Books : No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.88
EAN: 9780312421434
ISBN: 0312421435
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: April 06, 2002
Publisher: Picador
Sales Rank: 3021
Studio: Picador
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Product Description:
With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition. No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.
As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today’s schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald’s workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how “culture jammers” utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in “Joe Chemo” for “Joe Camel”).
No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.
“This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable.”—Naomi Klein, from her Introduction
Amazon.com Review:
We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."
In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?
Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.
But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs Very good book about how brand makers are driving our minds and lives
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I found this to be somewhat of a depressing book. I never really understood the full concept and ramifications of "branding." What you may think is a tiring sequence of commercials and have a more nefarious background. Naomi Klein paints a rather bad image of the corporations on how they exploit third world nations to their own gain. Free Enterprise zones sounds really good but usually end up being a place where corporations can skirt laws about unionizing, worker safty, and the environment.
I remember reading the issues of the garmet industry 100 years ago and yet many of the same tactics are in play today. What is sad is the fact it can go on because the people wish to have their trinkets and cloths for the cheapest rate possible.
I thought was interesting is the effort of branding and I don't know if it was a factor but to develop and defend a brand; it would make sense to shed production to "free enterprise zones" to where you can reduce your labor costs to .23 an hour. The savings allows for further marketing efforts.
One thing that disappointed me was the truth of the efforts of the Kenyan marathon runners attempting cross country skiing. Rather then being people who thought "I would like to try this" it turns out to be nothing more then a marketing stunt by Nike.
Much of the book delves into Nike and Phil Knight. Basically he can be labeled as the poster child for sweat shops and branding.
A surprising ... Read More
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Great book,just loved how it made me see the things that were so much part of my life and that I wouldn't question.
Now my views are different, I catch the logos, I catch the subtle messages, I catch the hidden messages that drive me into the consumer that I am, and understand better why, how and who is behind all of it.
This book is well researched, and even if written almost ten years ago, not much has changed in the world of marketing and how we are tricked into buying the things we don't need from across the world.
A great read.
Rating:  -
No Logo is a well researched book that documents many of the things that are wrong with our consumer culture. While "No Logo" is definatly worth your time Klein's argument has one reoccuring flaw. She draws links between different phenomenon without showing how they relate to each other.
According to Klein the switch from advertisements focused on quality to appeals to emotion made the brand more important than the product. In order to more effectivly manage the brand companies began outsourcing the task of actually creating the product, often overseas.
This is where Klein's argument comes apart due to causal relationships that are not satisfying. She blames the poor working conditions found in many third world factories on the culture of brand awareness itself. Rather than focusing on the very real economic and legal issues at play Klein chooses to focus on describing how people have attacked advertisements and other symbols.
While individuals should be encouraged to be active in righting wrongs Klein's idea of constructive actions are laughable at best. Drawing mustaches on advertisements or bloacking traffic with impromptu street parties do nothing to help the plight of workers in the third world. Klein's prescriptions for change are perfect for those who want to feel as if they are making a difference without making actual sacrifices.
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In mid-nineteenth century England, poet William Blake indignantly portrayed poor children sneaking a peek from the windows of the factories where they slaved fifteen hours a day, to watch the rich and beautiful cavort in the meadows with their hounds and horses. In the United States of the 1920's, Socialists reveled in contrasting the plight of the downtrodden workers with the opulence of the Robber Barons who lived off their labor. Today, to someone sensitive to the plight of the world's poor, little could be more repugnant than the contrast between the vulgar consumerism of the masses in the advanced capitalist economies and the lowly condition of the destitute third world workers who sew their clothes and craft their sports gear.
Naomi Klein is a prominent spokesperson for those disgusted with this contrast between rich masses in the developed countries and poor masses in the backward countries, the former benefitting obscenely from the low wages and poor working conditions of the latter who work sweatshops on their behalf. Klein wrote in a period when Nike, Wal-Mart, and other mega-corporations were under severe attack for oppressing their domestic and foreign workers. She and fellow activists had hoped this anti-corporate upsurge might turn into a full-fledged revolt that would dramatically improve the lot of low wage workers around the world.
In the second edition of No Logo, which appeared in 2002, she notes that "These struggles may seem slight in retrospect, ... Read More
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