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

Geoffrey Harder is a public services librarian and manager, Knowledge Common, in the Science and Technology Library of the University of Alberta.

Debate about globalization and corporate-versus-public interest has
found its way into households, boardrooms, and political chambers on an
international scale. Naomi Klein, a prolific journalist, speaker, and
activist and the author of the bestselling book No Logo (2000), has
taken it upon herself to document the issues manifested in
anti-corporate activism as viewed regularly on the evening news.

Fences and Windows is a collection of speeches, articles, and other
writing—a collection of “ragtag writings” as Klein herself readily
admits—accumulated during her travels. Despite its somewhat fragmented
feel, however, the book draws the reader in through its documentary and
often hard-hitting pieces detailing events that Klein herself
participated in. The writings are intended to encourage readers to
rethink globalization and its impact on the global community. Klein
writes, “This collection is a record of my own steep learning curve,
one small part of a vast process of grassroots information sharing that
has given swarms of people—people who are not trained as economists,
international-trade lawyers or patent experts—the courage to
participate in the debate about the future of the global economy.”
Taken as such, the book succeeds. Even those who want to follow up on
Klein’s proofs, or who are looking for a more thoroughly constructed
argument, will want to begin with No Logo.