No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs by Naomi Klein
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Book Reviews of No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Book Review: classic book by now
Summary: 5 Stars
Great service by Amazon. The first order got lost but they replaced it for free with no questions asked!
The book itself hardly needs a review by a random guy but it is a classic reading now
Book Review: naomi klein is my hero
Summary: 5 Stars
She spoke at my college last year and her words were filled with such passion and such honesty that I had to read this book. Its amazing.Book Review: Amazing book with a lot of things to do with globalization
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is extremely useful and important and has a lot of thing to do with society.Book Review: Highly Disturbing
Summary: 4 Stars
I found this book to be very interesting, and disturbing. Klein is certainly a Leftist, and generally as a conservative I would dispute much of her world-view but with the first half of her book she is on to something. I believe that the second half is less successful, and I do not share her idealization of graffiti artists and anti-global activists, but overall her book is a provacative and important one. Read and beware.I would like to respond to an earlier reviewer's comments, which many of my friends have directed me to when I told them of the book. Tristan from Australia finds fault with a graph in her book (not indexed for inflation) and then sets to beaking her over the head with it. I think he misses much of the point of her book - even if her graph is off.
There is no question based on anecdotal evidence alone that advertising and the pervasiveness of "branded" space has increased. Look at modern sports stadiums, say the NFL - they're all named after corporations. The athletes at "FedEx Field" are all wearing brands that the team has negotiated (and been paid large sums to wear) - and they can be fined if they aren't wearing a "Starter brand" cap when they sit on the bench, etc. They then sit down and drink a Gatorade, while they watch the Coca-cola sponsored half-time show featuring Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or whoever the company believes they can best get to flog their product. The highlights from the first half will be then shown on the X-brand half-time show, and then recreated using graphics from EA Sports John Madden game. You could avoid all this and go to a movie, but first you'll have to sit through advertisements before the movie - and not just for upcoming movies anymore. First you'll be shushed by Halley Epsenberger while she's cramming Pepsi down your throat - all this after you spent $9.50 to be a captive audience for commercials - at least when you watch basic TV the excuse that the advertising is paying for the programs make sense, but this? And then you can be clever and see how many products have been placed in the movie. If it's James Bond you can see him wearing X-brand watch, drive his BMW, and polish it off with some Tanqueray Gin - not because smooth sophisticates drink it, but because Tanqueray paid the most for it.
As for her other points - she goes into great depth about how we're becoming fungible goods as workers. An example I remember from the book is that Microsoft has a core of permanent employees and true they do make good money, but half of their work is done by temps. And to ensure that temps don't try and claim anything as basic as health coverage (what would they be thinking?) they're required to be laid off for a 30 day period every year so that no one classifies them as full time workers. Walmart does get to keep prices low as the Australian writer suggested, but unlike prior employers who believed they had a responsibility to take care of their workers - e.g. Ford wanted every worker to be able to afford a Ford - Walmart doesn't care whether it's employees can afford to shop their or not. As I know from having done some work for them they're all about keeping employees employed at under 28 hours a week - again so they can keep from having to pay any benefits. Great you say - get another job, but others such as Starbucks have caught on to that and screw their employees similarly. Sure you work 30 hours a week, but the schedule is such that you can't realistically get a job to fill in the time you're not working for them, plus you get to be on unpaid call (I guess for a coffee emergency), and in typical fashion they've even done computerized studies on each employee's productivity. They know each stores peak hours, how many customers x-employee typically serves, etc. - so they can schedule the employees only for the most cost-effective time. On one hand this sounds fair, but on the other - it's completely shafting the employee - especially those that treat it as their "real" job. Given that we're becoming a service based economy, this is getting to be a larger and larger part of the public.
So the Australian guy can carp all he wants about graphs, and he can avoid the point of her argument - which is that advertising has gotten more sophisticated, and insidious - all to help companies, which are shedding any "brick and mortar" connections to become brands and images rather than production (an interesting example - Levis - which no longer owns a single factory, but has outsourced all of its production to third-world factories - which it is not responsible for, and which it can leverage to provide even cheaper and cheaper products - damn the sweatshop employees). I hope he and others are comforted when their jobs disappear and he goes to stand in line at the Hillfiger sponsored Employment office.
Book Review: This book should rock your world
Summary: 4 Stars
I've noticed from comments about this book that a number of people are prepared to dismiss it as an attack against capitalism. Many others become overly focused on her accounts and descriptions of subversive responses to multinational corporations like culture jamming. I personally believe that anyone who is interested in how our economic system affects our democratic society (regardless of your political values) will find this book illuminating.Klein uses a TON of facts, anecdotes, documented trends, onsite interviews, industry reports, and quotes from prominent people in the business world to weave a compelling narrative about the branding process and what it does to society locally and globally.
In the first section, Klein talks about how modern multinationals are trying to create brand images that are larger than products, investing millions of dollars on everything from simple advertising to sponsored events, to the creation of entire branded towns.
Next she covers the business practices of many popular brands and shows how deregulation combined with anti-competitive tactics have squeezed small to medium companies out of markets. She highlights two strategies that have similar objectives: the practice of consolodating into what she calls "big boxes"--Super Wal-Marts, monster Targets, etc. The other tactic, clustering, is when a company like Starbucks opens up so many outlets that they actually compete with each other. While they lose a little money, they effectively squeeze out any competition.
This is followed up by two very compelling and related topics--a discussion of how brand marketing has truly intruded on our public spaces and our private psyches, and an explanation of how the outsourcing of labor to overseas markets has given the companies the financial resources to invest in improving the prestige of their logo at the expense of workers (and sometimes human) rights around the world. She describes working conditions in the Philippines and China that should get you hopping mad--especially when she makes it clear that these same corporate practices are beginning to manifest themselves here in N. America, albeit in mutated form. The shift to sub-standard wages and temp hours in the US and Canada is not coincidental, and she makes astute observations that show the relationship between the CEO who gets a multimillion dollar bonus for laying off thousands of workers.
Her description of the different forms of popular resistance that are rising to meet this invasion by the brands is interesting, but almost beside the point. The most important aspect of this book is that it rephrases the old debates about laissez-faire vs. regulated capitalism. Time and time again, she shows how these large corporations develop income streams and amass wealth AT THE EXPENSE OF EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING ELSE. The business practices used in many cases would have been considered illegal at other times in this country's history, and in many cases, should at least be considered unethical now. McDonald's, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, the Gap, Nike, and others are NOT creating useful jobs, are NOT improving the US's image internationally, and are NOT promoting positive values in our youth culture. In short, they are not adding any value, at the same time that they are exacting a tremendous cost from us and our environment.
Are we heading towards a future like the ones depicted in "Blade Runner", "Rollerball", or "Alien", where corporations make all of the important decisions, and where it becomes difficult for regular people to live decent lives? Klein makes a pretty convincing case that we need to take action now--otherwise, it may one day become impossible to wake up and smell the coffee without buying name brand from someone else.