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Wednesday, 17 August 2005 |
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Current Store: UK Store
Books : No Logoby: Naomi Klein
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Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk 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 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 are 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 organise workers and advocate for change. But resistance is growing and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programmes have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labour practices but about the astronomical mark-up 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 organisers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centred alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of co-ordinated 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 SAM LEITH, Observer: 'No Logo is fluent, undogmatically alive to its contradictions and omissions and positively seethes with intelligent anger.' ALEX O’CONNELL, The Times: 'Klein brilliantly humanises No Logo with fascinating personal stories, her voice firm but never preachy, her argument detailed but never obscure.' Synopsis: If the world really is just one big global village, then the logo is its common language understood by - if not accessible to - everyone. In "No Logo", Klein undertakes a journey to the centre of a post-national planet. Starting with the brand's birth, as a means of bringing soul to mass marketing, she follows in the logo's wake and notes its increasing capacity for making the product subservient - a strategy reaching its apotheosis in brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, who actually produces nothing but lends his signature to a wardrobe of clothing statements made elsewhere. Beyond this she reaches her core argument - the now uneasy struggle between corporate power and anti-corporate activism - via sweatshop labour, submerged identity and subversive action. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - would recommendpretty hard reading at times, but the content is excellent and certainly gets one thinking about ethical shopping! Rating:  - Fluent, Thought-provoking but breathtakingly superficialAs a rule, I am very suspicious of the sharp left-right divide that beclouds any political or economic discussion; there must be truth on both sides. Therefore, I bought this book in order to understand the rage felt by the anti-globalisation movement. I finished the book with the feeling that the book spectacularly failed to deliver. Naomi Klein breezily argues that: - Multinational corporations have become more powerful than governments and somehow usurped the functions of the government ... Read More Rating:  - No LongerIt's worth remembering the stir created when this book came out 6 years ago. Looking at it again now is a great measure of how quickly culture has moved. No Logo will be remembered as a truly ground-breaking book that galvanised the attitudes of a generation who had a sneaky feeling that something wasn't right but struggled to articulate it. That's a nice way of saying that it now feels quite dated - although perhaps that's the perfect compliment as it clearly did it's job of waking us all up to our global ... Read More Rating: - The Third World has always existed for the comfort of the FirstNaomi Klein sketches perfectly the major shift in corporate strategy today: transnational companies are not interested in production anymore, only in branding: products are made in factories, brands in the mind. Branding creates big margins, production in home countries meager earnings. This strategy causes monstrous layoffs in the First World and creates EPZ (Export Processing Zones) in the Third World. In the First world, corporations transformed themselves in `engines of wealth growth' ... Read More Rating: - Excellent but slightly flawedAt first glance, "No Logo" looks to be a real chore with some 430 or so pages, but actually turns out to be an informative, well-written and engaging insight into corporate culture and practice, into how multinational corporations are gradually taking over and how the society is beginning to fight back. Due to the concepts and ideas introduced and discussed, I also found it to be a genuinely useful book, having come in handy for uni studies, employment and even social gatherings in general, occasions when marketing ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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