A Critical Exploration of Klein’s Discarded Factory in Connection With

There is an undoubtedly enormous influence on the world by consumerism. Consumerism and capitalism shape the commonwealth that we live in today. Everyone knows this because they descry advertisements all day long on television, on the radio, on billboards and through hundreds of other mediums. Unfortunately, what the world is not exposed to is what goes on behind the marketing and the ultimate final sale. There is a dark side to capitalism created not only by shady merchants, but the universal multi-national companies as well. What both of these excerpts portray is the idea that there is more to the products we buy than we are told, or unfortunately, that we bother to ask about. Through the use of interviewing, traveling, and criticism, these authors do a fine job in analyzing the relationships between branding and marketing, and more importantly, between our modern day consumption habits and hidden production processes.Based on what we see through advertising and what we are told by sales associates in stores, we assume that many of the products that we are exposed to are of high quality, which justifies the high prices. For example, we pay high prices for a Nike shoe than a brand less shoe because from what we know, it is made better. While some people have the sense to realize that a have-to doe with doesnt make that much of a difference, the scale to which we are misled is much greater than we think. Stoller points out one instance on the streets of Harlem in the following theodolite And so they traveled uptown to invest in bolts of wholesale Ghanaian kente, which they brought to their sweatshops in lower Manhattan, producing hundreds of kente caps at a price cheaper than one could get by buying cloth on 125th Street and commission... ...rs were buying the Afri sewer image. These two authors proved in different ways that there are flaws in consumerism. While Stoller didnt attack the market as Klein did, he shed light on an underground society that peo ple did not know besides much about, even though we see them every day. That idea is eerily similar to multi-national brands that we see every day, doing things that we as consumers unfortunately, do not know alike much about. This grand scheme of giving up ethics for an increased profit is not only inconveniencing us consumers on the streets of Manhattan with fake cloth, thanks to Klein, we can see that it is literally destroying the world. Works CitedStoller, Paul. 2002. Money Has No Smell The Africanization of New York City. Chicago University of Chicago Press.Klein, Naomi. 1999. No Logo Taking Aim at the deformity Bullies. Canada Knopf Canada.