(no subject)

[la_vie_noire]

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.

Comments

[willow]

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'.


================

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.

PS

[willow]

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.

Re: PS

[la_vie_noire]

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

[la_vie_noire]

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!