ABSTRACT
Expanding upon and beyond high/popular politics, this chapter utilizes diffuse political sites to scrutinize established narratives. It assesses the politics of affluence through party efforts to cultivate support, but also through affluence's representation by organizations in civil society. The chapter analyses the state, policy and elections to the culture of politics itself, its instincts, conduct, style and remit of influence in the wider culture. Affluence excited political elite-popular tension, if at the same time blurring, reconfiguring politics' boundaries. As with 'subtopia', longstanding elite suspicions helped make advertising a blame-magnet for contemporary culture. TV was key to advertising: its novelty meant advertising was qualitatively more apparent and involved a higher proportion of professional agency productions than in the press. In a 1966 Anglo-American study, sex, HP, loneliness, TV violence and laziness were amongst a litany of ills 'flourishing in the midst of affluence'.
