No Logo by Naomi Klein
It has taken me a long time to get round to reading this book, but I am glad that I eventually did. I first saw No Logo on a friend’s shelf a few years ago, but foolishly never bothered to borrow it. I was finally prompted to get hold of it after I saw the author interviewed on a very informative documentary, called simply The Corporation, last year.
No Logo is a damning critique on the corporations that have shaped our world. Beginning with a history of advertising and corporate development, Klein eventually finishes by having taken the reader all around the world, investigating the callous disregard that big business has for people and the environment along the way. If you want to understand why the world is in the mess it is, then you could do worse than starting here.
From the very outset it is clear which side Klein sits on and, in the hands of a lesser author, the book could simply have been an emotionally frenzied attack. Klein is fair and far from sensational. To a degree she is balanced too; criticising the anti-corporate world and praising corporations when it is due.
The book details how brands have gradually taken over more of our private space and infiltrated our consciousness. She is candid about her own seduction by them and honest about how she is inextricably linked to corporations (her publisher is owned by a Rupert Murdoch company).
While most readers from the first world will recognise immediately the ways in which they have been exploited, the most poignant sections are when Klein visits the third world. Here, her descriptions of worker conditions in the free-trade zones that dot many countries, can only be described as disturbing. If you do not refuse to by brands such as Nike and Adidas after reading this, then you surely have no conscience.
Unfortunately as I look around my world today it seems that the brands are winning. They are still exploiting humanity and the environment, and are still able to plaster their logos virtually everywhere. Klein’s book finishes with a challenge to the anti-corporate movement to develop and grow more sophisticated in its approach.
Although events are starting to outpace the book, like any work by Chomsky (Deterring Democracy springs to mind) it is still worth a read, and I guess will be for sometime yet. If Klein is planning on a substantial update, then I for one would be eager to read it.
Do yourself a favour, raise your consciousness and read No Logo.
Recent Comments