The Trojan Horse The Growth of Commercial Sponsorship

Deborah Philips and Garry Whannel have given us a great gift--a book that manages to transcend its times, even as it captures them. They analyze the ruins of neoliberalism's baleful influence on British life, from culture to sport to health. Blending political economy with cultural studies, The Trojan Horse expertly describes thirty years of struggle and mystification. -- Toby Miller, Professor of Cultural Industries, City University London, UK and author of Makeover Nation Commercial sponsorship now pervades our lives, intruding private interests into the management of our public and collective affairs at great social cost and with few economic benefits as the weaknesses and failures of free-market economics become increasingly manifest. By demonstrating this in convincing detail, Deborah Philips and Garry Whannel's broad-ranging and incisive study provides an invaluable service in re-asserting the principles of publicness that need to be defended against the Trojan Horse of privatisation. An important and timely book. -- Tony Bennett, Research Professor in Social and Cultural Theory, University of Western Sydney, Australia From art and sport to education and health, the authors describe how seemingly benevolent sponsorship is the Trojan Horse that has facilitated a creeping erosion of corporate interests into the public sector. In a devastating critique of the demise of the welfare state, Philips and Whannel document the colonisation of public space by commercial priorities that enables private enterprise to set the agendas of our schools, hospitals, care homes and surgeries with deleterious consequences. Wide-ranging, insightful and shocking to boot, this is a "must read" for anyone interested in the nature of public value and the hidden power of corporations. -- Natalie Fenton, Professor of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK