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No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs | 
 enlarge | Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $6.94
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Rating:  163 reviews
Sales Rank: 1602
Media: Paperback
Pages: 528
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312421435
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.88
EAN: 9780312421434
ASIN: 0312421435
Publication Date: April 6, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: **Books may NOT include Online Access Codes (InfoTrac, MyEconLab).** Books MAY contain highlighting, writing, and/or bent pages. We ship M - F.
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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
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Interesting, but Klein has a poor understanding of causation September 6, 2008
E. Palmer
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Confessions of a No Logo Survivor August 7, 2008
Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
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, but you can hardly blame us media merchants for believing that we were engaged in a crucial battle on behalf of oppressed people everywhere: every step we took sparked a new wave of apocalyptic panic from our conservative foes." (p. 110) This movement has now subsided, and much of No Logo is an analysis of what went wrong.
Klein's main argument is that modern advertising is so powerful that it is capable of co-opting the anti-corporate movement and turning the aspirations of its supporters to it own advantage.
"Our sworn enemies in the `mainstream'---to us a giant monolithic blob outside of our known university-affiliated enclaves--didn't fear and loathe us, but actual thought we were sort of interesting. Once we'd embarked on a search for new wells of cutting-edge imagery, our insistence on extreme sexual and racial identities make for great brand-content and niche- marketing strategies. (p. 111) Culture jamming, the attack on corporate logos in massive demonstrations of disaffected youth, enjoyed a vigorous presence in this period, Klein notes (p. 287), but its major themes were quickly adopted by the advertisers to sell more stuff. (p. 297). Nothing, it would seem, can dent the sophisticated facade of the taste-makers.
Naomi Klein is a fine writer with a real social conscience. While she wears this conscience on her sleeve, she never lapses into a strident or sanctimonious style. She hasn't a clue to the real nature of the phenomena with which she is dealing, however. Her major thesis lacks even prima facie plausibility.
This thesis starts with the important insight that the success of the modern consumer goods corporation depends on its brand name reputation and sales, and hence can leave the actual production of consumer goods to a myriad of out-sourced factories and workshops. "Successful corporations," Klein writes, "must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products." (p. 3) The reason such firms as Nike and Wal-Mart locate production in low-wage third-world sites is, to quote: "When the actual manufacturing process is so devalued, it stands to reason that the people doing the work of production are likely to be treated like detritus---the stuff left behind." (p. 197)
There is little plausibility to this argument. Is it not reasonable that in earlier times firms produced goods in the home country because they had great regard for their workers. They did so because home-country workers provided lower unit labor costs. Contemporary firms locate internationally when they think they can make higher profits that way, not when they lose respect and regard for their domestic work force. Moreover, aside from a fringe of activists, consumers are generally not willing to pay significantly higher prices for goods in order to benefit third world factory workers. This is not because people are selfish, but rather because the low-wage workers who produce their clothes and shoes have little impact on the daily lives of consumers, and only the most concentrated political agitation can raise this impact, and then only for a short period of time.
It is also doubtlessly true that even a sustained effort to raise the wages of sweatshop workers would have little effect on the rate of poverty in third-world countries. More effective by far would be by the World Trade Organization succeeding in lowering tariff barriers against the import of third-world agricultural products, and by socially progressive groups and governments subsidizing third-world movements for democracy, representative government, civil liberties, the right to unionize. Klein correctly notes in regard to her study of the struggle of Philippine workers: "Because the Workers' Assistance Center's chief mission is to empower workers to stand up for their rights, WAC organizers don't much like the idea of Westerners sweeping into the zone brandishing codes of conduct, with teams of well-meaning monitors trailing behind." (p. 439).
Like many progressive supporters of the third world poor, Klein's instincts are anti-globalization and even anti-market. Commenting on a picture of economist Milton Friedman being assaulted by pie-wielding demonstrators, Klein identifies Friedman as "architect of the global corporate takeover," and asserts that he is getting "his just deserts." (260) Friedman's strident free-market rhetoric is of course quite over the top, but in fact, third world countries that have attempted to compete in the world market place rather than shelter themselves from it have done quite well, and the recipes of Klein et al. are, conversely, doomed to impotence and failure. The idea of offering sweatshop workers decent wages is a wonderful one, but suggesting that this might be a way to improve the lot of the poor in the world economy is ludicrous. Perhaps a country with mountainous oil revenues can play at sounding anti-capitalist (e.g., contemporary Venezuela), but the future of prosperity in virtually all poor countries depends on developing markets and state institutions that support markets in a synergistic and democratic manner. It is up to us to help them attain this, rather than feeling good about ourselves because we pay an extra few cents for "fair trade certified" coffee beans.
 Amazing book with a lot of things to do with globalization July 7, 2008
Rambo Wong (Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is extremely useful and important and has a lot of thing to do with society.
Thorough and tendentious June 12, 2008
Elliott Bignell (Sargans, Switzerland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book may be necessary reading for the socially and politically aware adult in the internet age. Klein's writing is more balanced than partisan critics might have you believe, and her work on this 490-page polemic has been very thorough. While she raises serious concerns, she eschews facile solutions. For this reason I recommend it to serious readers of all political hues - it is not simple propaganda, and Klein is as aware of the weaknesses in the anti-corporate backlash as she is of those in their chosen foes. Highly readable for a serious work.
No Logo=kind of out of date and a big read March 26, 2008
Josh Davis (Ga)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
No Logo is a book about the capitalist takeover on the world. For me I was real excited to read up on how the corporate world is screwing us over taking up every nook and cranny of the public and private space. The brand is almighty, and everyone without a keen eye worships the brand (ie Nike). Its a bit out of date because there are newer ways for the brand to seep into the public conciousness that aren't explained obviously before cell phones got bigger and with the popular explosion of online streaming video.
I didnt find it too relevant to today, and some of it was hard to understand, and the more it got deeper into the politics of injustice of the brands, it got harder to read. It felt like a constant bash through my head about the evils of corporations and halfway through I felt like "okay! brands are evil, the corporations are taking over, what can I do?" Although I did find it informative on what exactly IS going on behind closed doors. I wish Ms. Klein would do an update on a blog about the current world. However if you're new to things like this its a good read, if you're a little more up and up on the politics beforehand.
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