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By Naomi Klein. Toronto: Knopf, 2000. 490 pp. ISBN 067697130X.
I like this book. I was prepared to be cynical and dismissive. After all, Naomi Klein has become an instant cause celebre. No Logo has been discussed in national newspapers and magazines; its photogenic and youthful author interviewed on television and radio. Klein has even received celebrity endorsements from Gloria Steinem and Billy Bragg; both are featured on the back of the book. It is a slick-looking object, which has been criticized for imitating the values that it admonishes and for pandering to the youth market (Drainie, 2000).
After reading No Logo my skepticism has been replaced with intellectual admiration. Klein's analysis of the "branding" phenomenon, the rise of a culture and economy centred on manufacturing corporate images, and her descriptions of the resistance to mega-corporations like Nike, Shell, and McDonalds is thorough, well-documented, and articulate. Based on four years of research, including analyses of trade journals such as Advertising Age, trips to economic free-trade zones around the world, and interviews with workers and activists, Klein makes sense of a variety of dispersed events that she connects under the rubric of "branding." Given the activities of the G-7 nations and the WTO to secure international trade agreements under the banner of a greater global good, and the spate of protests that have arisen against the activities of these organizations worldwide, No Logo is a timely analysis and intervention.
It is an ambitious book that tries to capture much under a single label, if I may use that pun. No Logo is structured into four major sections--"No Space," "No Choice," "No Jobs," and "No Logo"--that repeat in visual and verbal form the catchy cover-title. These first three sections sketch out how the hegemony of branding has been achieved. "No Space" explains the concept of branding, describes its incursion into the public sphere, and questions the transformation of citizens into consumers. As examples, she looks at the appropriation of the style of African-American youth culture in the inner cities and the targeting of schools and universities. She tells how ambitious marketers have colonized public space by supplying schools with the hardware for pumping in news shows with their advertisements, or by securing exclusive contracts with institutions and...