Following the blurb, the young honest set out woman, smiling at me from the photo, is a successful journalist, writing for Nation, New York Times etc. etc. She opened her archives, jigsaw puzzled the fitting around four chapters, confirmed the script with her advertising agency and ready was the bestseller including the inevitable internet-page.
Let's have a look into the NO LOGO shopping mall. At the entrance there is a sign reading "No Space". Here Naomi Klein presents her hypothesis, that brands are more important than the products and she deals with the increasing commercialization of cultur and education. Logo-products are expanding, like mini-McDonald's in schools or contract research at universities.
In the second aisle, the supermarket-radio is blaring about "No Choice". Why? "Market-driven globalization doesn't want diversity." Ahh, I see. The desertion of inner cities because of the expanding of Wal-Mart-supermarkets, starbuck-coffee-shops and malls are some of her examples. They are presented in a nerve-raking detailed way by Klein.
Right before the cash registers we arrive at "No Jobs". It is dedicated to the working conditions in an indonesian export processing zone. "The zone is a tax-free economy ... a miniature military state inside a democracy." We learn, that we finally have reached the main topic of the book: the working conditions in sweat shops and the protests of consumers against it. Motto: The world should be a commodity, but I still want to have a clear conscience. That's why I buy the same shit under a different brand or paint a gap in the teeth of the marlboro-man.
After reading 275 soporific pages, demanding a lot of discipline, we are allowed to leave the shop just to enter the zone of resistance: "No Logo". The tremendous No Logo-movement, constructed by the author, does things like alienating advertising posters, Reclaim-the-Streets-parties or boycotts. Wow. Because I know such things and have my own ideas about it Naomi Klein ennobles me to a part of a global movement. My conclusion is to demand: NO MONEY for NO LOGO.
