Introduction: A Web of Brands

Naomi Klein (henceforth referred to as Ms. Klein) introduces the book by talking about her Toronto neighbourhood, which was “ravaged” because of rapid modern industrialization that had wiped out most of the small businesses there. She gives a very vivid image of the conditions there, and describes how this situation has affected the local populace.

“All around me, the old factory buildings are being rezoned and converted into “loft-living” complexes with names like “The Candy Factory”. The hand-me-downs of industrialization have already been mined for witty fashion ideas – discarded factory workers’ uniforms, Diesel’s Labor Brand Jeans and Caterpillar Boots”. “We are all stuck together here for now, caught between the harsh realities of economic globalization and all-enduring rock-video aesthetic”.

She then mentions her visit to Jakarta (Indonesia) and says that the workers are “now used to people like me: foreigners who talk about them about the abysmal conditions in the factories”, implying that many people have come and documented their stories before, but their voices were still not heard to the people who mattered. Such news is suppressed – “Usually reports about this global web of logos and products are couched in the euphoric marketing rhetoric of the global village”. The brand of coats, “London Fog”, that these workers produced, was the same brand that used to have a coat factory in Toronto in Ms. Klein’s building. “Esprit” was another brand manufactured here.

She says that this manufactured euphoria has been dwindling, and that the Westerners have started seeing wider economic divides and thinner cultural choices to the oppressed people.  She talks about the global village as the one “where some multinationals are in the process of mining the planet’s poorest back country for unimaginable profits”. She says that the Third World has always existed for the comfort of the First, but people are now trying to pinpoint the source of brands and the origin of their products.

Ms. Klein clearly says that “this is a book of first-hand observation, and attempts to capture the anti-corporate attitude emerging among many young activists, and spread awareness about brand-name secrets that would fuel the next wave of opposition targeting transnational corporations”. She noticed similar ideas at the center if recent social and environmental campaigns. Her personal quest to find out the commonalities among various pockets of resistance led her to track its early stages and the conditions that have set the stage for this backlash. One such condition, she emphasizes, has been the growth of such corporations to supersede Governments, and that firms are only accountable to their shareholders and not to the broader public.

The book is divided into 4 parts:

1. No Space (How we have unknowingly surrendered our culture and education to marketing)

2. No Choice (How promises of increased choices have been betrayed by mergers, synergies and corporate censorship)

3. No Jobs (Deals with McJobs and Outsourcing)

4. No Logo (The anti-corporate activism)