This book presents interviews with some of the most provocative artists of the postmodern era. These sculptors, writers, filmmakers, activists, and performance artists have forged a new vision of art that is confrontational, political, and concerned with interrupting the domination of our lives by mass culture.

This book presents interviews with some of the most provocative artists of the postmodern era, including Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Carrie Mae Weems, Carolee Schneemann, Andres Serrano, Karen Finley, and Kathy Acker. These sculptors, writers, filmmakers, activists, and performance artists have forged a new vision of art that is confrontational, political, and concerned with interrupting the domination of our lives by mass culture.

Ideas are embedded in social arrangements, which in turn produce effects. With this simple premise, this radically accessible systems design book makes a compelling case for arrangements as a rich and overlooked terrain for social justice and world building. Unpacking how ideas like racism and sexism remain sturdy by embedding themselves in everything from physical and social infrastructure to everyday speech and thought habits, this book gives readers the tools to sense, intervene in and imagine new arrangements.

What role can provocation play in the process of renewal, both of individuals and of societies? Provocation in Popular Culture is an investigation into the practice of specific provocateurs and the wider nature of cultural provocation, examining, among others: Banksy Sacha Baron Cohen Leo Bassi Pussy Riot Philippe Petit Archaos. Drawing on Bim Mason’s own twenty-five year career as performer, teacher and creative director, this book explores the power negotiations involved in the relationship between provocateur and provoked, and the implications of maintaining a position on the ‘edge’. Using neuroscience as a bridge, it proposes a similarity between complexity theory and cultural theories of play and risk. Three inter-related analogies for the ‘edge’ on which these performers operate – the fulcrum, the blade and the border – reveal the shifts between structure and fluidity, and the ways in which these can combine in a single moment.

Conflicts involve powerful experiences. The residue of these experiences is captured by the concept and language of emotion. Indiscriminate killing creates fear; targeted violence produces anger and a desire for vengeance; political status reversals spawn resentment; cultural prejudices sustain ethnic contempt. These emotions can become resources for political entrepreneurs. A broad range of Western interventions are based on a view of human nature as narrowly rational. Correspondingly, intervention policy generally aims to alter material incentives ('sticks and carrots') to influence behavior. In response, poorer and weaker actors who wish to block or change this Western implemented 'game' use emotions as resources. This book examines the strategic use of emotion in the conflicts and interventions occurring in the Western Balkans over a twenty-year period. The book concentrates on the conflicts among Albanian and Slavic populations (Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, South Serbia), along with some comparisons to Bosnia.

Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions: Theory, Research, and Procedures surveys a variety of areas to which cognitive-behavioral strategies have been applied. The various contributors represent some of the major innovators in the field. Each has developed and systematically evaluated programs which apply sound empirically based procedures to cognitive and behavioral phenomena. The opening chapter traces the short developmental history and describes the current professional environment of the cognitive-behavioral movement. The chapters that follow represent major contributions by the leading investigators across a number of areas of intervention. Each chapter describes a summary of research in the respective area, a description of the actual intervention procedures with supporting empirical data, and a consideration of the theoretical foundations and potential implications associated with the intervention. The chapter contents vary across three dimensions. First, the interventions range from those that focus on the acquisition of new capacities to those that deal with the control and modification of existing processes. Second, several chapters focus on adult populations, several on child populations, and some on both. Finally, whereas a number of the chapters deal with problems that have been areas of traditional clinical concern, several others explore new and interesting applications for cognitive-behavioral interventions.