No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs by Naomi Klein (PDF)

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Ebook Info

  • Published: 2009
  • Number of pages: 528 pages
  • Format: PDF
  • File Size: 2.78 MB
  • Authors: Naomi Klein

Description

A Tenth Anniversary Edition of Naomi Klein’s No Logo with a New Introduction by the AuthorNO LOGO was an international bestseller and “a movement bible” (The New York Times). Naomi Klein’s second book, The Shock Doctrine, was hailed as a “master narrative of our time,” and has over a million copies in print worldwide.In the last decade, No Logo has become an international phenomenon and a cultural manifesto for the critics of unfettered capitalism worldwide. As America faces a second economic depression, Klein’s analysis of our corporate and branded world is as timely and powerful as ever.Equal parts cultural analysis, political manifesto, mall-rat memoir, and journalistic exposé, No Logo is the first book to put the new resistance into pop-historical and clear economic perspective. Naomi Klein tells a story of rebellion and self-determination in the face of our new branded world.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I work in online marketing, which means that my work is often much more mechanical than the kind Klein describes in her book, but the insights that form the basis of all marketing (promotion) are similar. Despite the distance between my experience and the focus of much of “No Logo,” I found it to be a brilliant and profound look at the end results of various marketing efforts. One that gives you a fascinating view of all sides of the equation – not just the impetus behind the marketing itself, but also the impetus behind the companies, products and brands, the production and supply chain and, finally, the adoption by consumers and a view of how these same consumers come to, as Klein says, inhabit the brand. In a country where it can be, but for the skyline and the geography, increasingly difficult to tell the difference between major cities like Memphis, Dallas and Atlanta, discussing exactly why the lives of so many Americans (and those of other developed countries’ citizens) have become increasingly homogenous is something that might behoove us all.Personally, I’ve always felt that the best consumer marketing seems obvious to consumers once it has been undertaken. Reading about how consumers, particularly the youth demographic, then go on to adopt the marketing as something of a lifestyle, even when ironically, was fascinating. Sure, we see it every day, but to read about it in a more academic, yet narrative fashion gives a fresh look at something we deal with from the inside. Klein takes concepts of the modern world of marketing that have been discussed in various publications and, no doubt, countless classrooms and weaves them into a brilliant narrative about where our marketing came from, where it is now and where it’s going in the future. I think the great value here is the dual purpose the work offers to both marketers and consumers – for the former, a view of how their work affects society beyond the boundaries of ROI and, for the latter, a fascinating view of exactly how they are manipulated to spend their money on things they often don’t need.While consumer marketing isn’t new, the scope of its effect on politics, economics, sociology and individual psychology is definitely one of the more pronounced hallmarks of the current era. Everyone thinks that they’re immune to marketing, we marketers included, but we are all trapped to one degree or another in a kind of snow globe that has both positive and negative aspects for all of us individually and collectively. Reading works like “No Logo” would no doubt be a great eye opener for John Q. Public. For marketers it may not be new material, particularly now in 2006, but I found it to be a fascinating breath of fresh air and a great reminder of just how many areas marketing touches and in how many ways marketing itself is a symbiotic force in society.On a completely personal note, I have also spent time outside of and lived outside of the marketing bubble in very foreign, developing cultures where the majority of the marketing is indecipherable and, therefore, lost on me. With this perspective in mind, it can be quite a shock to return home to see the saturation of our culture with marketing messages and the level to which we are buried in marketed, particularly branded goods. Klein discusses this to some degree, but when you have tangible experience with the lives of the developing world citizens who make the trinkets we snatch up due to this marketing and your roots are in the culture that’s doing the snapping up, it can’t help but make you question – a feeling Klein seems to also want to convey – the morality of the level of consumer saturation that we in the developed world seem to revel in. Some would say this kind of thought comes from a particular political ethos, but I’ve seen the same kind of dialogue put forth by everyone from counterculture liberals to fundamentalist conservatives. Who we are and why we are who we are is a question for everyone, I think, and there’s no doubt that marketing is playing an ever-increasing role in defining our societies and our cultures. If this is an issue that you’re at all interested in then the attention given to it from a marketing perspective in this book will be of value to you.

⭐Despite having become modestly dated in its details (a updated edition or follow-up work would be welcomed), Naomi Klein’s book No Logo remains an important work about the blurring boundaries between global business and global culture. Since its publication, much of the globalization furor directed at Kathy Lee, McDonald’s, Nike, Shell Oil, Pepsi, and others has died down or been redirected at health, local impact (e.g., Wal-Mart stores) and other important but ancillary issues (take, for example, the movie Super Size Me). The fact that the noise has subsided does not, however, mean that the problems Ms. Klein cites have disappeared. More likely, the companies subjected to such scathing public rebuke have better learned how to play the game, managing their PR more effectively and hiding further and further behind layers of subsidiaries, contractors, sub-contractors, and locked factory gates.No Logo is a significant work, deserving to be much better known than it is. American consumers — that is, all of us — need to reach a much better understanding of how brand management has evolved into culture management, how Starbucks and Nike and Gap and The Body Shop and so many other companies are infiltrating our subconscious and controlling our cultural dialogues. No Logo still serves as an eye-opener for those who have been spending so much time at the mall that they have not yet seen what is going on around them.Sadly, No Logo is not the most approachable of books for the general populace. It is over-long and over-detailed, bogging down in topics that are probably exciting to radical activists (like billboard jamming) but are sleep-inducing to most readers. Like many people who are involved in activism, Klein sometimes loses the forest for the trees, giving us so much insider detail about causes and people we don’t know that we lose interest in, and attention to, her real message. My rating of only four stars, while certainly positive, derives from Klein’s tendency to preach too much to the converted and spend too little time educating the as-yet unconverted.The book is divided into four sections: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, and No Logo. The first two sections, encompassing the first eight chapters, are well worth the price of the book by themselves. Readers will come to a new understanding of how the public spaces around them are being manipulated by mega-corporate messaging, how those corporations hide behind a public face of social consciousness, and how violently they respond when anyone seeks to question their self-proclaimed high moral ground. I would recommend these eight chapters as required reading for every third- or fourth-year high school student in America. Chapter 16, “A Tale of Three Logos,” is also a fascinating account of less than admirable behavior on the parts of Nike, Shell, and McDonald’s, definitely worth reading.I can only hope that Ms. Klein will someday revisit her subject matter again, perhaps to publish a more streamlined and updated version that will reach a wider audience. She deserves the audience, and the American public needs to hear her voice. Despite her understandable tendency toward one-sidedness (perhaps necessary in this case to avoid being drowned out by Nike and McDonald’s commercials and Starbucks ads), Naomi Klein’s No Logo is an important book that all consuming Americans should read.

⭐This book is fantastic. Naomi Klein’s journalistic style is surgically sharp as she peels back the layers to expose how our world’s most famous Logos (Brands) have evolved; taking our public spaces, our choices, our jobs, and how they have contributed/colluded to deepening the systems of poverty and injustice in the world.Everyone should read this book. If only to see how entangled this mess is. You’ll find it difficult to close your eyes to what it reveals.–Tristan Sherwin, author of “Love: Expressed”

⭐A shocking and lively book designed to stir both thought and emotion in the Western reader. It details all that is wrong with globalisation and corporate power, brings to life the tireless yet often unseen operations fighting back, and mercilessly sets out the dreadful treatment of workers being exploited by many of our most well-known brands.In terms of these corporations and global companies, Klein unapologetically explores the very darkest depths of their capitalist mentality. She names and shames several huge brands, including Nike, Nestle, Disney, Microsoft, Wal-mart, McDonalds and Gap, and frequently refers back to these examples to illustrate her points in a recognisable context.Another of her tactics, well-used to provoke reaction throughout the book, is to provide the reader with detailed case studies, and accompanying analysis, of some of the more heinous scandals linked to various companies over the years. From strikes by humiliated teenage workers at McDonalds to compulsory pregnancy testing and the sacking of pregnant workers in poor factories, this is really explicit and shocking material. One example that will never leave my mind is that of the death of many young female workers, mostly teenagers, in a poor foreign garment sweatshop. The girls were locked into the factory all day, with no comforts and no safety measures in place. When a bundle of flammable material caught fire, the whole factory went up. The workers had no escape route and died, some in the fire itself and some, tragically, by throwing themselves from the windows to avoid being slowly burned alive.Alongside these horrors, Klein explores the anti-globalisation politics in the world, as well as the pitiful, hypocritical means used by the brands to try and claw back their popular image. She visits worker unions and help centres trying to liberate sweatshop workers. She looks at boycotts and consumer power in changing the way brands conduct business. Movements such as `Reclaim the Streets’ – a disruptive street-blocking festival scene – and `Culture Jamming’ – the art of reworking and altering adverts on the streets in order to change their political meaning drastically – are also described in detail.Whilst it is terribly frustrating to read about the evasive tactics used by companies – moving factories, issuing `ethical’ ad campaigns and avoiding monitoring – the final message is one of hope, empowerment and a need for education. A brilliant and eye-opening book that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone who is feeling disillusioned with all-dominating brands and capitalist values in today’s turbulent and morally questionable society.

⭐It’s not necessarily untrue that No Logo is The Female Eunuch for the 21st century – both books do an admirable job of pointing up political and social problems, but both are similarly cursed in that they have no real workable ideas for social and political change.There was a certain element of redundancy in the book, but some of the observations made were astonishing. One is left with a feeling of horror at the human rights abuses which seem to underpin the entire clothing industry, amongst others. But sometimes her sniping at some chains seemed to be based solely on the fact that they had a brand. For instance, the Body Shop is lumped in with Nike but other than darkly citing that they’d been subject to “investigations” no real evidence was produced against them. Funnily enough, the same is also true of McDonald’s supposed environmental abuses. In the case of Shell’s complicity in the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, no discussion of the actual events surrounding his arrest or trial takes place – he was tried for murder – so one is forced to take the notion that he was unjustly accused on faith. I’m sure he was unjustly accused, but nevertheless, this could have done with clarifying.That said, even if you don’t agree with its tenets, it’s still an interesting book and has an ambitious theme. Worth four stars, in any case.

⭐An important book when it came out. Quite a small font and closely spaced text, so not an easy book to read.

⭐This book should be obligatory reading in classrooms the world over. Only then the new generation will understand how consumerism has taken over their free will. I read the updated edition (ten years), but it didn’t need much updating as the overall message still rings true today.

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