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Art, Politics, and Development

Philipp H Lepenies author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Temple University Press,U.S.

Published:1st Nov '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Art, Politics, and Development cover

In his groundbreaking study, Art, Politics and Development, Philipp Lepenies contributes to the ongoing controversy about why the track record of development aid is so dismal. He asserts that development aid policies are grounded in a specific way of literally looking at the world. This “worldview” is the result of a mental conditioning that began with the invention of linear perspective in Renaissance art. It not only triggered the emergence of modern science and brought forth our Western notion of progress, but ultimately, development as well.Art, Politics, and Development examines this process by pulling from a range of disciplines, including art history, philosophy, literature, and social science. Lepenies not only explains the shortcomings of modern aid in a novel fashion, he also proposes how aid could be done differently.

In the series Politics, History and Social Change, edited by John C. Torpey

"While none of [the book's] components [are] original, the combination of them may be. The best section, on the invention of perspective... cites art historian Erwin Panofsky's Perspective as Symbolic Form. Lepenies isn't writing history; he's building an intellectual construct. Its end point is the assertion that contemporary thinking on development supports a linear concept of progress and that we possess a privileged viewpoint on it."--Library Journal, October 2013

ISBN: 9781439910849

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 18mm

Weight: unknown

214 pages