No Logo

No Logo

Author: Naomi Klein
Desc: With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle this is an infuriating inspiring and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money marketing and the anti-corporate movement. As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today's schoolbooks superstores sporting arenas and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative well-written study a front-line report on that battle we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint computer-hacking acumen and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel"). No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology economics popular culture international affairs and marketing. "This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable." —Naomi Klein from her Introduction