Books like Documenta Fifteen — picked by fans

This book was the first to bring together a group of international artists, curators, and scholars to discuss and engage the changing nature of the art world, as a result of globalization.

The project was launched at the Center for Media and Art (ZKM) in Karlsrühe, Germany in 2006 with a series of conferences that turned into a series of books over time and an exhibition in 2013.

No other book considers so many new manifestations of the museum in the twenty-first century, illuminating new opportunities for the reader to explore distant lands vicariously and also to discover how many different ways institutions are being developed in cities around the world.

This book provides a primer on the global art market from scholars around the world.

The issues addressed include economic integration of multiple circuits/regional markets, the rise of markets in Asia, online marketplaces, and the importance of galleries and collectives to propel artists to success. The biggest advantage to this work is that it is the first book to consider global art markets from divergent perspectives.

While there remains a real center to the art world analyzed in this volume, you can start to see how new regions and countries are charging forward, transforming the domain of contemporary art in the twenty-first century by making it far more diverse and global.

Adam is one of the foremost reporters to cover the art market and has worked for the Financial Times and the Art Newspaper.
In her second book on the art market, she dives into the unsightly domain of the global art world, including speculation, forgery, art as an asset class, and freeports, the secret offshore warehouses where the rich stash their treasures tax-free. Her unique approach, focusing on classic categories such as supply, demand, and price among others brings a refreshing approach to the changing nature of the art market.

This book tears the lid off the globalization conversation because, before this book, nobody had considered all of the ways that the tools of globalization, like transnational shipping and the geographical distribution of labor, could be used to commit international crimes.

According to the authors, globalization’s shadow hides in plain sight, whether we are discussing transnational Mexican cartels, the Dark Web, human trafficking through Eastern Europe, or wildlife smuggling.

One of the morals of this book is that there is always a dark side to success stories and also that the more we generate regulations to prevent unwanted activities, the more money someone is going to make by providing those services.

Brooks represents a unique spin on the globalization thesis. He argues that the globalization of production, whereby multinational corporations disperse production around the world, has had a profound effect on security by promoting peace amongst developed economies.

Nonetheless, as we find in our book, he argues that the effect of the globalization of production is differential across types of states, as it is likely to promote conflict between developing states.

I appreciate this book because its twelve chapters—each by a different author—is a tour de force of the many different parts of the world that have constituted the Dutch empire these past four centuries, all conveniently curated into one volume. (By the way, never overlook the Dutch: small country, huge commercial impact.)

Most importantly, each chapter, in its own way, provides insights into questions I have about networks, such as how they transcend political borders, how linkages are formed, and how cultural boundaries are bridged.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the challenges and opportunities facing global governance. Weiss skillfully analyzes the evolving landscape of international cooperation, addressing the “Why?” behind the need for effective governance, the “What?” of its current structures, and the “Whither?” of its future trajectories.

With his insightful perspectives on pressing global issues, Weiss delves into the complexities of power dynamics, institutional frameworks, and the role of state and non-state actors. He identifies five gaps in the present global governance system: knowledge, normative, policy, institutional, and compliance. These gaps must be filled to ensure global governance structures are secured in the face of inevitable challenges ahead.

Engaging and accessible, the book provides a vital roadmap for readers interested in the past and future of global governance.

This anthology is highly recommended if you are looking for profound and multidimensional analyses of authoritative rule-making systems beyond the nation-state that emerged within the dynamics of globalization.

Readers will find general investigations on the structure and development of the institutional framework of “global governance” next to case studies focusing on how specific issues, e.g., the HIV/AIDS epidemic or transnational finance hazards, are governed within these frameworks. Furthermore, this volume is of great value as it depicts the controversial academic debates on how practices of “global governance” should be interpreted on a theoretical level. One can learn from both: “realist” and “Marxist” critiques on the concept of global governance and its proponents from “liberal institutionalist” and “functionalist” perspectives.

Alongside the explanatory level, the book is rounded off by some normative investigations on how global governance should look in the future in order to overcome patterns of global injustice.

The approach of Milanovic is very different from that of Hickel in that it is intensive in the use of data which, he would argue, shows a much more nuanced picture of the success of the global economy in reducing poverty than argued by Hickel.

He begins by reproducing the ‘Elephant Chart’ from his earlier work. This is a chart showing the relative gain in real per capita income by global income level. The name ‘Elephant’ comes from the shape of the chart which shows the largest income gains to have occurred for those in the middle of the distribution and the lowest in the range of 70 to 80 in the percentile distribution and the highest for those at the very top. Those in the middle being the hump of the elephant those at the top being its trunk.

Milanovic argues that in many respects the years before the… show more.

The divide here is not within a country but across countries, in particular between rich and poor countries, which are often referred to as ‘The Global South’.

Hickel argues that the activities by those in rich countries designed to ‘help’ poorer countries have exactly the opposite of their claimed effect. Rather than being the mechanism by which poverty is alleviated the policies they advocate for these poor countries are really the causes of their continuing poverty.

He writes: "Today British apologists defend colonialism in India and interventions in China on the basis that it brought ‘development’ to these regions. But the evidence we have suggests exactly the opposite story. It was the colonial period that forced market integration that inaugurated the ‘development gap’ between Britain and Asia."