Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (Paperback)

When Naomi Klein took on the "brand bullies" in No Logo, a book charting the rise of anticorporate activism, she auspiciously, inadvertently perhaps, branded herself an anticorporate activist. Fences and Windows is a chronicle of that ascending career. It's a collection of the columns, speeches, and essays--the bulk of which appeared originally in The Globe and Mail--that Klein wrote between 1999 and 2002 as she traversed the world bearing witness to antiglobalization rallies, demonstrations, and counter-summits that mushroomed, largely in response to the November 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. The book, ultimately, is a record of the emergence of a new type of activism, one indebted to the culture of globalization even as it seeks to open a critical window onto and provoke debate about the policies of multinationals, the WTO, the IMF, and national governments. She writes:

What emerged on the streets of Seattle and Washington was an activist model that mirrors the organic, decentralized, interlinked pathways of the Internet--an Internet come to life…. But while the movement's Web-like structure is, in part, a reflection of the Internet-based organizing, it is also a response to the very political realities that sparked the protests in the first place: the utter failure of traditional party politics.

The book is structured as a series of "hub and spokes," one of the metaphors Klein uses to describe the movement. The broad themes of intolerance towards and criminalizing of dissent, the impact of a genetically engineered food supply, the privileging of corporate profit over social welfare, the erosion of national sovereignty, and the neglect of ecological considerations are the hubs around which gravitate her reports on the protests that have taken place in Toronto, Quebec City, South Africa, Prague, Chiapas, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. The reader, Klein states upfront, should not expect a sustained thesis. Instead, the articles are dispatches from the many sites of dissent--brief, immediate, impassioned, engaged, positioned, incendiary, persuasive, crafted. A moment comes, however, when the reader does desire a more in-depth dialogue about the issues raised by these confrontations, especially when presented with a simplistic "us-versus-them" slant. One example is the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty protest in Toronto which erupted into a violent (some may argue provoked) clash between police and demonstrators. Klein almost seems to brush it off by taking one side, rather than contemplating the question "Is this the only kind of response possible, and should it be?" At a time when, as this book makes abundantly clear, the very topography of democracy is experiencing seismic tremors, critical and rigorous reflection by our intellectuals becomes of utmost importance. This is where Fences and Windows either constitutes a lost opportunity or presents an invitation for reflection. --Diana Kuprel

Mediogenic Naomi Klein has written a vapid volume, one well suited to sound bite culture. Klein damningly describes the book's creation with the following: "These columns, essays and speeches, written for The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times and many other publications, were dashed off in hotel rooms late at night after protests in Washington and Mexico City, in Independent Media Centres, on way too many planes." The book's premise then amounts to grabbing a headline (a protest, say, or a coup) in order to make one under deadline. The subtitle of Fences and Windows raises an immediate red flag. As a book of rapid-fire "Dispatches", it isn't a reasoned or sustained argument for any unifying principle other than that most tired of recent stances—"Globalization is bad." Instead, it's a collection of newspaper columns and speeches Klein wrote on the campaign trail, so to speak, as the de facto spokesperson for her movement.
Perhaps Klein is also tiring of her college-guru status, for she seems embarrassed about her book. The very first words to be found within are these: "This is not a follow up to No Logo, the book about the rise of anti-corporate activism that I wrote between 1995 and 1999." Well, what is it then? A non-follow up? As the book released chronologically after No Logo, it follows No Logo, although it is clear that the movement in quality is not "up" but down. The real Naomi Klein did write this book—unless the corporations replaced her with an identical clone, one equally bent on their destruction.
The ideological failure of this book is total. Klein immediately sets out her soft targets in the prefaces:

"When schools were underfunded or water supply was contaminated, it used to be blamed on the inept financial management and outright financial corruption of individual national governments. Now, thanks to a surge in cross-border information swapping, such problems were being recognized as the local effects of a particular global ideology, one enforced by national politicians but conceived of centrally by a handful or corporate interests and international institutions, including the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank."

Oooh, the dirty threesome. Klein casts them as three of the horsemen of the apocalypse, along with the quotation's other unmentioned baddie, the United States of America. Say their name in a negative context enough, blame them enough, and people may begin to believe that all the trouble in the world is the result of ill-meaning bankers and financiers at America's beck and call. The logic at work in Fences and Windows is insipid, at no higher level than that of a basic word-recognition capacity. A global conspiracy is tautologically assumed by definition; because the words "International" and "World" appear in the names of the WTO, IMF, and WB, they must be guilty. They smack of globalization!
Fences and Windows espouses an intellectual sloppiness that approaches dishonesty. Linking world bodies to world poverty isn't fair if only their names are invoked as a preliminary in order for our intrepid cultural reporter to cut to scenes of abject poverty. The meat of the WTO's destructive policies are never linked to endpoints. Guilt is assigned, but never reasoned out. Worse yet, not a single word is applied to the task of treating her targets fairly. The acronymic bodies are presented as uniformly evil and counterproductive. If the IMF did indeed do this and that bad deed, Klein writes out the negative consequence as if it were foregone and deliberate. To her, the Four Horsemen are solely out to profiteer, their nefarious natures incapable of implementing any beneficial policy, or even any mixed ones. Aren't the debtor—and often undemocratic— governments to blame somewhere in all of this? Follow this logic:

"No wonder so many who sang Argentina's praises in the past are now rushing to blame its economic collapse exclusively on national greed and corruption. "If a country thinks they're going to get aid from the United States, and they're stealing money, they're just not going to get it," George W. Bush said in Mexico last week. Argentina "is going to have to make some tough calls."

So "some", but especially the U.S. and dumb W., think that Argentina has a corruption problem. Klein writes in the following paragraph:

"Argentina's population, which has been in open revolt against its political, financial and legal elite for months, hardly has to be lectured on the need for good governance. In the last federal election, more people spoiled their ballots than voted for any single politician. The most popular write-in candidate was a cartoon character named Clemente, chosen because he has no hands and cannot steal."

So, not only do "some" think the country corrupt, the Argentine populace does so too. Where's the big a-ha! here?
The idiocy continues (though I'm skipping ahead a few pages) with Klein's castigation of the current Liberal government policy directing significant funds towards our borders to improve the flow of goods in either direction and make our country safer. Klein writes,

"When Canadians accepted cutbacks to health care, unemployment insurance and other social programs, we were told that this austerity was necessary to attract foreign investors. We weren't trading our social programs for free trade, the boosters said—on the contrary, only free trade would generate the kind of prosperity needed to rebuild our social programs. But… it turns out that the budget surplus will not be used to make people more secure. It will be used to make people more secure, to "keep our borders open" as Martin said. The proceeds of cross-border trade are going back into the border itself: to make it a terrorist-fighting and free-trade-flowing superborder. This, it turns out, is the legacy of all those years of belt-tightening: not a better society but a really great border."

What's Klein arguing here? That the border should be more closed? That thousands of Canadians should lose their jobs so that they can happily benefit from expanded social programs? That improving border security actually doesn't make Canadians more secure? That it's unimportant to improve screening for potential terrorists? That a terrorist attack of unprecedented magnitude should breed national security complacency amongst our leaders? Only a zealot can argue so poorly.
And inchoate is not, by definition, definitive. In the essay "What's Next?", Klein describes the anti-globalization movement as diffuse and non-hierarchical, asserting that a lack of overarching ideology is a healthy sign of survival, even strength. Musn't a movement be articulate in order to achieve anything productive? What is it that Klein et al. wants? A Perfect Globe (minus the–ization), a blue-skies calendar with a perpetual series of conference dates marked on it?
Klein convincingly indicted corporatism in her first book. This tack is also the strongest line the author takes in her non-follow-up. Corporate abuses are commonplace, lying like fodder for the contemporary cultural journalist. Where Klein's claws slip is on the governmental side of things. Corporations may indeed be faceless evils, but governments aren't, and governments are malleable institutions by nature of their accountability. Why is Klein so hard on the organs of these governments which give money by the trillions to creditor nations? Public good lies somewhere in the sum equation, even allowing for the obvious corporate trade-offs.
An ugly theory long applied to the Atlantic Provinces after the seat of Canada's economic power shifted to Ontario is that the East has a "defeatist attitude" because of inherent financial incentives to collect unemployment. Apply the same principle to international markets: should we automatically assume that because the Western world gives someone money, we should expect that the act will lead to independent wealth-generation in the target country? Furthermore, should there be some strings attached to this lump sum in order to keep the recipient country honest, or should the money be given freely, with no expectation of repayment? Should the beneficence of debt relief precede the fact of debt—should the 'rightness' of providing loan money preclude the obligation to pay back loans according to the terms negotiated? To Klein and her fellow foes of globalization, debt relief is a holy writ; stand against it by asking any questions and be "branded" a foe.
In Fences and Windows, every culpable suit is tied to a corresponding civilian sad sack Klein meets on the streets during her jaunts at home and abroad. These unfortunate individual cases are of course tragedies. Klein is so absolute in her loyalties, and so uncompromising in her beliefs when she writes, "Economic analysis is supposed to be about the peg to the dollar, 'pesoification', and the dangers of 'stagflation'—not children losing homes or elderly women's gaping wounds." I'm entitled to be the same. Where is the old stomach lady you met in Buenos Aries now, Naomi? Do you correspond? Did you give her money to fix her "gaping wounds"? Is she to pay you back? Really, how easy is it to write these columns? To go to some poor place and say: "I have literally seen the wounds inflicted by the West!", then recline amidst the media morass, stomach filled by the fees your polemics command?
Klein maintains that the anti-globalization effort is "…an intricate process of thousands of people tying their destinies together simply by sharing ideas and telling stories about how abstract economic theories affect their daily lives." Heartfelt sharing while experiencing the mucous-membrane burn of tear gas is undoubtedly a good thing, but authoritative policies are the reason why protestors are rubbing their eyes. With more attention paid to these policies, an actual follow-up could be written. Klein could use this follow-up to address what she would have organizations like the WTO and the IMF do, bearing in mind that a successful protest is not one that results in "shutting down" a meeting of financial representatives; a successful protest is forcing those representatives into a dialogue. Unlike the movement she espouses, in her next book Klein will need to be articulate and not exclusively anti. When this happens, governments will have to respond in a manner other than with security measures. I daresay the book that will effect this change must be greater than serial one-offs.
Shane Neilson (Books in Canada)