Ian Cook – Page 11 – followthethings.com

“Radi-aid: Africa For Norway“
NGO video campaign by and for The Norwegian Students’ & Academics International Assistance Fund (SAIH).
Video playlist embedded above. Campaign website here.

It’s unusual to find a humanitarian campaign where people in the Global South take pity on people in the Global North and send them aid in the hope that it will improve their miserable, pitiless lives. The kind citizens of many African countries, blessed with warmth that many take for granted, get together to help the people of Norway who are suffering terribly from freezing cold temperatures. What better to send them? Electric radiators. Charity workers collect and deliver them to grateful aid recipients. They even record a charity single and video to raise awareness and funds, like Band Aid’s ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ or USA for Africa’s ‘We are the world’. Their song is just as awful. Just as patronising. Just as one dimensional. Just an inaccurate. Just as tear-jerking. This is a campaign by a Norwegian development NGO that wants to challenge the ‘white saviour complex’ that so much European development NGO fundraising is based upon. What if the tables were turned? What if you were represented in the way that you represent others? What if you found that offensive, partial, ridiculous? Would that lead you to think differently about humanitarian aid, the way it is represented in charity ads, and the things that its NGOs send to people who it sees as needy? Like goats. This campaign, and particularly the video for its charity single ‘Africa for Norway’, went viral. This became a very public debate. Who could have imagined that a gift of radiators could have been so effective?

Page reference: Marie Conmee, Rebecca Jones, Frederic Montaner-Wills, Thomas Paulsen, James Pidding, Hannah Rusbridge & Joe Shrimpton (2016) Radi-Aid: Africa For Norway (taster). followthethings.com/radi-aid.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Posted on September 16, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story

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Recycle my waste

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story“
A documentary film written by Jenny Rustemeyer Grant Baldwin, directed by Grant Baldwin for Silvapark Films.
Trailer and on-demand Vimeo stream embedded above. Search the internet for other streaming options here.

Most trade justice activism looks back down the supply chain from the point of consumption. It looks at all the materials, human and other lives bound up in commodities. It asks how they could be brought together in more sustainable, more ethical, ways. The sheer volume of resources inside even the most basic thing can be astonishing. Just as astonishing are the mountains of unsold commodities that go to waste. All those resources and all that work that went into making commodities that aren’t consumed! It’s shocking. So, filmmakers Jenny Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin challenge themselves to live on thrown-away food for six months. They document how they get on with this experiment in a diary-like film. All the little details of their life, the decisions they make, are shared with the audience. People throw perfectly good food away at home, so maybe rummage through their bins. Then they discover the hidden world of supermarket dumpsters that contain discarded out-of-date food. They find and join local networks of dumpster-divers who specialise is finding, emptying, distributing and eating what’s in them. But what kind of diet do you end up living on when this is how you shop? How many lasagnes can you squeeze into your freezer? Do you fancy eating lasagne every day? Would you try this zero cost ethical food shopping? What can audiences learn about the food industry’s inevitable production of waste? They call on some experts to explain.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story (holding page). followthethings.com/just-eat-it-a-food-waste-story.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 14, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Find Your Doppelganger

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Apps

2015

UNBRANDED

PHOTO APP

DOPPELGANGERS WORLDWIDE

USED WORLDWIDE

PHONE APP CONCEPT

POP THE BUBBLE

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Find Your Doppelganger“
A concept for a mobile phone app submitted by Rachel Grant as part of a BA Geography dissertation at the University of Exeter, UK.
Full concept text below.

Student Rachel Grant likes to try out the latest apps on her smartphone. She’s tried ones that tell you which celebrity you look like. That’s OK. But there’s a photographer who finds unrelated people who look exactly alike. The technical terms is doppelganger. He arranges for them to meet, photographs them together and finds they feel connected, like lost relations. So what if there was a phone app – like the ones that help you find your celebrity lookalike – that could scan your face and introduce you to your supply chain doppelganger? A garment worker? A tungsten miner? A tea picker? A delivry driver? A plastic recycler? Someone who helped to make your stuff? Might you feel more empathetic towards supply chain workers if they looked like you? Would it be easier to imagine walking in their shoes? What if the ‘Find Your Doppelganger’ app gave you the chance to chat? What if you met up? What impact could meeting a lost ‘relation’ like this have on you?

Page reference: Rachel Grant (2024) Find Your Doppelganger. followthethings.com/doppelganger.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

Posted on September 13, 2024June 23, 2025 by Ian Cook

Ilha Das Flores

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Grocery | Money & Finance | Recycle my waste

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Ilha Das Flores (Island Of Flowers)“
A short film written, directed and produced by Jorge Furtado for Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Embedded in full above. Search online to watch the film here. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

It sounds simple: filmmaker Jorge Furtado follows the life of a tomato from Mr Suzuki’s tomato field to a garbage dump ‘on the Island of Flowers’ in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Here, the rotten tomatoes binned in shoppers’ kitchens are selected to feed the local pigs. The leftovers are scavenged by local people who have queued for the chance. But, this no ordinary film. Its footage doesn’t always seem ‘real’. Its voiceover is eccentric but is delivered in monotone. It’s like an economic geography lecture – or a public information film – that’s been made for an audience visiting Planet Earth for the first time. It explains what a human being is, and what the function of money in capitalism is, for instance. It’s full of human beings whose tomato-connected lives audiences can learn a little bit about. It’s a collage made from quick cuts between filmed scenes, found media and ideas. There seem to be so many tangents. But, together, they gradually build a powerful argument that, ultimately, trashes the way that capitalism values people, animals and the environment. Humans who watched it called it a beautiful, hilarious and deeply troubling masterpiece. You’ll have to watch it to believe it. Maybe two or three times. It’s only 13 minutes long. It’s the only example of trade justice activism that we have found that follows a thing from the beginning to the end of its life. And it decentres the stereotypical shopper in fascinating and eccentric ways. But what is Jorge Furtado trying to achieve? What are his cultural reference points? Why is this highly political film presented as a kind of weird joke?

Page reference: Maura Pavalow (2025) Ilha das Flores. followthethings.com/ilha-das-flores.html (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 68 minutes.

Posted on September 13, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Plastic China

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Recycle my waste

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Plastic China“
A documentary directed by Jiuliang Wang for CNEX, Beijing TYC & Oriental Companion Media
YouTube trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.

Recycling plastic is a good thing right? But where does it go to be recycled? Who does recycling work? And what’s that work like? This film traces the world’s plastic waste to a small village in China where families sort, clean and shred it by hand and by machine. Some of it is processed to make nurdles – the tiny plastic beads that factories buy in bulk to melt and make recycled plastic goods. A lot of it isn’t – partly because there are so many types of plastic, and those nurdles can’t mix them together. The film shows the labour of plastic recycling from the perspective of an 11 year old girl called Yi-Jie. Her family eke a living processing plastic waste shipped into their lives from all over the world. She recycles full time to help earn money for, and alongside, members of her impoverished family. Some of the plastic packaging she processes includes images of wealthy consumers enjoying the goodies that they used to contain. These images feed Yi-Jin’s dreams of a better life. She plays imaginative games with the plastic packaging that surrounds her. In one scene she makes and plays with a plastic waste computer. But her family doesn’t earn enough for her to attend school. She doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Audiences for trade justice activism are used to worrying about who makes their stuff down the supply chain. But the hidden lives and labours in commodities don’t disappear when they’re purchased. Others become attached to them when they’re thrown away. The same labour (and environmental) rights issues are there to worry about too. The materials that commodities are made from never disappear. They just appear somewhere else, in other people’s work, lives and landscapes. This film was terrible PR for the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, they banned it from being shown there. But they went much further, banning the importing and recycling of plastic waste from overseas. Shutting down an industry is perhaps the most powerful impact that trade justice activism can have. But is this what the filmmakers had in mind when they decided to make Plastic China? Could they have predicted that this might happen? What’s their responsibility towards Yi-Jon and her family?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Plastic China (holding page). followthethings.com/plastic-china.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 12, 2024September 12, 2024 by Ian Cook

B’eau Pal Water

Posted on September 11, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

My Fancy High Heels

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Fashion

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“My Fancy High Heels“
A documentary film directed by Ho, Chao-ti for Conjunction Films, broadcast on Public Television Service, Taiwan.
Embedded in full above. Mandarin & English, with Mandarin subtitles.

Everyone has challenges, dreams and sources of sorrow and happiness in their lives. Wealthy young women in New York city. Impoverished slaughterhouse, tannery and factory workers in China. Maybe even baby calves. And their lives can be connected by following things. Like a pair of sculpture-like Bally, Prada, Gucci, Fendi high heel shoes that sell for $300 to $1,000 a pair. Each person connected by these shoes is worth knowing, spending time with, walking in their shoes for a while. The calves – and the people who kill, bleed and skin them – too, because their hide makes the softest leather. There’s empathy here for everyone, but connecting these lives, sorrows, happiness through these shoes is jarring for its audiences. The extremes of wealth and poverty, glamour and horror, are so extreme. Exploited workers don’t only make clothes for high street brands and retailers. The most exclusive brands, with the biggest profit margins, are just as tainted. This is a Chinese language film, and it’s difficult to find or buy a DVD with English subtitles. So a lot of the discussion below has been Google translated. The audience, for a change, is not English-speaking and not in the Global North.

Page reference: Jenny Hart & Ian Cook (2024) My Fancy High Heels (taster). followthethings.com/my-fancy-high-heels.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Posted on September 4, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads

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Fashion

PROCESSED IN SOUTH KOREA

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads“
A multi-sited ethnographic research monograph by Caroline Knowles, published by Pluto
Preview above. Available from good bookstores. Website here.

When academics, journalists, filmmakers and other thing-followers choose the commodity they will delve into, it’s often something important, something they couldn’t live without. Caroline Knowles takes a different approach, choosing something she doesn’t think about much, something that’s sitting at the back of her closet, something she uses only occasionally. It’s a great idea. Following different commodities brings lots of different materials, places, and people together in one story. There will inevitably be surprises. But she’s not following them back from her closet to the factories where they were made in the Global South. She’s following them forward. From the oil wells of Kuwait, to the petrochemical plants in South Korea that turn this oil into the right kind of plastic that can be shipped as granules, to the factories in China where they are turned into flip-flops, which are then shipped for sale and walking about in Ethiopia. She uses this on-the-ground following to reflect on globalisation. It’s a more complex process than many think it is. It looks this way when you follow things, especially if you de-centre the Western consumer, follow South-South trade, and connect different sites, people and places. The ‘guilty Western consumer’ is nowhere to be seen. So what can this approach tell us about trade justice? In what ways might it be, and contribute to, its activism?

Ian Cook et al (2024) Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads (holding page). followthethings.com/flip-flop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 2, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt

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Fashion

MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CROWDFUND YOUR WORK

HAVE IT MADE

MAKE IT META

“Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt“
A podcast series, webdoc & YouTube playlist in NPR’s ‘Planet Money’ series produced by Alex Blumberg.
YouTube playlist embedded above. Listen to the Podcast series here. Visit the webdoc here. Visit the NPR store here.

The USA National Public Radio’s ‘Planet Money’ plans a series of programmes on the international cotton industry, from seed to t-shirt. But they’re not interested in investigating who makes K-Mart or Walmart or H&M t-shirts. Instead, they launch a kickstarter campaign. If enough people pledge $25, their reporters will travel the world to find out who makes a T-shirt that they commission. This means that they can talk directly to farmers, factory owners, workers, shippers and others involed in bringing that shirt to the market. If they find stories of environmental or labour exploitation, it’s their own brand that will be damaged. 25,000 are made. Each features a squirrel hoisting a martini glass (a jokey reference to what economist John Maynard Keynes referred to as capitalism’s ‘animal spirits’). Each pledger was sent a t-shirt as a reward for their investment. Other people could buy one from NPR’s online store.

Page reference: Emelia Price, Steph Small, Sophie Blakstand, Maisie Jenyon, Catt Suttie, Hannah Cookson, Laura Johnston & Abigail Spink (2025) Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt (taster). followthethings.com/planet-money-makes-a-t-shirt.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Machines

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Fashion

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL

MAKE IT INCOMPLETE

“Machines“
A documentary film directed by Rahul Jain with cinematography by Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva for Jann Pictures, Pallas Film & IV Films.
Trailer embedded above. Available on demand on Vimeo here and Dogwoof here. Available on Box of Broadcasts here and Kanopy here (with institutional login). Search online for other streaming options here.

Director Rahul Jain revisits the fabric factories of his youth to document machines and people that print patterns on the rolls of fabric bought by clothing manufacturers to make the shirt, dress or pair of tights that you or I might wear. His film is beautiful, atmospheric, metronomic, disturbing. Watching the machines at work, and the people tending them, is mesmerising. The cinematography is wonderful. It seems like a proper ‘fly on the wall’ documentary for a long time. When the workers later start to talk about their lives and work in this place, it’s depressing, hopeless, boring, toxic, abject, unhappy. This is a powerful film that moves audience members viscerally, but Jain doesn’t want them to do anything to help the workers. Towards the end, workers telling Jain that he’s just like a politician. He visits. He hears problems. He leaves. Nothing changes. So what can a film like this do? What’s the point of making it? How do audience members respond? What difference can it make? Is it about this factory and its workers? Or capitalism as a system? Is this trade justice activism? Or an arthouse film? The answer is open…

Page reference: Annily Skye Jeffries (2017) Machines. followthethings.com/machines.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Page also available in Finnish here (coming soon)

Estimated reading time: 62 minutes.