No Logo by Naomi Klein; Flamingo, an imprint of HarperCollins, London; 2000.
AS a visitor to Chennai from England I sometimes find a sort of relief whilst driving into the city from Meenambakkam when I see huge hoardings advertising such mundane but useful products as motorcar tyres, cement, cycles, ordinary fabrics - and, in the se days, of course, local software firms. There is relief because the journey is an escape from the relentless incursions into public spaces in my own country of the advertisements of global corporations, projecting images and values and lifestyles that are associated with a particular brand name and a logo. Some logos, such as the 'swoosh' (like a big tick) of the Nike company, which started out by making sports shoes, are so familiar that the brand name itself does not actually need to appear. Of cour se India is no longer outside the ambit of such global companies, and public spaces are cluttered with the slogans and images of international as well as of national companies. But still it makes a change to find advertisements for cement enjoying as muc h prominence as those for fetishised footwear.
'Branding', the creation of brand images, 'logos', and the global capitalism they epitomise, are the themes of this feisty book, considered so dangerous that it was banned by the Swiss authorities from the vicinity of Davos during the recent meeting of t he World Economic Forum. The young Canadian author, Naomi Klein, wrote it whilst "living in Toronto's ghost of a garment district in a ten-story warehouse... All around me, the old factory buildings are being converted into 'loft-living' complexes with n ames like 'The Candy Factory'. The hand-me-downs of industrialisation have already been mined for witty fashion ideas - discarded factory workers' uniforms, Diesel's Labor brand jeans and Caterpillar (originally known for making tractors) boots." The fat e of this part of Toronto is that of many other of the old industrial cities of Europe and North America. Shopping complexes are more prominent nowadays than 'satanic mills' in the old industrial north of England. And in the shopping complexes and the sh opping malls, whether in Manchester or Manila (and more and more in Madurai, too), one finds the same brand names and images - Macdonalds, Gap, Benetton, The Body Shop... and, of course, the ubiquitous Nike.
This is Klein's starting point for a fascinating exploration of the story of the logo and of the practices of capitalism associated with it. The book has four parts: 'No Space', about the invasion of public spaces and of much of cultural and of public li fe by the big corporations, and the appropriation by them of counter-cultures that are then sold back to the people to whom they belonged in the first place; 'No Choice', about the constraints that exist in practice as a result of the marketing strategie s deployed by the corporations, on much-vaunted consumer choice; 'No Jobs', about the trends in labour markets that are creating vulnerability for so many people; and finally, 'No Logo', an account of anti-corporate activism, some of which turns the powe r of brand names and images against itself, and which, through resistance to the assaults of corporations on public spaces, civic life and peoples' livelihoods, "is sowing the seeds of a genuine alternative to corporate rule". The book combines fine inve stigative journalism, entertainingly and movingly written, with subtle and sophisticated cultural analysis.
TO begin with, advertising was a kind of an information service, advising people about things that were available for purchase (my favourite cement advertisements in India still have something of this quality). But it has long since been about creating i mages and building an association between a brand name and a particular commodity. Thus, for example, in the United States and in Britain, so basic a commodity as oats has for long been indissolubly linked with the name of 'Quaker', and as the advertisin g slogan has it, 'Heinz meanz beanz'. Brands establish emotional ties with customers (so you ask for 'Heinz beans' not 'baked beans'); the images associated with them have come to carry messages about ways of life and the values associated with them. So, through advertisements telling stories about the people who drove its cars, the name of 'General Motors' came to be established as a metaphor for the American family, and the possession of a car made by GM associated with the ability to live a full fami ly life.
By now brands have come to do more than establish associations with a particular product. They have a 'spiritual' quality, and they constitute the core meaning of the modern corporation. The Nike 'swoosh', for example, is associated with the slogan 'Just do it' - an attitude to life that, together with a supposed commitment to sports and to athleticism, constitutes the meaning of the company. And these ideas are also associated with its products, so that companies like this one now produce not so much c ommodities as ideas and images. As the chief executive officer of Nike has put it: "There is no value in making things anymore. The value is added by careful research, by innovation and by marketing." In Nike's case these activities involve searching out 'the cool' amongst young people - especially amongst young black men in inner city areas, from whom Nike and other corporations have borrowed meaning and identity.
One way of doing this is through what is called 'bro-ing'. A pile of shoes is dumped in a school playground with the cheery shout of "Hey bro', check out the shoes!" This is a means of gauging reactions to new styles and of creating a buzz. The end resul t is that the sense of style of these young people is sold back to them at prices that they and their parents can ill-afford (as is also true in the families of young academics in the U.K.!).
Nike, perhaps above all, amongst many kids, is all about image. This is brilliantly captured by Zadie Smith in her novel on multicultural London (White Teeth): "Magid and Millat stopped and looked in awe at the perfectly white Nikes that were now in Irie's possession (with one red tick, one blue; so beautiful, as Millat later remarked, it made you want to kill yourself)." (see review of White Teeth in Frontline, May 26, 2000). What started out as a familiar object with some use-valu e - a shoe - has become a fetished symbol of 'attitude', and the brand image has colonised mental space as much or more than it has public spaces. As Naomi Klein puts it (referring here to the logo of Lacoste) "the crocodile has swallowed the shirt" - th e ostensible products have become important mainly as vehicles for brand names and the ideas associated with them: "the products that will flourish in the future will be the ones presented not as commodities but as concepts: the brand as experience, as l ifestyle."
In the context of economic deregulation and privatisation in the last ten years or so, brand images have been enabled to take over much of cultural and public life, as well as invading public spaces. The mechanism of corporate sponsorship has been tremen dously expanded. By now corporate sponsorship of music and of other events in the West has gone so far as to blur the lines between the brand and cultural or sports performance. Is the sports star lending her name to the brand, or is it the brand that is helping to build the name and the image of the sportswoman? "Brands and stars have become the same thing."
The big corporations have become a major presence, too, in education, not just through securing sole rights to sell their products in school canteens and on university campuses, but as funders of student clubs (the boat club in my old Cambridge college, for example), and even more significantly as funders of research - the results of which they will of course seek to suppress if these in any way threaten corporate interests. Academic freedom in the West is under much more virulent attack now from the co rporations than ever it has been from states.
One of several beautifully written autobiographical passages in the book is about the politics of political correctness ('PC'): "Many of the battles we fought were over issues of 'representation'... From campus feminists arguing over 'representation of w omen' on the reading lists to gays wanting better 'representation' in television... (etc) ... ours' was a politics of mirrors and metaphors." Class had fallen over the agenda, Klein writes, "along with all serious economic - let alone corporate - analysi s." 'PC' politics, ironically, created another set of opportunities for the brand-image makers who were able to exploit the 'diversity' that they realised to be valued amongst the younger generation (the 'X-ers' of U.S. consumer research), by developing multi-cultural and feminist themes. Mental space invaded once again. The result has been that "The need for greater diversity - the rallying cry of my university years - (has become) the mantra of global capital." It should be a cause for serious critical reflection that "The abandonment of the radical economic foundations of the women's and civil rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness successfully trained a generation of activists in the politic s of image, not action."
In a sense the writing of No Logo might be seen as Naomi Klein's atonement for the political failure of her generation. And the major part of the book starts to develop some of the kind of economic and class analysis of global capitalism that has been lacking.
ECONOMIC globalisation is held by its many advocates to have increased choice and opportunity for the great majority of people. Yet the practices of the big corporations are restricting choice even in the 'advanced' economies. Huge retail chains actually eliminate competition with diverse tactics. Wal-Mart, for example, has grown to be the biggest retail company there is by setting up 'big-box' super stores on the outskirts of many towns and cities, ripping the old hearts out of them in the process. Ano ther tactic is 'clustering' - saturating city areas with retail outlets, to the point that the outlets of the same firm compete with each other, and there is no other competition. These tactics are often assisted by strategic mergers and by attempts to d evelop 'synergy' between products and activities. In this way people are led to 'step inside the brand', purchasing a large part of their 'wants' from the same corporation - records, magazines, clothing, travel tickets, insurance... Alternatives have act ually been reduced, if not eliminated altogether. The big corporates exercise censorship, too, ensuring that magazines and music (for example) match up to the 'desirable' norms of wholesome American, or British, or French 'family life'.
And jobs - opportunities - have gone. It is a bitter irony that the younger generation that has supplied the 'style' and is such an important market for the global companies, confronts bleak prospects. The companies sell images and the objects that are t heir bearers are produced where labour is cheapest and least protected. It has been calculated, for instance, by U.S. labour campaigners, that in China a living wage is of the order of 87 cents (U.S.) a day. Yet there are factories there producing goods for the global companies at rates as low as 13 cents a day. Sweatshops, indeed! And the companies (which do not advertise themselves in these enclaves of low cost production) are always ready to move on to another export processing zone, especially if th ere are signs of labour organising. For the developing countries this kind of industrialisation produces only a mirage of development (pace the views of those like Jeffrey Sachs). The towns outside the gates of the factory zones cannot afford to finance public infrastructure any more than the workers within them can afford anything more than the most basic of livings. Meanwhile, in the erstwhile 'industrial', now mainly service economies of the West, the majority of jobs are casual, temporary or part-ti me. This is represented by the management gurus as making possible richer and fuller lives for people. We are all supposed to be our own masters now, freelancing and selling what Tom Peters calls 'A Brand Called You'. But for everyone who makes it in thi s way - as some software professionals for example, undoubtedly have, in India as well as elsewhere - there are many who experience nothing but appalling vulnerability.
SLOWLY resentment and resistance are building up. The latter part of No Logo describes the range of resistance: 'culture jamming', the systematic and often very funny defacing of advertisements; the movements to 'reclaim the streets' across the We st; campaigns against corporations such as Microsoft and Macdonalds, Shell and Nike - sometimes very successfully turning their logos against the image-makers. The response to these campaigns, in particular, has been in calls for 'corporate social respon sibility' monitored through means such as social audits. Yet labour is usually excluded from these processes.
Klein argues finally that "Political solutions - accountable to people and enforceable by their elected representatives - deserve another shot before we throw in the towel and settle for corporate codes, independent monitors and the privatisation of our collective rights as citizens." Let us fight for citizenship and against being reduced to the status of 'consumers' or customers - as the people of the United Kingdom have already been to so great an extent. Not for nothing are people here referred to on the nearly-defunct privatised railway network as 'customers'. We are 'passengers' on our railways no more.
No Logo is inspiriting stuff. The book, however, stops too soon. The key question of the moment is that of how to move beyond resistance to global capitalism (resistance that is less choate, I think, than Klein implies) to the construction of a co herent alternative. As Naomi Klein suggests, class struggle has to be brought back in. But how is this to be done in a world in which the old polarities - shown up so sharply when there were millions of men working in Britain's mines, for example - are n o longer so apparent, and the class relations of global capitalism so much more abstract and less immediately felt? Of course the recognition of connections across the globe - of our dependence as consumers in the West upon the sweatshop workers of the P hilippines, of China, of Vietnam, Mauritius, and increasingly of India, too - is an important part of the process of realisation. And Klein is surely right to accent the struggle everywhere for citizenship and for accountable government - which implies s trengthening nation-states and, ultimately, inter-nationalism as against the sirens of 'cosmopolitanism'. This calls for more systematic, programmatic and political action than is reflected in the movements that Naomi Klein describes. Still, No Logo is, as The Financial Times (of London) put it "a manifesto and a call to arms", not just a darned good read.
John Harriss is Reader in Development Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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