No Logo
Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
by Naomi Klein
Picador, 1999, b/w photographs, hardcover, dustjacket, ISBN 0312203438
Like New Condition, minor edge-wear to dustjacket
'A national bestseller, No Logo took Canadians by storm when it was published last year in hardcover. Equal parts cultural analysis, political manifesto, mall-rat memoir, and journalistic expos , it is the first book to uncover a betrayal of the central promises of the information age: choice, interactivity, and increased freedom. No Logo takes apart our packaged and branded world and puts the pieces into clear pop-historical and economic perspective. Naomi Klein tracks the resistance and self-determination mounting in the face of our new branded world and explains why some of the most revered brands in the world are finding themselves on the wrong end of a bottle of spray paint, a computer hack, or an international anti-corporate campaign.
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 t 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, ecomics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.
This book is rather an 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'