Corporations / No Logo

by ariadnesthread101

Last week, we touched on several aspects related to the values, actions and effects of corporate activity.

Very briefly, we pulled together issues of:

Values: By asking the question: Do corporations prioritize profits above absolutely everything else?

Impacts: These differ by place (developing / developed countries), and do not recognise national boundaries. Does this make effective regulation impossible?

Governance: Are national governments unwilling or unable to tackle the impacts of corporate activity because of the (actual, potential or imagined) contributions of corporate capitalism to economic development to human well-being? Also, corporations themselves are no longer restricted to national boundaries.

Pulling this discussion into next week, we’ll be encountering the work of Naomi Klein. Here’s Klein’s website and here’s more about her.

Specifically, we’ll be discussing her seminal No Logo. Here’s a seven-minute introduction to the key ideas in the book.

Here’s a more in-depth introduction to the ideas in the book. Here, she talks about national boundaries, globalisation and resistance movements here – so, touching on the political dimensions that are going to be illuminated later in the course.

Building on the connections between corporations, economics and politics, Klein later wrote The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Here, she again connects the critique of global corporate capitalism to politics, making the case that the global ‘free market’ did not triumph by democratic means.