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I started to read Naomi Klein's No Logo (I downloaded it, of course, you know that).

This is a village where some multinationals, far from levelling the global playing field with jobs and technology for all, are in the process of mining the planet's poorest back country for unimaginable profits. This is the village where Bill Gates lives, amassing a fortune of $55 billion while a third of his workforce is classified as temporary workers, and where competitors are either incorporated into the Microsoft monolith or made obsolete by the latest feat in software bundling. This is the village where we are indeed connected to one another through a web of brands, but the underside of that web reveals designer slums like the one I visited outside Jakarta. IBM claims that its technology spans the globe, and so it does, but often its international presence takes the form of cheap Third World labour producing the computer chips and power sources that drive our machines. On the outskirts of Manila, for instance, I met a seventeen-year-old girl who assembles CD-ROM drives for IBM. I told her I was impressed that someone so young could do such high-tech work. "We make computers," she told me, "but we don't know how to operate computers." Ours, it would seem, is not such a small planet after all.

It would be naive to believe that Western consumers haven't profited from these global divisions since the earliest days of colonialism. The Third World, as they say, has always existed for the comfort of the First. What is a relatively new development, however, is the amount of investigative interest there seems to be in the unbranded points of origin of brand-name goods. The travels of Nike sneakers have been traced back to the abusive sweatshops of Vietnam, Barbie's little outfits back to the child labourers of Sumatra, Starbucks' lattes to the sun-scorched coffee fields of Guatemala, and Shell's oil back to the polluted and impoverished villages of the Niger Delta.

Very good, isn't it? Until the exact next paragraph:

The title No Logo is not meant to be read as a literal slogan (as in No More Logos!), or a post-logo logo (there is already a No Logo clothing line, or so I'm told). Rather, it is an attempt to capture an Anticorporate attitude I see emerging among many young activists. This book is hinged on a simple hypothesis: that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition.

Uhm. So let me get this straight, Klein. You write this for First World Liberal Westerners. Who just have to wake up from their comfortable lives and fight corporations. Never mind that the same Third World Activism have been doing this for decades by now. I hope I'm reading you wrong, but I'm having a feeling you see them (us?) as Those Poor People who have to be saved by White First World Westerners. We have agency, you know.

I just hope the rest of your book doesn't treat Developing Countries citizens as The Other (Object) That Has to be Saved and Protected because I would be pissed.

(To be fair, I just started reading, so I have no idea. It says hell of important things, but it just reminded me to a post I read casually today on one of the linkspams about HOW WE NEED THE POWERFUL WHITE PEOPLE BECAUSE WE HAVE TO BE PRACTICAL EVEN IF IT COSTS US OUR DIGNITY, and sorry, I don't subscribe to your magazine. Sorry again. Powerful White People? Treat other human beings as human beings. A snake isn't more important than me, I don't care how your white self may see it. That's all.)

ETA: Also, its introduction is treating Western Activism as a Salvation and totally dismissing the effect a lot of it really has in Third World communities of color (I'm just seeing the praising of White Environmentalist). But I don't know if these things will be mentioned again through the book.

ETA 2: Ah. Okay.

Most memorably, it led me to factories and union squats in Southeast Asia, and to the outskirts of Manila where Filipino workers are making labour history by bringing the first unions to the export processing zones that produce the most recognizable brand-name consumer items on the planet.

Okay. I'm still wary. "Most memorably" because it differs from the rest of the activism she mentioned by being from South-Asian people and not Westerners? You know that's weird. But still, I may have a better relationship with this than I thought. Maybe I'm just being uber-picky because I have had a bad day at on-line discussions.

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I am so used to seeing that attitude in advocacy books like this that it took your post to bring me up short. Even though I was searching diligently for books from the global south's POV. Thank you so much for this.

Yeah, you know, I don't think I will hesitate to recommend this book to anyone because it's important and I barely see this issue treated, but damn, its introduction just touched me where it hurt me today.

But have this, I like it:

At around this same time a new kind of corporation began to rival the traditional all-American manufacturers for market share; these were the Mikes and Microsoft’s, and later, the Tommy Hilfiger’s and Intel’s. These pioneers made the bold claim that producing goods was only an incidental part of their operations, and that thanks to recent victories in trade liberalization and labour-law reform; they were able to have their products made for them by contractors, many of them overseas. What these companies produced primarily were not things, they said, but images of their brands. Their real work lay not in manufacturing but in marketing. This formula, needless to say, has proved enormously profitable, and its success has companies competing in a race toward weightlessness: whoever owns the least has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed to products, wins the race.

I watched the film No Logo & didn't look up the book . And while the film did point out the 'Everywhere is America but with quirks'; On the other hand, it really focused on young Westerners catching a clue as the hope of the future. Which was enough for me not to put the book on my long non-fiction 'to read' list.

The next generation of white people becoming more aware or independent is NOT salvation, as far as I'm concerned.

Another tip off for me, though I suppose more subconscious than conscious, originally, was how it showed an Incorporated/Brand Franchise town as brandless/no logo nirvana; one of Disney's planned town communities where (other)brands are not allowed. The film did not seem to realize that while it was saying faithful following of a brand could lead to such a place where lack of brands equals a higher status, it was showing that such lack of brand status would be impossible for non westernized, non whites - wherein brand prominence has become subsidy.

It had no clue, for example of a possibility of "India; Brought To You By Monsanto."

The major concern seemed to be about how Brands have infiltrated, and influenced American, perhaps specifically USian culture with a nod towards 'those quaint folk over there'.

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Meanwhile, I am still trying to process & finish Jean Killbourne's 'Can’t Buy My Love', which is now on my to-buy list, since it's super saturated 'Killing Us Softly (the film').

If you come across anything where Killbourne's showing her ass, I'd appreciate a link of awareness. Since so far, I've been impressed in the film & what I've read of the book, where Killbourne admits she's focusing on White Westernized Women, and that it's a narrow focus, but for her, a barely manageable sampling and yet she has pointed out in places where messages are doubly or triply messed up for excluding non-whites/holding up western white expectations of beauty, body size, culture, etc.

Which is not to say btw, that No Logo doesn't explain how Marketing is taking over and is not to say No Logo isn't an important building block in how to view the bigger picture. It is.

But there are owies.

I couldn't even fathom the owies at first when I first saw the film - because I was so much in shock at having American culture so neatly explained to me.

Yeah, yeah, I agree so much. I appreciate what she did, but still it has it downs.

The major concern seemed to be about how Brands have infiltrated, and influenced American, perhaps specifically USian culture with a nod towards 'those quaint folk over there'.

Agh, I was fearing that because it started about how liberals were feeling all bad because their education was being corrupted with brands that did bad business in Burma! Because if those liberal receive a Legitimately Liberal education, well, who cares about the rest.

Oh wow. I will be googling for it like right now! XD I will definitely talk about it if i can find it. Thank you!

The criticisms you're making here are also criticisms that IMO hold valid for the entire US antiglobalization movement of the late 1990s / early 2000s of which Klein was a part, so I wouldn't expect the book to get any less dualistic. (I still run into this kind of thing constantly in Americans who are starting to think about colonialism but haven't worked very hard at at yet). On the one hand, awareness of how global inequality shapes the global marketplace and makes us unequal players in it is very very good. On the other hand, this tendency to relentlessly cast people in the Third World as passive recipients of economic oppression pissed me off when I was a card-carrying member of the antiglobalization movement, and it pisses me off more now. (This is also why I tend to resist the tendency of US-ian leftists to cast their own country as a literal global supervillian that is Worse Than Anything Ever in The History of the World. I mean, yes, we can suck pretty bad, and we have more power with which to suck than anyone else, and we should try to quit being such jerks - but acting like everyone else is helpless before our super-special magical never-before-seen evilness is in its own way super-narcissistic and casts us - in my view - as somehow realer and specialer than everyone else on the planet.)

. On the other hand, this tendency to relentlessly cast people in the Third World as passive recipients of economic oppression pissed me off when I was a card-carrying member of the antiglobalization movement, and it pisses me off more now. (This is also why I tend to resist the tendency of US-ian leftists to cast their own country as a literal global supervillian that is Worse Than Anything Ever in The History of the World. I mean, yes, we can suck pretty bad, and we have more power with which to suck than anyone else, and we should try to quit being such jerks - but acting like everyone else is helpless before our super-special magical never-before-seen evilness is in its own way super-narcissistic and casts us - in my view - as somehow realer and specialer than everyone else on the planet.)

Yeah, exactly, I think I pretty much agree, even if I'm more wary of the imperialism apologists, but yeah, I don't like those Westerners who think their countries are the Big bad and only them are Worthy of take it down, because clearly it all focuses on them and their needs.

Hm. I think my main problem with this whole "let's anthropomorphize Imperialism and Imperialistic Powers" is that it forgets the main reason people should be supporting and fighting these battles is because people lives and dignity are being stepped upon. It's all about what Western importance, and what Imperialism represents, and how you aren't liberal enough if you don't fight the Man, and how Capitalism is a treat for western freedom, and how you... arg. Oh, you will be saving those poor Third World People meanwhile.

Speaking of communities of color, I find that this kind of anti-corporate/anti-wage slavery rallying (no matter how well-intentioned or truthful it may be) often fails to take into account the fact that the poorer segments of First-World countries depend on the cheap products that are now being made in sweatshops. Walmart uses sweatshop labor to keep its prices low in order to get the business of the people who need cheap products; businesses catering to the middle and upper classes (Starbucks, Microsoft, high-end clothing stores like Anthropologie, etc.) also utilize sweatshop labor, and make hideous profits because of it, but by-and-large the driving force behind wage-slavery is the cheap price (which, of course, leads to profit).

Obviously, the lower income brackets in the United States and Europe contain proportionately more people of color than the wealthier ones.

This is not to say that sweatshops must continue to exist, because the poor of the United States and elsewhere will otherwise have no access to affordable clothing and food. I've heard that argument before, and I personally find it despicable. The problem is that many pro-labor, pro-environment companies focus on providing expensive products for members of the upper class, while ignoring the need to ensure affordable, sweatshop- and slavery-free products are available to members of the lower class. The cause has largely become limited to the wealthy, the college-educated, and the white. And if the West is going to do its part--which we have to, since we're always going to be the receiving end of the fruits of sweatshops and slave labor--every person, in every income bracket, of every race, needs to be in a position to help.

Of course, this also entails making sure that knowledge of Third-World activists becomes as widespread as knowledge of their First-World counterparts. As it stands, too much of this movement reeks of "the White Man's Burden," albeit with a dose of compassion and varying levels of self-righteousness.

Ugh. yeah, I guess there is something there, you are right, the white liberal theory is so much romantic and never takes into account the lives of the communities of color and marginalized people.

Now. Not even for a minute in my life I would consider to say that Walmart, Nike and their abuse towards poorer communities has to continue because that's how it works!! I just want to say that is something kinda dangerous, because that's the apologists argument: "POORER PEOPLE NEEDED IT, IT'S NOT MY FAULT, THAT'S HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS!!" and boy.

Accountability is very important, white privileged liberals have to be immersed and support systems and solutions that take into account the lives and works of communities that are being affected by these corporations.

You know, the problem with saying that "Waltmart gives them work" is that yeah, they work for Walmart (I like that wording more), but that happens because those corporations made sure that they had no choices, that's the pretty thing about capitalism and imperialism, they savage the third world and poorer communities and then they can look like "their only choices."

I've wanted to read that book for while. *puppy eyes* :D?

http://www.e-text.org/text/Klein,%20Naomi%20-%20No%20Logo.pdf era este? No se me abre porque mi internet apesta, guardatelo XD

Sí es, gracias o/

De nada! ^^

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