No Logo

Klein opens No Logo by describing the old garment district of Toronto, Canada, where she lived during its composition (xv-xvii). She describes the disused warehouse that she rented—from a man who made his fortune manufacturing and selling London Fog coats—as well as the surrounding neighborhood, as a quirky, charming portrait of “postindustrial limbo” (xvi).

Klein then cuts to Jakarta, Indonesia, where she interviews striking garment workers, most of them under 21 years of age and living on $2 USD per day, about the sweatshop conditions in their workplaces (xvii-xviii). Eventually, Klein learns that one of her interview subjects makes coats for London Fog. The long arm of modern globalization has led Klein to discover where the now dormant garment-making industry of Toronto has relocated.  

Klein goes on to lay out the basic premise of, and inspiration for, No Logo. As a young journalist fresh out of university, Klein developed the suspicion that “anticorporatism is the brand of politics capturing the imagination of the next generation” (xxi). Her aim in the book is to understand (1) the cultural, economic, and political conditions that gave rise to this movement (Parts 1 through 3); and (2) the “activism that is sowing the seeds of a genuine alternative to corporate rule” (Part 4) (xxiii).