For decades universities have been falling down on the job of teaching people to think for themselves and selling themselves as trainers for enhanced income generation. It is an abomination if, as George Monbiot reports (Who is really making your choices? It may not be you, 31 December), they are supporting research into techniques for overcoming resistance to advertising. We should look to other institutions to provide reservoirs of resistance. They will not be specifically set up to combat the “hidden persuaders” that Vance Packard wrote about in 1957, but by groups who build community on other common interests.
Perhaps the most successful is the Campaign for Real Ale, which took on the global beer producers who told us what to drink. My own city has many fine pubs, traditional and modern, which are obvious centres of resistance and not just on the beer front. What some will find more surprising is that there are some church communities around that encourage people to develop a capacity for scepticism, while helping them to stand up to the powerful forces of 21st-century global capitalism.
Geoff Reid
Bradford
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