Ten years ago, Naomi Klein's No Logo was a virtual fashion accessory for a certain generation. Everywhere you went, hip earnest types could be seen reading it - on the train, on holiday, even in Starbucks sipping on a latte (with obligatory sprinkling of irony). Being neither hip nor earnest myself, I managed to miss out on this achingly cool phenomenon, and only picked up a copy to read earlier this year. The good news is that if you're coming to No Logo a decade or so after the party ended, be assured that it is still very much an essential read. Not so much 'out of date' as 'of its time' - but all the more interesting for it.

Most people today will already be aware that corporations and exploitation go together like burgers and fries. That if we scratched the surface of some of our most successful brands - Nike, Levi's, Disney - we would find something noticeably different from the clean, wholesome image adorning our billboards and magazines. What Klein has done is force our gaze into this hidden world - of sweatshops, child labour and corporate censorship - to remove any doubt about the full extent of the price being paid for our brand-filled lifestyles. It's a price that ranges from troubling (the creeping corporate colonisation of academia) to horrifying (the appalling conditions at Cavite where workers slave over products destined for western malls).

Infuriating and depressing it may be, No Logo is also a book that revels in the sheer tie-dyed trendiness of standing up to the machine; of anticorporate activism, of culture jamming, lobbying and reclaiming the streets. Indeed it is Klein's unbounded optimism - in a continually thriving underground movement, independent media, spontaneous street parties and protests - that forms a key part of the book's appeal. Surprisingly objective and able to analyse her own prejudices, this is more even-handed than you might expect. She predicts and acknowledges the cynicism, but refuses to let it dampen her spirit.

A few inaccuracies in Klein's data don't alter the fact that this is an important and well-argued book. At 500 pages, it's possibly a little bloated, but there's no denying the strength of material here to inform as well as outrage. I certainly didn't know anything about export processing zones before reading this book. Nor did I know much about anticorporate activism beyond the media portrayal of unwashed students and anarchist yobs. More than anything, Klein deserves credit for bringing the experiences of previously invisible foreign workers and the other darker sides of corporatism to our attention. Don't let the book's age put you off - the themes are still relevant, no matter how many 'corporate responsibility' statements have since cropped up on the big brand websites. As an extra, this 10th anniversary edition includes a new introduction by the author, offering some post 9/11, financial meltdown, Brand Obama context.

Perfectly written for a non-fiction book, this entire work will annoy you once you realise how much and how easily human beings are manipulated. Sadder than everything, you are faced with how much of your own behaviour and ability to choose is bent by the will of big corporations, and how this massively hurts other human beings. Read up on Export Processing Zones - get good and angry - and then watch as no one listens because our Western lives are so god damn convenient. A good read for anyone interested in the machinations of modern life, and what hides behind the curtain.

Naomi Klein is an incredibly sloppy scholar. As a writer she reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell. Both write books that seem as if their author has reflectively thrown everything they've found that seems vaguely interrelated and interesting.

In this book, Klein takes on marketing, branding, and sweatshops. Her main theme is the gradual corporatization of the world, but I find it hard to compare the absolute horrors of sweatshops (which her investigative journalism exposed beautifully) to the public eyesores of billboard advertising or the general annoyance of mass marketing and branding. Which is not to say it's not related, but the problems of the sweatshops, imo, are much more relevant and interesting to our lives and worlds, then the minor annoyances of a logo on a stadium.

Again, don't get me wrong. It's all important, and it's all interrelated, but conflating the subjects - conflating something that is horrifically exploitative and is damaging individuals and countries to the concerns of well-heeled Americans who don't like advertising seem to me absurd.

That said, it's a good book, well written and full of great reporting on sweat shops and the way corporations silently run them (and fuck over nearly everyone, including, eventually, US, the consumers).

ইরাক যুদ্ধ, অকুপাই ওয়ালস্ট্রিট, রানাপ্লাজার অনেক অনেক আগে লেখা বই। একটা জায়গায় একটা খুব দরকারী কথা বলা আছে, এই বড় বড় কর্পোরেশনগুলির গ্লোবাল নড়াচড়া। সেই গত শতকের শুরুতে আমেরিকার মূল ভুখন্ড থেকে শুরু করে। তখনকার মানে ১৯১২ তে একটা দুর্ঘটনায় যদি নিউ ইয়র্কে ১০০ জনের বেশি শ্রমিক মারা যায়, তার সাথে ২০১৩ তে ১০০০ এর বেশি শ্রমিক বাংলাদেশে মারা গেলে এই দুই দুর্ঘটনা আমাদের মনোজগতে কী কী প্রভাব ফেলে? এখন এই "আমাদের" বা আমরা ধারণাটিকেও ভেঙ্গে দেখতে হবে। আমেরিকার ধনী, ইউনিভার্সিটি ছাত্র, বেকার, কমিউনিটির সুনাগরিক, রাজনীতিবিদ, তৃতীয় বিশ্বের মানে নাইজেরিয়া, হন্ডুরাস, ফিলিপাইন বা বাংলাদেশের পুঁঁজিপতি, ফ্যাক্টরি মালিক, রাজনীতিবিদ, শ্রমিক, শিক্ষিত সমাজ, বেকার, ছাত্র, কৃষক এই সব "আমরা" ধারণাটির মদ্যে আছে। সেই যে আরো চল্লিশ-পঞ্চাশ বছর আগে গ্লোবাল ভিলেজ নামের এক কল্পগল্পের কথা শোনা গিয়েছিল, সেই গ্রামে প্রত্যন্ত কিনারায় শুরুতে ছিল তাইওয়ান, কোরিয়া, এরপরে দৃশ্যমান হয়েছে ইন্দোনেশিয়া, ফিলিপাইন, ধীরে ধীরে চীন, ভিয়েতনাম, বাংলাদেশ। এইটাই কর্পোরেশনগুলির সেই নাড়াচাড়া।এখন এই বৃহৎবপু বিশ্বপুঁজি নাইজার নদীর তীরে বা সাব সাহারান আফ্রিকার দিকে যাচ্ছে। এখনো বিশ্বগ্রাম কঠোর বর্ণাশ্রমে আবদ্ধ। তার মধ্যেও অনেক সাফল্যের কথা আছে, অনেক আশাবাদ আছে।

Klein tak dobrze pisze, że aż zastanawiam się nad zostaniem anarchistą, lol

No Logo a été publié en 1999 et, malgré que l'oeuvre ait près de 20 ans, le propos est encore tellement d'actualité...

Cet ouvrage ambitieux aborde les stratégies marketing employées par les entreprises au tournant des années '90. C'est à cette époque que l'idée que "la marque est primordiale" prend le dessus, qu'une entreprise vend un mode de vie, une image, plutôt qu'un produit. Ce virage, encore bien présent aujourd'hui, provoque un investissement majeur dans la publicité et le marketing au détriment des travailleurs, auprès de qui les corporations se désengagent radicalement depuis la fin des années '90.
Ce livre rappelle tristement le pouvoir immense dont disposent les grandes marques, souvent plus puissantes que les gouvernements locaux, et qui, sans surveillance, sombrent dans des abus terrifiants qui s'apparentent clairement à l'exploitation humaine et les régimes de terreur. ⚖⛓

No Logo s'intéresse aux débordements des corporations et au mouvement anti-corporatiste qui s'est formé en réponse à ces dérapages qui, loin d'être l'exception, sont malheureusement la règle pour parvenir à un maximum de profit et de contrôle du marché.

C'est stupéfiant de constater que 20 ans plus tard, les mêmes enjeux sont encore présents, notamment quant aux structures toutes puissantes et, ma foi, assez anti-démocratiques que sont les grandes entreprises. Aussi, il est assez effrayant de constater que la pub absorbe encore plus promptement et insidieusement tout mouvement culturel marginal qui tente de lui résister ou de se protéger de la rarification d'espaces non privatisés/marchandisés.

Je l'aime beaucoup Naomi Klein ❤.

Can not enjoy anything under capitalism. Klein gives a great analysis of how companies have been using branding to suck the life out of everything possible and how movements are resisting corporate domination. Yet she fails to provide a Marxist and anti-imperialist analysis that corresponds with neoliberalism and globalization in the late 90s. Interesting to see how this book would look in 2023.

(drastically condensed reaction)

It's a good start to a larger, overarching leftist critique of the way we live now. Klein does a fine job of explaining and exhuming many of the classic discontents of Capitalism, let alone the free-market nuttiness we've come to know. It's worth reading simply for the shedding of some further light on many of the social conditions we seem to take for granted.

The trouble is, she doesn't seem to have much to offer in the way of a viable, significant response- an alternative program.

She makes the point (sort of over-makes it, to my mind) about culture jamming and such and it sure sounds cool and interesting and worthwhile. It's just that it's also more than a little cosmetic and somewhat self-congratulatory and ultimately rather ineffective.

There isn't much in the way of *constructive* criticism, not to patronize the book to death, in that there are many ills correctly and articulately diagnosed but not much in the way of remedy. This is a problem, especially since the argument is known pretty widely in a general way and therefore the need for some kind of counter-program is all the more pressing.

I am going to try Disaster Capitalism one of these days and maybe it will have more of a bolder, tougher, more necessary impact.

ten years after this book's breakthrough success, we've seen many of its concerns rear their ugly head and make so huge and unmistakable and infinitely complex a mark that, discouragingly, it seems we're (people of the left, that is, those may take a lot away from this book and the already converted it preaches to) still standing at square one- acknowledgment- and gazing up at this monolith, and taking the temperature....

No logo (2000)

Un libro con alla base un lavoro impressionante di documentazione e il concetto "marchi, non prodotti". Lievi difetti i dieci anni trascorsi dalla pubblicazione e il fatto che sia incentrato soprattutto sulla realtà americana.
Valore aggiunto: mi ha fatto conoscere i fotografi Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans e Dorothea Lange.

Знаете ли, че Nike примерно, всъщност не произвежда маратонки и дрехи? Те просто поръчват изработката на външни фирми и се занимават само с рекламата – тяхната единствена дейност е да градят имидж на запетайката в логото си…

„Без лого“ е много добър учебник, който изследва пазарното и рекламно поведение на големите компании (основно за облекло), които градят дейността си основно около създаването на имидж и привлекателност на своето лого – защото когато съвременният потребител купува дрехи, той търси по-скоро определен имидж и послание, които тези дрехи носят, отколкото нещо друго.

Описани и анализирани са много рекламни кампании на най-големите компании – конкретни неща и примери, които няма да намерите в нито една друга книга за маркетинг – рекламиране на концерти, концепции на плакати, промоционални стратегии, териториално позициониране на реклами…

Единственото странно нещо в книгата е, че тя всъщност изобщо не е замислена като маркетингов учебник, а като антикапиталистическа пропаганда – видите ли, колко са коварни лошите компании, че действат така. Но политическите пристрастия на авторката едва ли касаят непредубеденият читател, а и не влияят на качествата на дацената ценна информация.

"The third world has always existed for the comfort of the First." Unfortunately this will likely always be true, and many of these sweatshops and evil corporate practices still exist, Naomi Klein would probably be happy to know that much awareness has surfaced, leading to harder pressure on the corps and the governments that allow these practices to exist. We still have to stay away from the Walmarts and so-called-designer goods as regardless of where on the spectrum, they are definitely profiting obscene amounts from their employees slave or slave-like labour, whether in the factories or the cashes. Yet supporting new 'ethical' brands isn't so easy - now there are just way too many products to choose from - it's so hard to tell if the values and way of life they are selling are congruent with their practices.

This book kinda just kept going and lost me around 3/4 through. It didn't really offer any clothing thoughts and recommendations, but I think that the solution is simple: be aware of the past and present of a brand, don't support brands that have been shown to have significant human rights complaints, buy less & local/small business, and stand up to those mother effing brand bullies.

I won't deny that this book was preaching to the choir with me, but still, a really fascinating look at the way mega-brands have shaped the world we live in. Kinda depressing to read a book like this from the 90s that presents the internet as a tool to be used against the brands, when to my mind it has served almost the exact opposite function.