it, through discreet interventions (Francis Alÿs, Gabriel Orozco), or sprawling assemblages (Thomas Hirschhorn). Most importantly, this join may serve as a rub in the smooth global flows of capital.

This chapter contributes to Foucauldian scholarship and emphasises the extent to which discrepancies between intended meaning and popular understanding of museum displays occurred. It discusses visitor engagement with non-European material cultures in the provincial museum to critique the assumption of the pervasive nature of curatorial control of audience reception. Away from the museum, however, there was plenty of additional opportunity to engage with the peoples of the British Empire and their material cultures. The chapter explores how museum publics form individual responses to cultural heritage, sometimes rejecting official interpretation and drawing upon wider cultural references and experiences. It introduces the intentions that Brighton Museum's staff had when constructing their particular displays of non-European material culture. It draws heavily upon public opinion submitted to and reported upon in the Brighton Herald and Hove Chronicle.

This chapter provides an overview of the Subanon experience. It explains the role which their engagement with Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has played in their quest for meaningful implementation of their rights, and the rights of other Philippine indigenous peoples. CERD engagement with the Subanon case has assisted the Mt Canatuan community in their struggle to assert their rights. From 2004 onwards the Subanon adopted a strategy based on two mutually reinforcing rights assertion approaches. The first approach was to invoke their own customary legal system. The second approach was to focus on international fora to seek remedies for their grievances. In 2011, after fifteen years of sustained resistance to the mining project, the Subanon decided that further resistance was unlikely to bring substantive changes. They also decided that their priority was to resolve the serious divisions which the project had caused in their community.

The Chief Rabbis' theologies were reflected in their communal policies. They fought against those in the Jewish community who adopted different religious approaches. They excluded them from the United Synagogue or wrote and spoke against them, as both Hermann Adler and Joseph Herman Hertz did in their confrontation with the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. Jonathan Sacks has highlighted the role played by the inherent traditionalism of the British-influenced Anglo-Jews. David Englander has pointed to the association of the United Synagogue with the Anglican Church as an 'official' form of religion, and with respectability. The Chief Rabbis adopted an expansive ideology, to bring as many as possible into the fold by leniency where possible within halakhah. This strategy was vital to the establishment of their freely accepted religious hegemony in Anglo-Jewry, with the result that schools other than the acknowledgement school remained comparatively small.

John Scott presided over the Baster settlement established in Gordonia, north of the Orange, to defend the frontier and act as a buffer for the Cape Colony against further attacks from the interior. Among his duties was dealing with the 'Bushmen', inhabitants of the area. In his book The Birth of the Museum, Tony Bennett takes issue with Douglas Crimp for describing the museum as another Foucaultian 'institution of confinement'. While the museum and the prison are both articulations of power and knowledge relations, the museum, he insists, is an institution not of confinement but of exhibition. The chapter illustrates how the mind of colonial officials like Scott, the new form of social control of the 'Bushmen' through subjection to colonial law and imprisonment was bound up with viewing them as subjects of scientific investigation.

This chapter presents a complementary way of understanding intergovernmental behavioural patterns and emphasises the importance of member states as actors in the game. Typical civil servants with an intergovernmental perspective are those employed by the Foreign Office, particularly those in the diplomatic corps. Intergovernmentalism has mainly been seen as a means by which national governments influence international organisations. Seconded national experts (SNE) are much more detached from the member-state governments than is generally believed. SNEs tend to enact a departmental contact pattern while working for the Commission, much like permanent Commission administrators. The presence of inside-out intergovernmentalism is of particular interest in the cases of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and World Trade Organization (WTO) Secretariats as the classic form of intergovernmentalism is more acknowledged in the Commission.

Perfect order' and 'perfect elegance' were seldom achieved by the colonial museum. Amy Woodson-Boulton suggested that 'the museum movement in Britain and its Empire was widespread, but locally driven, without any central administration'. Major reconstructions have occurred in museums in Britain in recent years, and these have some resonances for Commonwealth developments. Some in the Commonwealth seem to be preserved in aspic, as in some galleries in the Indian Museum, Kolkata, or the Pacific ethnography display in the South Australian Museum, Adelaide. Notable examples of overall reconstruction and reformulation can be found in Victoria, British Columbia and Melbourne or Singapore. The colonial museum mutated into the 'national' (sometimes meaning provincial in federations) very quickly. Studies of museums need to pay them much greater attention. Some museums continue to play a significant role in scientific research.

The bulk of Georg Lukács' major writings over the 1931–63 period were concerned with questions of literary criticism or political philosophy. This chapter focuses on The Specificity of the Aesthetic (1963), which marks the return of Lukáacs to the questions of abstract philosophy and high aesthetic theory, as well as his reengagement with issues relating to film.