No Logo

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   1999年の11月、シアトルで開かれたWTOの会議に5万人の市民・活動家が集結し、激しい抗議行動を繰り広げた。テレビには、マクドナルドの店舗を襲う一部の人々の姿も映しだされた。なぜ5万もの人が集まり、そしてなぜ攻撃対象がマクドナルドなのか――。本書はその背景にある、いま欧米で盛んな反企業・反ブランド運動に迫ったドキュメントである。

   標的はナイキ、シェル、ギャップ、スターバックスといった世界的に有名な多国籍企業のブランドばかり。本書はこうした企業が攻撃されるにいたった理由を3つの点から論じている。1つ目は、ブランド拡大戦略を掲げる企業のマーケティングに、文化や教育が取り込まれた、というもの。都市空間、メディア、音楽、スポーツのほか、学校や政治的表現の場も企業の進出によって歪められたと指摘する。2つ目は、企業が進める合併やシナジーにより選択肢が奪われた、というもの。意に添わないものを排除する企業検閲の存在も伝えている。3つ目は、外部委託、パート労働などの雇用形態にシフトする企業により仕事が奪われた、というもの。企業がアジアにもつ「搾取工場」の実態もここで暴かれている。

 「そして反撃は始まった」とし、さまざまな形の反企業運動を取り上げている。なかでも著者は、インターネットを駆使する若い世代の活動家に注目。企業のマーケティングを逆手にとるような、彼らの洗練された方法を積極的に描いていく。シアトルでの抗議行動は氷山の一角、企業のグローバル化とともに反抗勢力も世界的にネットワークを広げている…。こうした世界規模の新しい現実が、見事に活写されている。

   著者は1970年生まれのジャーナリスト。本書では自身の活動家としての側面も隠していない。独自に取材・調査したという箇所の説得力はやや弱く感じられるが、一方で、大企業のマーケティングを読み解く鮮やかさが印象に残る。世界的な反企業運動の全貌を初めてとらえたという点で、価値ある1冊であることは間違いない。（棚上 勉）

Product Description

The book that offers a cure for affluenza, 'No Logo' is one of those rare books that defines a generation, the most significant one since Douglas Coupland's 'Generation X'. By the time you're twenty-one, you'll have seen or heard a million advertisements. But you won't be happier for it. This is a book about that much-maligned, much-misunderstood generation coming up behind the slackers, who are being intelligent and active about the world in which they find themselves. It is a world in which all that is 'alternative' is sold, where any innovation or subversion is immediately adopted by un-radical, faceless corporations. But, gradually, tentatively, a new generation is beginning to fight consumerism with its own best weapons; and it is the first skirmishes in this war that this abrasively intelligent book documents brilliantly.

Amazon.com Review

We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."

In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?

Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.

But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan