ABSTRACT
Governments pursued privatisation policies on the promise that they would increase consumer choice. Marketing men set about mapping style communities based on shared tastes, and academics, reading these signs of the times, declared the arrival of the post-modern age in which appearance eclipsed substance and what people saw was all people got. Commentators in the West were quick to proclaim a victory for capitalism. In the battle for hearts and minds, America’s vision of the future had apparently won a decisive victory. The crowds who stormed the Bastille prison and demonstrated in Wenceslas Square were not simply protesting against corrupt regimes, but were claiming the right to participate in shaping public institutions and public culture. The crowds who stormed the Bastille prison and demonstrated in Wenceslas Square were not simply protesting against corrupt regimes, but were claiming the right to participate in shaping public institutions and public culture.
