| Summary: |
As the advertisement suggests, sponsorships are now embedded in many facets of
contemporary culture: cultural programs (from historic restorations to rock concerts),
social sponsorships (of education, health, and environmental programs), or sports
sponsorships. The borders between the social, cultural, and political, which sponsoring
ostensibly maintains, dissolve in the practice of corporate cultural politics. This is
underscored by the shift from separate programming for cultural and social sponsorships
to new programs that integrate cultural and social projects, both locally, in the
communities where corporations maintain their operations, and globally, in their promotion
of products and images. Corporate cultural politics attempt to legitimize corporate
interests in globalized societies—in cultural, social, economic, and political
spheres—but in doing so they also expose their stake in institutional and communal
discourses and values.
Not only has the corporation become accepted as a legitimate, institutionalized
participant in the cultural marketplace, but corporate cultural politics also define and
shape culture. Associating cultural sponsorship exclusively with “high culture†or patronage masks the corporation’s participation in constructing social relations and
identities in a multidimensional culture of everyday life, a culture that cannot be adequately
characterized as high or low. Culture Incorporated argues that an analysis of
sponsorship, as a function of corporate cultural politics, is now more crucial than
ever, precisely because sponsoring has become so ubiquitous. Sponsorships deflect attention
away from the corporation’s own functions as a cultural producer, promoter,
or mediator by projecting the image of an institutional entity standing outside the
cultural marketplace.
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