Chapters 1-5 Summary and Analysis

It is a myth that corporations are actually growing. For most of the twentieth century, they did, because they enlarged their product lines and actually produced everything they sold. By the 1980s, however, this began to change, as corporations became multi-national and contracted out production to third world countries. The new focus of the corporation itself became one of marketing its brand name. Most American corporations now buy products produced elsewhere and "brand" them for sale. To promote their brands, corporations are "...waging a war on public and individual space - on public institutions such as schools, on youthful identities, on the concept of nationality and on the possibilities for unmarketed space" (p. 5). How this phenomenon came to be and what it means to American cultural groups is the subject of the first five chapters of this work.

As...