Naomi Klein
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Naomi Klein | |
|---|---|
Naomi Klein, October 2011
| |
| Born | May 8, 1970 Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Occupation | Author, activist |
| Subjects | Anti-globalization, anti-war |
| Spouse(s) | Avi Lewis (1 child) |
naomiklein.org | |
Naomi Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.[1] She is best known for No Logo, a book that went on to become an international bestseller, and The Shock Doctrine, a critical analysis of the history of neoliberal economics.
Contents
[hide]Family[edit]
Naomi Klein was born in Montreal, Quebec, and brought up in a Jewish family with a history of peace activism. Her parents were self-described "hippies"[2] who moved to Montreal from the U.S. in 1967 as war resisters to the Vietnam War.[3] Her mother, documentary film-maker Bonnie Sherr Klein, is best known for her anti-pornography film Not a Love Story.[4] Her father, Michael Klein, is a physician and a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her brother, Seth Klein, is director of the British Columbia office of theCanadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Her paternal grandparents were communists who began to turn against the Soviet Union after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and had abandoned communism by 1956. In 1942, her grandfather Phil Klein, an animator at Disney, was fired after the Disney animators' strike,[5] and went to work at a shipyard instead. Klein's father grew up surrounded by ideas ofsocial justice and racial equality, but found it "difficult and frightening to be the child of Communists", a so-called red diaper baby.[6]
Klein's husband, Avi Lewis, works as a TV journalist and documentary filmmaker. His parents are the writer and activist Michele Landsberg and politician and diplomat Stephen Lewis, son of David Lewis, one of the founders of the Canadian New Democratic Party, son in turn of Moishe Lewis, born Losz, a Jewish labour activist of "the Bund" who leftCentral Europe for Canada in 1921.[7] The couple's first child, son Toma, was born on June 13, 2012.[8]
Early life[edit]
Klein spent much of her teenage years in shopping malls, obsessed with designer labels.[9] As a child and teenager, she found it "very oppressive to have a very public feminist mother" and she rejected politics, instead embracing "full-on consumerism".
She has attributed her change in worldview to two events. One was when she was 17 and preparing for the University of Toronto, her mother had a stroke and became severely disabled.[10] Naomi, her father, and her brother took care of Bonnie through the period in hospital and at home, making educational sacrifices to do so.[10] That year off prevented her "from being such a brat".[9] The next year, after beginning her studies at the University of Toronto, the second event occurred: the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre of female engineering students, which proved to be a wake-up call to feminism.[11]
Klein's writing career started with contributions to The Varsity, a student newspaper, where she served as editor-in-chief. After her third year at the University of Toronto, she dropped out of university to take a job at the Toronto Globe and Mail, followed by an editorship at This Magazine. In 1995, she returned to the University of Toronto with the intention of finishing her degree[6] but left academia for a journalism internship before acquiring the final credits required to complete her degree.[12]
Major works[edit]
No Logo[edit]
Main article: No Logo
In 2000, Klein published the book No Logo, which for many became a manifesto of the anti-corporate globalization movement. In it, she attacks brand-oriented consumer cultureand the operations of large corporations. She also accuses several such corporations of unethically exploiting workers in the world's poorest countries in pursuit of greater profits. In this book, Klein criticized Nike so severely that Nike published a point-by-point response.[13] No Logo became an international bestseller, selling over one million copies in over 28 languages.[14]
Fences and Windows[edit]
Main article: Fences and Windows
In 2002, Klein published Fences and Windows, a collection of her articles and speeches written on behalf of the anti-globalization movement (all proceeds from the book go to benefit activist organizations through The Fences and Windows Fund).
The Take[edit]
Main article: The Take (2004 film)
In 2004, Klein and her husband, Avi Lewis, released a documentary film called The Take about factory workers in Argentina who took over a closed plant and resumed production, operating as a collective. The first African screening was in the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the South African city of Durban, where the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement began.[15]
At least one article in Z Communications criticized The Take for its portrayal of the Argentine general and politician Juan Domingo Perón, which they felt portrayed him as a social democrat.[16]
The Shock Doctrine[edit]
Main article: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Klein's third book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was published on September 4, 2007, becoming an international and New York Times bestseller[14]translated into 28 languages.[17] The book argues that the free market policies of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics have risen to prominence in countries such as Chile, under Pinochet, Poland, Russia, under Yeltsin, and the United States (for example, the privatization of the New Orleans Public Schools after Hurricane Katrina). The book also argues that policy initiatives (for instance, the privatization of Iraq's economy under the Coalition Provisional Authority) were rushed through while the citizens of these countries were in shock from disasters, upheavals, or invasion.
Central to the book's thesis is the contention that those who wish to implement unpopular free market policies now routinely do so by taking advantage of certain features of the aftermath of major disasters, be they economic, political, military or natural. The suggestion is that when a society experiences a major 'shock' there is a widespread desire for a rapid and decisive response to correct the situation; this desire for bold and immediate action provides an opportunity for unscrupulous actors to implement policies which go far beyond a legitimate response to disaster. The book suggests that when the rush to act means the specifics of a response will go unscrutinized, that is the moment when unpopular and unrelated policies will intentionally be rushed into effect. The book appears to claim that these shocks are in some cases intentionally encouraged or even manufactured.
Klein identifies the "shock doctrine", elaborating on Joseph Schumpeter, as the latest in capitalism's phases of "creative destruction".[18]
The Shock Doctrine was adapted into a short film of the same name, released onto YouTube.[19] The film was directed by Jonás Cuarón, produced and co-written by his fatherAlfonso Cuarón. The video has been viewed over one million times.[14]
The publication of The Shock Doctrine increased Klein's prominence, with the New Yorker judging her "the most visible and influential figure on the American left—what Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky were thirty years ago." On February 24, 2009, the book was awarded the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing from the University of Warwick in England. The prize carried a cash award of £50,000.
Iraq War criticism[edit]
Klein has written on various current issues, such as the Iraq War. In a September 2004 article for Harper's Magazine,[20] she argues that, contrary to popular belief, the Bush administration did have a clear plan for post-invasion Iraq, which was to build a completely unconstrained free market economy. She describes plans to allow foreigners to extract wealth from Iraq, and the methods used to achieve those goals.[21][22] The 2008 film War, Inc. was partially inspired by her article, Baghdad Year Zero.[23]
Klein's August 2004 "Bring Najaf to New York", published in The Nation, argued that Muqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army "represents the overwhelmingly mainstream sentiment in Iraq."[24] She went on to say "Yes, if elected Sadr would try to turn Iraq into a theocracy like Iran, but for now his demands are for direct elections and an end to foreign occupation".[24] Marc Cooper, a former Nation columnist, attacked the assertion that Al Sadr represented mainstream Iraqi sentiment and that American forces had brought the fight to the holy city of Najaf.[25] Cooper wrote that "Klein should know better. All enemies of the U.S. occupation she opposes are not her friends. Or ours. Or those of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that Mullah Al Sadr, in any case, is much desirous of support issuing from secular Jewish feminist-socialists."[25]
Criticism of Israeli policies[edit]
In March 2008, Klein was the keynote speaker at the first national conference of the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians. In January 2009, during the Gaza War, Klein supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, arguing that "the best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa."[26]
In summer 2009, on the occasion of the publication of the Hebrew translation of her book The Shock Doctrine, Klein visited Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, combining the promotion of her book and the BDS campaign. In an interview to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz she emphasized that it is important to her "not to boycott Israelis but rather to boycott the normalization of Israel and the conflict."[27] In a speech in Ramallah on 27 June, she apologized to the Palestinians for not joining the BDS campaign earlier.[28] Her remarks, particularly that "[Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card" were characterized by an op-ed columnist in the Jerusalem Post as "violent" and "unethical", and as the "most perverse of aspersions on Jews, an age-old stereotype of Jews as intrinsically evil and malicious."[29]
Klein was also a spokesperson for the protest against the spotlight on Tel Aviv at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, a spotlight that Klein said was a very selective and misleading portrait of Israel.[30]
Environmentalism[edit]
In recent years[when?] Klein’s attention has turned to environmentalism, with particular focus on climate change, about which she is currently writing a book.[31] According to her website, the book and a new film will be about "how the climate crisis can spur economic and political transformation."[32] She sits on the board of directors of campaign group 350.org[33] and took part in their 'Do the Math' tour in 2013, encouraging a divestment movement.[34]
She has encouraged the Occupy movement to join forces with the environmental movement, saying the financial crisis and the climate crisis have the same root – unrestrained corporate greed.[35] She gave a speech at Occupy Wall Street where she described the world as ‘upside down’, where we act as if ‘there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions’, and as if there are ‘limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.[36]
She has been a particularly vocal critic of the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta, describing it in a TED talk as a form of ‘terrestrial skinning’.[37] On September 2, 2011, she attended the demonstration against the Keystone XL pipeline outside the White House and was arrested.[38] Klein celebrated Obama’s decision to postpone a decision on the Keystone pipeline until 2013 pending an environmental review as a victory for the environmental movement.[35]
She attended the Copenhagen Climate Summit of 2009. She put the blame for the failure of Copenhagen on Barack Obama,[39] and described her own country, Canada, as a ‘climate criminal’.[40] She presented the Angry Mermaid Award (a satirical award designed to recognise the corporations who have best sabotaged the climate negotiations) toMonsanto.[41]
Writing in the wake of Hurricane Sandy she warned that the climate crisis constitutes a massive opportunity for disaster capitalists and corporations seeking to profit from crisis. But equally, the climate crisis 'can be a historic moment to usher in the next great wave of progressive change', or a so-called 'People's Shock'.[42]
Other activities[edit]
Klein contributes to The Nation, In These Times, The Globe and Mail, This Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and The Guardian.
She once lectured as a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics as an award-winning journalist, writer on the anti-globalisation movement.[43]
She ranked 11th in an internet poll of the top global intellectuals of 2005, a list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals compiled by the Prospect magazine in conjunction withForeign Policy magazine.[44]
She was involved in 2010 G-20 Toronto summit protests, condemning police force and brutality. She spoke to a rally seeking the release of protesters in front of police headquarters on June 28, 2010.[45]
In May 2011, Klein received an honorary degree from Saint Thomas University.
On October 6, 2011, she visited Occupy Wall Street and gave a speech declaring the protest movement "the most important thing in the world".[46]
On November 10, 2011, she participated in a panel discussion about the future of Occupy Wall Street with four other panelists, including Michael Moore, William Greider, andRinku Sen, in which she stressed the crucial nature of the evolving movement.[47]
List of works[edit]
Books and contributed chapters[edit]
- Klein, Naomi (December 1999). No Logo. Knopf Canada and Picador. ISBN 0-312-42143-5.
- — (October 2002). Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. Vintage Canada and Picador. ISBN 0-312-42143-5.OCLC 50681860.
- — (October 2003). "Rescuing Private Lynch, Forgetting Rachel Corrie". In Kushner, Tony; Solomon, Alisa. Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. New York City: Grove Press. pp. 69–71. ISBN 978-0-8021-4015-9.
- — (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Knopf Canada. ISBN 978-0676978001. OCLC 74556458.
- — (November 17, 2009). "Capitalism, Sarah Palin–Style". In Kim, Richard; Reed, Betsy. Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare. OR Books. ISBN 978-0-9842950-0-5.[48]
Articles[edit]
- Klein, Naomi (September 2004). "Baghdad year zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia". Harper's Magazine (New York City): 43–53. ISSN 0017-789X.
- — (November 28, 2011). "Capitalism vs. the Climate: What the right gets — and the left doesn't — about the revolutionary power of climate change". The Nation (New York City). ISSN 0027-8378.
- — (October 29, 2013). "How science is telling us all to revolt". New Statesman.
Filmography[edit]
- The Corporation (interview)
- The Take
- The Shock Doctrine
No Logo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | |
| Author | Naomi Klein |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Alter-globalization |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Knopf Canada, Picador |
Publication date
| December 1999 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 490 (first edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-312-20343-8 |
| OCLC | 43271949 |
| Followed by | Fences and Windows |
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book by the Canadian author Naomi Klein. First published by Knopf Canada andPicador in December 1999,[1][2] shortly after the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference protests in Seattle had generated media attention around such issues, it became one of the most influential books about the alter-globalization movement and an international bestseller.[3]
Contents
[hide]Focus[edit]
The book focuses on branding, and often makes connections with the alter-globalization movement. Throughout the four parts ("No Space", "No Choice", "No Jobs", and "No Logo"), Klein writes about issues such as sweatshops in the Americas and Asia, culture jamming, corporate censorship, and Reclaim the Streets. She pays special attention to the deeds and misdeeds of Nike, The Gap, McDonald's, Shell, and Microsoft – and of their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies. Many of the ideas in Klein's book derive from the influence of the Situationists[citation needed], an art/political group founded in the late 1950s.
However, while globalization appears frequently as a recurring theme, Klein rarely addresses the topic of globalization itself, and usually indirectly. (She would go on to discuss globalization in much greater detail in her 2002 book, Fences and Windows.)
Summary[edit]
The book comprises four sections: "No Space", "No Choice", "No Jobs", and "No Logo". The first three deal with the negative effects of brand-oriented corporate activity, while the fourth discusses various methods people have taken in order to fight back.
"No Space"[edit]
The book begins by tracing the history of brands. Klein argues that there has been a shift in the usage of branding. There is an actual clothing brand NOLOGO which has existed since the late 1980s and can be seen at www.nologo.com. This is an excellent example of this shift to an "anti-brand" brand. Early examples of brands were often used to put a recognizable face on factory-produced products. These slowly gave way to the idea of selling lifestyles. According to Klein, in response to an economic crash in the 1980s (Latin American debt crisis, Black Monday (1987), Savings and loan crisis, Japanese asset price bubble), corporations began to seriously rethink their approach to marketing, and began to target the youth demographic, as opposed to the baby boomers, who had previously been considered a much more valuable segment.
The book discusses how brand names such as Nike or Pepsi expanded beyond the mere products which bore their names, and how these names and logos began to appear everywhere. As this happened, the brands' obsession with the youth market drove them to further associate themselves with whatever the youth considered "cool". Along the way, the brands attempted to have their names associated with everything from movie stars and athletes to grassroots social movements.
Klein argues that large multinational corporations consider the marketing of a brand name to be more important than the actual manufacture of products; this theme recurs in the book and Klein suggests that it helps explain the shift to production in Third World countries in such industries as clothing, footwear, and computer hardware.
This section also looks at ways in which brands have "muscled" their presence into the school system, and how in doing so, they have pipelined advertisements into the schools, and have used their position to gather information about the students. Klein argues that this is part of a trend toward targeting younger and younger consumers.
"No Choice"[edit]
In the second section, Klein discusses how brands use their size and clout to limit the number of choices available to the public – whether through market dominance (Wal-Mart) or through aggressive invasion of a region (Starbucks). Klein argues that the goal of each company is to become the dominant force in its respective field. Meanwhile, other corporations, such as Sony or Disney, simply open their own chains of stores, preventing the competition from even putting their products on the shelves.
This section also discusses the way that corporations merge with one another in order to add to their ubiquity and provide greater control over their image. ABC News, for instance, is allegedly under pressure not to air any stories that are overly critical of Disney, its parent company. Other chains, such as Wal-Mart, often threaten to pull various products off their shelves, forcing manufacturers and publishers to comply with their demands. This might mean driving down manufacturing costs, or changing the artwork or content of products like magazines or albums so they better fit with Wal-Mart's image of family friendliness.
Also discussed is the way that corporations abuse copyright laws in order to silence anyone who might attempt to criticize their brand.
"No Jobs"[edit]
In this section, the book takes a darker tone, and looks at the way in which manufacturing jobs move from local factories to foreign countries, and particularly to places known asexport processing zones. Such zones have no labor laws, leading to dire working conditions.
The book then shifts back to North America, where the lack of manufacturing jobs has led to an influx of work in the service sector, where most of the jobs are for minimum wage and offer no benefits. The term McJob is introduced, defined as a job with poor compensation that does not keep pace with inflation, inflexible or undesirable hours, little chance of advancement, and high levels of stress. Meanwhile, the public is being sold the perception that these jobs are temporary employment for students and recent graduates, and therefore need not offer living wages or benefits.
All of this is set against a backdrop of massive profits and wealth being produced within the corporate sector. The result is a new generation of employees who have come to resent the success of the companies they work for. This resentment, along with rising unemployment, labour abuses abroad, disregard for the environment and the ever-increasing presence of advertising breeds a new disdain for corporations.
"No Logo"[edit]
The final section of the book discusses various movements that have sprung up during the 1990s. These include Adbusters magazine and the culture-jamming movement, as well as Reclaim the Streets and the McLibel trial. Less radical protests are also discussed, such as the various movements aimed at putting an end to sweatshop labour.
Klein concludes by contrasting consumerism and citizenship, opting for the latter. "When I started this book," she writes, "I honestly didn't know whether I was covering marginal atomized scenes of resistance or the birth of a potentially broad-based movement. But as time went on, what I clearly saw was a movement forming before my eyes."
Criticism[edit]
After the book's release, Klein was heavily criticized by the news magazine The Economist, leading to a broadcast debate with Klein and the magazine's writers, dubbed "No Logo vs. Pro Logo".[4]
The 2004 book The Rebel Sell (published as Nation of Rebels in the United States) specifically criticised No Logo, stating that turning the improving quality of life in the working class into a fundamentally anti-market ideology is shallow.[citation needed]
Awards[edit]
The book won the following awards:
- The 2001 National Business Book Award[5]
- The 2001 French Prix Médiations[6]
No Logo was also short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award in 2000.[7]
Editions[edit]
Several imprints of No Logo exist, including ISBN 0-676-97130-X (hardcover first edition), ISBN 0-312-20343-8 (hardcover), and ISBN 0-312-27192-1 (paperback). A 10th anniversary edition was published by Fourth Estate, ISBN 978-0-00-734077-4, that includes a new introduction by the author. Translations from the original English into several other languages have appeared. The subtitle, "Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies", was dropped in some later editions.
Video[edit]
Naomi Klein explains her ideas in the 2003 40-minute video No Logo – Brands, Globalization & Resistance, directed by Sut Jhally.
Influence in pop culture[edit]
- Members of the English rock group Radiohead have stated that the book influenced them particularly during the making of their fourth and fifth albums, Kid A (2000) andAmnesiac (2001) respectively. (The albums were recorded over the same sessions.) The band recommended the book to fans on their website, and considered calling the album Kid A "No Logo" for a time.[8]
- Argentine-American rock singer Kevin Johansen wrote a song inspired by Klein's book. A copy of No Logo is even used in the official video for the song "Logo".[9]
- Canadian metal band Inner Surge have listed Klein's book as an influence on selected tracks from their album Signals Screaming.
- The book was referenced in Robert Muchamore's CHERUB: The Recruit. It was recommended to James Adams by Brian 'Bungle' Evans, and later by Ewart Asker.
- The book is referenced in Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson's How To Be A Canadian. The brothers mention that they think "the cover to Naomi Klein's book No Logo would make an excellent logo".
- The book is referred to in Warren Ellis's Doktor Sleepless, when during a speech about consumerism the Doktor mentions that "Even No Logo had a fucking logo on it".
- Rapper MC Lars's album This Gigantic Robot Kills contains a track entitled "No Logo", a satirical analysis of anti-government youth, partially inspired by the book.[10]
- Argentinian soloist Indio Solari referred to the book in the song "Nike is the Culture" (Nike es la cultura), singing, "You shout no logo, or don't you shout no logo, or you shout no logo no".
- Dhani Harrison, son of George Harrison and front-man of English electronic/alternative rock group Thenewno2, has stated that No Logo had a large influence on their 2008 release, You Are Here.
- Lamont Herbert Dozier credits Klein as an inspiration for the song he co-wrote "Loco in Acapulco"; "I believe the song depicts the consumeristic nature of the materialist society that is obsessed with brand identity." (Dozier, 2010)[full citation needed]
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