MA thesis on American internationalism at the dawn of the 20th century, revisited through a comparison with the Netherlands, showing a pattern of morallegalistic means to pursue economic goals in...Show moreMA thesis on American internationalism at the dawn of the 20th century, revisited through a comparison with the Netherlands, showing a pattern of morallegalistic means to pursue economic goals in international politics.Show less
This thesis shows that the conceptions of Habsburg multinationalism continued to have a decisive influence on interwar Austrian social democratic and Catholic conservative political thinking on...Show moreThis thesis shows that the conceptions of Habsburg multinationalism continued to have a decisive influence on interwar Austrian social democratic and Catholic conservative political thinking on internationalism in the period 1916-1927. The legitimations of the Habsburg Empire’s place in Central Europe, which included a distinguishing between political state and cultural nation, an othering of the ‘Eastern menace’ and the peculiar civilisational paradox of German superiority and national diversity, showed a ‘stability of meaning’ that continued to dominate Austrian political rhetoric after the Treaty of St. Germain. An actively fought ‘battle for intellectual hegemony’, which sprung from the Empire’s civilisational mission and found expression both in Austromarxist dogmatism and Catholic traditionalism, brought about a particular focus on education as a means for ‘socialisation’, renewal of Catholic values and internationalisation. Austrian Catholic and socialist internationalismsshowed similarities, stressing the importance of cultural internationalisation through education and free trade in Central Europe. The Christian Social chancellor Ignaz Seipel loomed large as an inspirational figure for (young) Catholics in the whole of Europe while Austromarxists Friedrich Adler and Otto Bauer tried in vain to bridge the gap between Labourist social democracy and Bolshevist communism The focus on Kulturpolitik and the universalist legitimations of Empire produced an internationalism that left room for utopian international schemes of European unity. Moreover, internationalism became a rhetorical tool in the increasingly polarised domestic debate in Austria, legitimising local political action with high-flying international idealism. This created a reality gap between local politics and utopian internationalism which resulted in an opportunistic Austrian foreign policy that was open to international initiatives like the League of Nations, the Little Entente and Paneuropa but that would never whole-hearted commit itself. Austrian international utopianism wanted to keep every option on the table which created a situation in which politicians had to settle for the internationalist option closest at hand. In the end, that turned out to be Anschluß to Germany.Show less
This thesis is in the field of contemporary art in a globalized context in relationship to the changing idea of ‘internationalism’, and intends to discover how the art agent, the Dutch art gallery,...Show moreThis thesis is in the field of contemporary art in a globalized context in relationship to the changing idea of ‘internationalism’, and intends to discover how the art agent, the Dutch art gallery, functions in the process of mediation among artists, collectors, and other art members. This thesis presumes that global awareness somehow only remains in the realm of theoretical debates, or at the most in the knowledge domain of galleries, and this has yet to be extended to practice. Since many galleries would say they work internationally, and this thesis would like to start from this point: what kind of 'internationalism' are we indicating when talking about 'being international'? This thesis bases partly on the study of Olav Velthuis (2013) on the 'home bias' of Amsterdam art galleries, and aims to examine why under this condition there is still a group of Dutch galleries devoting themselves to working closely with international artists rather than local ones. Literature reviews on the globalization in relation to contemporary art exhibition, quantitative research on the data derived from each selected gallery's website of this research, and four face-to-face interviews with the gallery owners are the three main approaches to tackle this issue. The debates on the dominance of Eurocentrism and Western-centrism are incorporated into the last chapter of compound analysis, functioning as the lens to view this 'Occidental-internationl' tendency in the scene of Dutch contemporary art gallery.Show less
