N° 2638
We live in an era where image is nearly
everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has
created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No
Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls,
mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds". Brand identities are even
flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best
of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and
product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the
disseminators of goods or services than as collective
hallucinations".
In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step,
how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the
street but increasingly in the schools as well. The global
companies claim to support diversity but their version of
"corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more
buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is
for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the
contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role
corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one
expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against
Blockbuster's policies, given that they are both divisions of
Viacom?
Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running,
most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president
of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its
clerks a "living wage" wrote that "while the concept is
romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities
of our business environment". Those clerks should probably just be
grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an
hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items.
Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring
"permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any,
benefits like health care, paid vacations or stock options. While
many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation"
observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such
policies make it increasingly difficult to organise workers and
advocate for change.
But resistance is growing and the backlash against the brands has
set in. Street-level education programmes have taught kids in the
inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labour
practices but about the astronomical mark-up in their prices.
Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made
you. We can break you". But there's more to the revolution, as
Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture
jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organisers, human-rights
hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs
are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centred alternative
to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as
capable of co-ordinated action, as the multinational corporations
it seeks to subvert". No Logo is a comprehensive account
of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place
to thwart it. --Ron Hogan
Lawson Park Electronic Library is a Guestroom project for Grizedale Arts, designed and built by Dorian Moore