Gathered in honor of John Michael Montias (1928–2005), the foremost scholar on Johannes Vermeer and a pioneer in the study of the socioeconomic dimensions of art, the essays in In His Milieu are an essential contribution to the study of the social functions of making, collecting, displaying, and donating art. The nearly forty essays here by—all internationally recognized experts in the fields of art history and the economics of art—are especially revealing about the Renaissance and Baroque eras and present new material on such artists as Rembrandt, Van Eyck, Rubens, and da Vinci.

Since 1979 China’s leaders have introduced economic and political reforms that have lessened the state’s hold over the lives of ordinary citizens. By examining the growth in individual rights, the public sphere, democratic processes, and pluralization, the author seeks to answer questions concerning the relevance of liberal democratic ideas for China and the relationship between a democratic political culture and a democratic political system. The author also looks at the contradictory impulses and negative consequences for democracy generated by economic liberalism.

Unresolved issues concerning the relationships among culture, democracy, and socioeconomic development are at the heart of the analysis. Nonideological criteria are used to assess the success of the Chinese approach to building a fair, just, and decent society.

One of the largest peace-keeping missions currently being undertaken by the United Nations is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the UN is attempting to deal with the civil wars and other conflicts that have plagued the country since 1996. In Intervention as Indirect Rule, Alex Veit uses a close study of the district of Ituri, a major battlefield and a laboratory for international intervention, to explore the micropolitics of warfare and statebuilding. Combining detailed firsthand empirical data with a historically informed analysis, Veit shows the effect that contemporary humanitarian interventions have on state-society relations. He also pays particular, and much needed, attention to the question of why the very organizations that should be helping with international statebuilding efforts—local authorities and civil society groups—so often instead turn out to be corrupt or hostile. Ultimately Veit argues that international intervention tends inadvertently to replicate—or even amplify—historical structures of political inequality, rather than establishing a liberal form of statehood.