Trade justice activism is messy, uncertain, nonlinear, all over the place, inspiring, worrying, powerful.
On followthethings.com âshoppingâ has an important double meaning.
On the one hand, it means âto seek or examine goods, property, etc. offered for saleâ.
On the other hand, it means âto behave treacherously toward; inform on; betrayâ or âto give away information aboutâ those goods, property, etc.
Anyone who makes trade justice activism, and anyone who visits this site, is a âshopperâ.
"Whoever said money can't buy happiness, simply didn't know where to go shopping" - Bo Derek.
followthethings.com encourages another kind of shopping.
Category: Handbook
The next stage of our project is to start drafting some pages for a book we want to write: ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. Using the ‘pattern language’ format of the ‘Beautiful Trouble’ series published by O/R, we drafting pages for ‘examples’ (condensed, paraphrased example pages – a few are published here), ‘intentions’, ‘tactics’, ‘responses’ and’ impacts’ (the lists of ‘ingredients’ that appear as links in the left hand column of the published pages, we will publish some of these ASAP) and ‘advice to filmmakers’ (student work from the University of Exeter module that’s behind our site that has used unpublished drafts of these ‘ingredients’ pages to imagine advice they could give to filmmakers about to make their first trade justice documentary). We’ll flesh these pages out when we have the time. We’re publishing them to share the concept at the moment. Please get in touch with any questions or suggestions!
Reach new audiences Cross cultures Teach economic geography Show capitalist evils Show what’s possible
TACTICS
Choose the right thing Target the right brand Follow the thing Join the dots Find lost relations Humanise things Include emotion Encourage empathy Show the violence Tell a story
RESPONSES
I know how they feel This is so sad I feel sorry for them Wow đ„ WTF? Capitalism is sh*t Who’s responsible? Oh, I get it now Thank you What’s the point? It could be worse I won’t buy it
IMPACTS
Now I know Now we’re talking I get what it’s like It made me want to shop
EXAMPLES
HANDBOOK PAGES
Handprint Ilha das Flores Jamelia – whose hair is it anyway? Mangetout Primark – on the rack <more to be added>
Consumers’ experience of commodities can be personal. Providing comfort, escape, togetherness. This is the bubble of ‘commodity fetishism’ that trade justice activists like to pop. Workers of the world helped to create these experiences. Let’s, at least, acknowledge that!
What’s this page?
This is a placeholder intention page that, once finished, will explain this intention, illustrate it with reference to comments taken from relevant followthethings.com example pages, and will give a clickable sense of the tactics, responses and impacts that go with this intention.
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RECOMMENDED READINGS
Ian Cook et al (2002) Commodities: the DNA of capitalism. https://followtheblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/commodities_dna.pdf (last accessed 3 June 2024)
Ian Cook & Tara Woodyer (2012) Lives of things. in Eric Sheppard, Trevor Barnes & Jamie Peck (eds) The Wiley Blackwell companion to economic geography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 226-241
This is the beginning of the next phase of the followthethings.com project. In 2020, we started to analyse the data we’ve compiled on over 100 examples of trade justice activism on followthethings.com. We’ve been trying to better understand the relationships between its intentions, tactics, responses and impacts. It design has been inspired by the short connected ‘pattern language’ approach taken in the Beautiful… activism books (Boyd 2012, Mitchell et al 2017, Williams et al 2025). While these books set out examples of activism, activists’ intentions, and the tactics and theories they can use, they don’t talk about audiences’ responses to, and the impacts of, this work. We’re trying to work out how trade justice activism works, and what it can do. We want to pass on what we have learned to those who are studying and making new trade justice activism. We have concentrated on films and videos to beging with and can only provide a taste of teh Handbook at the moment. But we’d love to hear your thoughts. See our contact page. Please check back.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
EXAMPLES
Bananas!* Beautiful clothes, ugly reality Big boys gone bananas!* Blood, sweat & takeaways Dream crazy Employee visualisation appendage Ghosts Girl model Handprint Ilha das Flores Jamelia – whose hair is it anyway? Life of a bullet Maquilapolis Mangetout Primark â on the rack Tackle the shackles The ginger trail The messenger band The true cost UDITA
INTENTIONS
What do trade justice activists want their work to do?
Change consumer behaviour Change corporate behaviour Change government behaviour Cross cultures Educate workers End violence & exploitation Improve pay & conditions Pop the bubble Reach new audiences Show capitalist evils Show whatâs possible Teach economic geography Tell the truth
TACTICS
What actions and strategies do they use to bring their intentions to life?
Add mood music Blame, shame & guilt Bring managers into view Choose an audience Create a character Embody exploitation Encourage a boycott Encourage curiosity Encourage detective work Encourage empathy Encourage feminist solidarities Find & give inspiration Find a character Find the unions Flip the script Follow the people Follow the thing Give workers the mic! Have a theory of change Hold âem accountable Humanise workers Include emotion Include suffering kids Include the digital Involve consumers Join with others Join the dots Juxtapose extremes Lie to tell the truth Make a website Make it familiar Make it funny Make it incomplete Make Music Make the familiar strange Place things carefully Put your bodies in the way Show both sides Show the violence Silence your critics Spend some time Stage a Q&A Start somewhere different Suggest concrete action Target the right brand Tell a story Workers take the mic
RESPONSES
How do audiences respond to this work, the stories it tells, the suggestions it makes?
Attack your critics Capitalism is sh*t Creeperific Guilty as charged I get what itâs like I gotta do something I just cried I know how they feel I laughed my ass off I want to find out more I wonât buy it Iâm humming that music Iâm so angry Itâs so badly made Liar! Fraud! LOL capitalism My hero! Oh shut up Silence your critics That’s racist There is no alternative These consumers are insane These people are inspiring They aren’t experts! This gives me hope This is disgusting This is so sad Who to believe? Whoâs responsible? Wow đ„ WTF?
IMPACTS
What changes does trade justice activism encourage in the world?
Activism is inspired Activism is publicised Activists are recruited Audiences are empowered Canât tell Corporations are punished Corporations change Debts are paid off Governments intervene I shop differently now Now I know Now we’re talking Workers suffer Workersâ pay & conditions improve
ADVICE TO FILMMAKERS
How students have used this handbook to criticaly anaylse trade justice activism
Primark – on the rack Mangetout Ilha das Flores Blood, sweat & takeaways Girl model Ghosts UDITA
INGREDIENTS
INTENTIONS
Reach new audiences Pop the bubble Change consumer behaviour Change corporate behaviour Improve pay and conditions Show what’s possible
TACTICS
Hold ’em accountable Blame, shame & guilt Lie to tell the truth Start somewhere different Involve consumers Humanise workers Find the unions Find a character Give workers the mic! Encourage empathy Juxtapose extremes Suggest concrete action Encourage feminist solidarities
RESPONSES
Attack your critics Liar! Fraud! Wow đ„ WTF? I’m so angry This is disgusting Guilty as charged I just cried I gotta do something Who’s responsible? These people are inspiring
IMPACTS
Now we’re talking Corporations change I shop differently now Workers suffer Activism is inspired Debts are paid off Workers’ pay & conditions improve
“Get people to reflect, not recoil“
By Abbie Gollings
IN BRIEF
Student Abbie Gollings has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. She’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. She knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. She’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could she give? Consider the emotions your work could evoke in its audiences. Which ones will encourage them to act in ways that could improve workers’ pay and conditions? And maybe start with the workers first? What’s her theory of change? What activism are they involved in. How could a filmmaker help?
More about this page.
We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?
Question
How can I make an effective trade justice documentary?
Answer
Screenshots from the Handbook.
‘Effectiveâ means many things: matching impacts to intentions, getting people talking. But you can do more. Effective documentaries can lead to action; the ultimate goal: improve workersâ pay and conditions. I assume this is your aim. But not just as a temporary âlifeboatâ (Kister and Wenner, 2024) – you want long-lasting change. Iâve watched some trade justice films. Some missed this mark. But they all point towards it. You can learn from them.
Start ambitious. Change corporate behaviour. Expose how they exploit workers, shame them into action. Corporations can change structurally – improve pay and conditions! This is what Primark on the Rack attempted. Posing as buyers, narrator McDougallâs team went to hold Primark accountable for âits illegal labour activitiesâ (Maroney; 190-1; in Adley et al., 2025), capturing footage of young boy Mantheesh working illegally on Primark garments in India. This scene caused outrage. Primark became the âposter boyâ for child labour (Cook et al., 2018; 483, in Adley et al., 2025) đŹ
Screenshots of Mantheesh testing sequins in Primark – on the rack.
Primark caught? Nope! They fired back. Attacked their critics. âLiar! Fraud! The footage is fake!â I didnât know who to believe. Commenters argued over whoâs right. This pivotal scene of Mantheesh became about everything but his struggles. Backfire! Panicking, Primark abruptly closed the three factories blamed of outsourcing and child labour. Rid themselves of the problem, leaving âhundreds of garment workers in an even worse position than beforeâ (Arnott; 36; in Adley et al., 2025). Workers suffer.
Thanks to the film, ”good daysâ for Mantheesh have come to an abrupt endâ (Hunt; 22, in Adley et al., 2025). đł . This is the opposite of its intention. Iâve used this example to show you how impactful film can be – and how risky. DONâT lie to tell the truth. Workers mightsuffer.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
SO.. letâs start smaller – a different angle. Target consumers. Try to change consumer behaviour. If you want people to rethink where their stuff comes from, pop the bubble. All activists need to shine light on the hidden realities (Duncombe, 2012). Cook and Woodyer (2012) explain how the âfetishâ of commodities hides the hands making them. So, as Boyd says (2012; in Duncombe, 2016, 122), you must make âthe invisible visible.â Showing the workers juxtaposing extremes can do this – it gets people questioning without blame, shame or guilt – which clearly didnât work for Primark on theRack.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
Mangetout and Ilha das Flores did this. But you canât just throw any scenes together.Bloomfield and Sangalang (2014) helped me get this – youâve gotta show the relationship between the scenes, like cause and effect, or moral contrast – so people connect the dots themselves. Leave space for imagination (Cook et al., 2007; 118). Like how Mangetout juxtaposes middle class diners who ate mangetout âbetween outbursts of smug crassness, [as] the African pickers were being treated as slavesâ (Holt, p.5; in Cook et al., 2025). Meanwhile Mark Dady, Tesco manager, smiles over his workers. It showed how Tesco policy exploits workers who completely rely on them, ignorant of their struggles, giving more attention to the vegetable than those producing it. Tesco werenât explicitly blamed – viewers drew âtheir own depressing conclusionsâ (Truss, np, in Cook et al., 2025) about how the workers were treated. I was so angry!
Screenshots of Mark Dady, Tesco buyer, visiting the farm (top left), Blessing Blessing Chingwaru, the farm’s chief mange-tout picker (bottom left) and the UK home counties dinner party guests eatinjg and discussing mage-tout farming in Zimbabwe: all from Mangetout.
Ilha das Flores also juxtaposed extremes showing the tomato-connected lives of workers, animals, and consumers. For some, it hit hard – âimpossible not to shed tears while watchingâ (Anon; 17; in Pavalow, 2025). Wow đ„ WTF? I was shocked seeing dead bodies, children eating scraps a family had previously deemed inedible. But the shock didnât lead me anywhere. If you look at Chouliaraki (2010), she explains this problem. She says when films show suffering too graphically or abstractly, they risk fetishising all over again. It becomes a spectacle of disgust (Lissner, 1981; 32, in Chouliaraki, 2010). I felt bombarded.
Screenshots from Ilha das Flores.
So, same technique, totally different outcomes. Emotions can work against you â ïž . Ilhadas Flores left people feeling disgusted – by the end âI just felt like being sickâ (Redroom Studios, np; cited in Pavalow, 2025). Disgust can make your audience recoil (RyynĂ€nen, Kosonen, and Ylönen, 2023). Someone said âthe holocaust images made me stop watchingâ (@andrewsharpe2587, np, in Pavalow, 2025). Not exactly the spark you need to fuel activism.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
But anger you can work with! Anger at Mangetoutâs revelations inspired activism. Read Micheletti and Stolle (2008, p.749) to understand this emotional mobilisation. They explain how strong emotions like anger can drive change consumer behaviour and change corporate behaviour. Thatâs an effective outcome! Unlike disgust, anger is intentional (RyynĂ€nen, Kosonen, and Ylönen, 2023). Mangetout was effective because, as Brown and Pickerill (2009) explain, there was somewhere to aim it: Tesco. Tesco felt pressured to join the Ethical Trading Initiative. Corporations have changed! SUCCESS!! đŻ You see there are different ways to apply pressure. Different emotions get different responses. Get people to reflect, not recoil.
Targeting consumer audiences seems to be effective – you can target them other ways! Try to change consumer behaviour. Kahn (2016) explains that consumers are more responsible than ever – the solution to fast fashion problems! Make them feel they gottado something.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
Involving consumers can be a powerful way to show them how to change. Blood Sweat andTakeaways tried this by taking 6 British food lovers to âwalk-a-mileâ in workersâ shoes in Thailand and Indonesia (Cuthbertson; 46; in Clarke et al., 2025). Millions watched – it reached new audiences and opened viewersâ eyes: âI never gave much thought to where my food comes fromâ (Lynn, np, in Clarke et al, 2025). But the show failed to tell viewers how to help – âboycott tuna or buy more of it?â (Sutcliffe 2009 np, in Clarke et al., 2025).
đ€ What was the point? Instead, it focused on participantsâ personal journeys, like Manosâ emotional revelation and apology to the workers shown below. It didnât push for social change (Gupta and Fawcett, np, in Clarke et al., 2025), and letting consumers ‘play at’ being workers only extended the gap between âus’ and âthemâ (Yang, 2017; 61).
‘I have to apologize … I need to change.â British food lover Manos apologies to Indonesia fishermen in Blood, sweat and takeaways.Screenshot from the Handbook.
You must TELL consumers what to do (Haug and Busch, 2016). Explicitly link consumer habits with workersâ lives. In Primark on the Rack, a young woman is shown video evidence of children working on a top from Primark that she owned. She was shocked! Guilty as charged! Trust in Primark – gone. âItâs the end of the affairâ says McDougall (Panorama, 2008; 48:43). Consumer behaviour changed đ . people said they’d shop differently now đ . Did they?
Screenshots of journalist Mark Heap shows a British consumer some foilm footage of the children who made her top, in Primark – on the rack.
I felt guilty too. All those times Iâve ventured to Primark for another cheap top. But what about the factory owners Iâd seen? The childrenâs parents? Whoâs responsible? I started justifying my actions, Iâm a student. I canât afford to shop elsewhere. âHow dare that reporter incline towards that woman [shopping] in anyway that itâs her fault for buying clothes from Primarkâ (Maddox 2008 np; in Adley, 2025). Young (2003) explains this response. Guilt is backwards-looking, people get defensive (Bartky 2002; in Yang 2017) and angry. Instead of collective action, blaming a consumer caused resentment and refusal to take responsibility (Young, 2003). I came to a dead end. But then I returned to Young (2003). She says you want to show people that itâs everyoneâs responsibility.Y ou need to show them how to make a difference, but donât blame. Guilt isnât always effective.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
So avoid responses that will backfire. Your doc could be more effective by humanising workers. Get people talking about them. Youâve learnt about emotional responses – which ones should you evoke? Here you could turn to Kemp (2025) who explains that empathy can motivate helping behaviour and catalyse action (Nash and Corner, 2016). You want action! So encourage empathy.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
The unintentional popularity of Girl Model shows that finding a character can really effectively connect an audience to workers struggles through empathy. âIt became âessential viewing for adolescent girlsâ (Burr, 2012, np; in Hambly et al., 2025) because people had been emotionally impacted. Aspiring model Nadya (13) is carted off to Tokyo with hope for a better life, and money for her family. But these promises dissolve and the glamour and gloss of the industry was stripped away (Kermode, 2012, np, in Hambly et al., 2025). The images show her real emotions under the fake glamour. Ijustcried âI wanted to give Nadya a hug, because I felt her painâ (DisturbedPixie, np; in Hambly et al, 2025).
Screenshots of Nadya Vall modelling and crying IRL, in Girl Model.
The rawness of disappointment touched a nerve. Canning and Reinsborough (2012) explain that your audience cares more when they relate. So you could include relatable characters to engage your audience. Point your camera towards the workers and it becomes an âempathy machineâ (Jackson in Nals, 2018; 135). But there was nothing I could for Nadya. I was invested but at a dead end. But Ghosts shows how empathy CAN effectively inspire action.
Ghostsfinds a character: Ai Qin. We follow her closely as she migrates to the UK for better wages and work. But she becomes trapped in a modern slave system. She repeatedly suffers. She cries and then⊠I cried.
Screenshots of modern slave Ai Qin in Ghosts.Screenshot from the Handbook.
My emotions mirrored hers (Nals, 2018). Her plight comes up to you like an unforgiving tide (Keak np; in Allen et al., 2025). You want to help her. Some viewers said that showing her ordinary emotions brought her closer to ‘us’ bridging a ‘gulf’ between viewer and subject (Brass; 346; in Allen et al., 2025), but I felt like I was framed in an oppressor vs oppressed dynamic (Bardan, date; in Pereen, 2014; 44). She was a victim, the audience are saviours (Pereen, 2014; 44). Ghosts ends with the Morecambe Bay tragedy: Ai Qin survives, but viewers learn the victims’ families struggle with debt. Broomfield established the Morecombe Bay Victimâs fund (OâKeeffe 2006; in Allen et al., 2025) and emotionally-connected viewers, now cast as saviours, donate to clear these debts. Debts are paid off.
So if you encourage empathy and suggest concrete action you can drive effective change. But this help was temporary. And empathy donation relationships rely on the colonial gaze being maintained (Hall, 1992; in Chouliaraki, 2010) which is part of the problem. Your film can use empathy to get immediate change, but you need to switch it up to improve workers pay and conditions long-term.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
Individualising and blaming consumers and corporations can undermine your goal. An effective doc must promote trade justice without endangering workers. So start somewhere different. Let workerstakethe mic. Like UDITA (Arise) did. Following 5 female union workers, it shows whatâspossible: powerful, collective action – âwomenâs hope and commitment to create better conditions for the next generationâ (Spooner; 32, in Barker et al, 2025). These people are inspiring. Empowered workers showed how resistance is already improvingpay and conditions (Siddiqi, 2019). They had a voice – and knowing best how the garment industry should change (Khan, 2016), they can tell us what they want – (OâNeill, np; in Barker et al, 2025).
Left: screenshot from UDITA. Right: screenshot from the Handbook.
I could no longer excuse ignoring how my t-shirts are made because â[T]he actual garment workers themselves are saying that they want us to shop consciously. WE CAN DO ITâ (Gregory, np, in Barker et al., 2025). It shows that the workers donât need âsavingâ – Primark – On the Rack showed how victimising workers can harm their interests (Siddiqi, 2019), moving beyond the âusâ and âthemâ divide. Before, I was encouraged to be a guilty consumer . Now I was encouraged to be a feminist insolidarity – an important move for audiences to make because it shows the collective responsibility we all have – that workers need to resist too (Young, 2003; 42).
Screenshot from the Handbook.
After so much despair, witnessing their resilience gave me hope. Your film can help apply pressure in the right places. Find the unions and help them to improve pay and conditions. Inspire viewers to work collectively. Make it forward-looking (Robin Zheng, 2019). Show there is an alternative, and you will make real change.
Left: screenshot from UDITA. Right: screenshot from the Handbook.
So to improve pay and conditions: target consumers and corporations, but be cautious â ïž . Get people talking about the workers, and mobilise emotions like empathy and anger into concrete action. Collate these ideas – have a theory of change and apply pressure from different angles. Like UDITA, give workers opportunity to show whatâs possible to give the audience hope, a sense of togetherness.
Screenshot from the Handbook.
SOURCES
Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P. Stenholm, N, Strang, W, and Valo,. T (2025) Primark â on the rack. followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)
Allen, H, Heaume, E, Heeley, L. Hedger, R, Johnson, S, McGregor, O & Webber, L (2025) Ghosts. followthethings.com/ghosts.shtml (last accessed: 25th April 2025)
Barker, T, Collier, T, Baker, A, Coppen, L & Eve, H (2025) UDITA (ARISE). followthethings.com/udita.shtml (last accessed: 25th April, 2025)
Bloomfield, E.F. and Sangalang, A. (2014) Juxtaposition as Visual Argument: Health Rhetoric in Super Size Me and Fat Head. Argumentation and Advocacy, 50(3), pp. 141â 156
+25 sources
Brown, G. and Pickerill, J. (2009) Space for Emotion in the Spaces Of Activism. Emotion, space and society, 2(1), pp. 24â35
Canning, D. and Reinsborough, P. (2012) Lead With Sympathetic Characters. in Beautiful Trouble. OR Books, p. 146
Chouliaraki, L. (2010) Post-humanitarianism: Humanitarian Communication Beyond a Politics of Pity. International journal of cultural studies, 13(2), p. 107â126.
Clarke, M Thomson, B. Bartley, V. Ibbetson-Price, K. Christie-Miller. E. & Schofield, H. (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)
Cook, I. and Woodyer, T. (2012) Lives of Things. in The WileyâBlackwell Companion to Economic Geography. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, p. 226â241
Cook, I. et al. (2007) âItâs More Than Just What It Is’: Defetishising Commodities, Expanding Fields, Mobilising Change. Geoforum, 38(6), p. 1113â1126
Cook, I, et al., (2025) Mangetout. followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)
Duncombe, S. (2012) It Stands On Its Head: Commodity Fetishism, Consumer Activism, And The Strategic Use Of Fantasy. Culture and organization, 18(5), p.359â375.
Duncombe, S. (2016) ‘Does It Work? The Ăffect of Activist Art. Social research 83(1), p.115-134.
Duncombe, S. (2023) A Theory of Change for Artistic Activism. The Journal of aesthetics and art criticism, 81(2), pp. 260â268
Hambly, A, King, E, Keogh, A, Renny-Smith, C, Callow,E, Thorogood, J & Alloy, V (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)
Haug, A. and Busch, J. (2016) Towards an Ethical Fashion Framework. Fashion theory 20(3), p.317â339
Pavalow., M (2025) Ilha das Flores. followthethings.com/ilhadasflores.html (last accessed: 28th April, 2025)
Kemp, D. (2025) Comparing Disgust and Sadness: Examining the Interaction of Emotion and Information in Charity Appeals. Journal of social marketing, 15(1), p.42â58.
Khan, R. (2016) Doing Good and Looking good: Women in âFast Fashionâ Activism. Women & Environments International Magazine, 96/97, p.7-9
Kister, J. and Wenner, M. (2024) Living Wages as Life Boat to Rescue Fairtradeâs Values for Hired Labour? The Case of Indian Tea Plantations. Die Erde: journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin 154(3), p.80-94
Micheletti, M. and Stolle, D. (2008) Fashioning Social Justice Through Political Consumerism, Capitalism, And The Internet. Cultural studies 22(5), p.749â769
NĂ„ls, J. (2018) The Difficulty of Eliciting Empathy in Documentary. in Brylla, C & Kramer, M. (eds) Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, p.135-148
Nash, K. and Corner, J. (2016) Strategic Impact Documentary: Contexts Of Production And Social Intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), p.227â242
Peeren, E. (2014) The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility. London: Palgrave Macmillan
RyynÀnen, M., Kosonen, H.S. and Ylönen, S.C. (2023) From visceral to the aesthetic: tracing disgust in contemporary culture. in their (eds.) Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral. London: Routledge, p.3-16
Siddiqi, D.M. (2009) Do Bangladeshi Factory Workers Need Saving? Sisterhood In The Post-Sweatshop Era. Feminist review, 91(91), p.154â174
Yang, J. (2017) Screening privilege: global injustice & responsibility in 21st-Century Scandinavian film & media. PhD thesis: University of Oslo (https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/70905/Yang%2bPhD%2bScreening%2bPrivilege.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y last accessed 28th April 2025)
Young, I. (2003) From guilt to solidarity: sweatshops & political responsibility. Dissent 50(2), p.39-44
Zheng, R. (2019) What Kind of Responsibility Do We Have for Fighting Injustice? A Moral- Theoretic Perspective on the Social Connections Model. Critical horizons : journal of social & critical theory, 20(2), p.109â126
Girl model Mangetout The ginger trail Ghosts Primark – on the rack
INGREDIENTS
INTENTIONS
Pop the bubble Cross cultures Tell the truth Show capitalist evils End violence & exploitation Change corporate behaviour Teach economic geography
TACTICS
Have a theory of change Target the right brand Follow the thing Tell the truth Tell a story Include emotion Encourage empathy Find & give inspiration Workers take the mic! Find a character Create a character Bring managers into view Show the violence Include suffering kids Juxtapose extremes Blame, shame & guilt Encourage feminist solidarities Add mood music Silence your critics
RESPONSES
This is so sad This is disgusting I’m so angry I just cried These consumers are insane Capitalism is sh*t These people are inspiring This gives me hope I want to find out more
IMPACTS
Now I know! Now we’re talking Activism is publicised Activism is inspired Debts are paid off Governments intervene Corporations change
“Choose the emotion that wonât let go – then hit ‘record’“
By Luke Elkington
IN BRIEF
Student Luke Elkington has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. He’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. He knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. He’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could he give? Get inspired by the films he’s watched, and get the emotions right. Then record.
More about this page.
We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?
Question
How can I make an effective trade justice documentary?
Now, for your film to be effective, its intentions must lead to real-world impact. To generate the greatest impact, I suggest having a theory of change đ€ AKA a strategy to maximize your filmâs effectiveness. This will help you focus on a specific TJM issue to create meaningful and targeted đŻ change (Duncombe, 2023)!!!
OK … let me tell you a story. Itâs 2008. Iâm watching âœïž football. Age 6. Suddenly, itâs half-time. A charityâs plea for donations appears on the TV. Starving Sudanese children đ¶đż scatter the screen. Their exposed black ribs protrude from the telly stabbing đĄ into my young eyes – bringing them to tears đą. WHY do I still remember? Emotions imprint far deeper than facts ever can – so your film must aim not just to inform, but to includeemotion that will shakeyour viewer.
In April, I walked past Primark. My attention focused on glossy posters of young girls đ§ posing. Slowly, their faces distorted into Nadya Vall from Girl Model. Filmmakers follow this 13 year old girl from Siberia to Tokyo, chasing her dream to become a model. But it falls apart and she cries for help. The image burnt đ„ into my brain đ§ . I couldnât stop thinking about Nadya.
Screenshots of girl model Nadya Vall in Girl Model.
Filmmakers use tactics to trigger đ€ź đ đą đ« đĄ đł đ. Girl Model finds a character in Nadya who ‘gives the film a clear protagonist'(Saito in Hambly et al., 2025, np) creating a bond between the viewer and Nadya (Nash & Corner, 2016). The film includes suffering kids đ§ as Nadya cries to return to her impoverished home which is contrasted with Ashley, Nadyaâs manager, who is free to wander her ‘cavernous Connecticut mansion’ đĄ (Lucca in Hambly et al., 2025, np).
Screenshots of model scout Ashley Arbaugh in Girl Model.
By bringing a manager into view, filmmakers reveal Ashleyâs apathy through unsettling imagery – strange dolls đȘand eerie photo cut-outs of models – which underscore her ‘disconnection from the modelling world’ (Redmon in ibid) and Nadya (Natter & Jones III, 1993). These tactics together encourage empathy đ„čby helping viewers really understand Nadyaâs suffering â which often makes viewers sad (Redmon in Hambly et al., 2025; Dant, 2012).
Screenshots of Ashley’s baby doll collection and covert snapshots in Girl Model.
It worked! Itâs ‘saddening’ âčïž (Almachar in Hambly et al., 2025, np). Iâm so sad. Sadness is ‘a response to and feeling of loss’ (Kemp, 2025, p.44). Myself and others found Girl Model pretty ‘disturbing’ (Cli in Hambly et al., 2025, np)âŠ.itâs disgusting đ€ź . These feelings are brought on by violations of morality and with these physical feelings of revulsion đ€ą, the filmâs message hits deeper into the viewerâs heart â€ïž (RyynĂ€nen et al., 2023).
Activism was inspired! Someone else made a film, people asked how they could create change, and conversations roared online â this engagement with the film is the first step toward real change ⊠now weâre talking đŹ (Sabin & Redmond and Bleasdale in Hambly et al, 2025).
So now we know about Nadyaâs exploitationâŠ. our knowledge is the starting point for action âđœ.
Hold on âïž. Wenzel (2011) warns that consumers often confuse gaining knowledge with meaningful action. As a result, films can end up re-fetishizing commodities, simply generating new demand: dammit đ€ (ibid).
BUT WAIT! Nash and Corner (2016) explain how to overcome thisâŠ..emotions can be just as powerful, if not more so, than knowledge. By fostering emotional attachment to an issue, films have the potential to stimulate genuine action, not just passive awareness (ibid)!!!!
OK, now I know emotions are important. Girl Model got people âčïž and đ€ź. Mangetout got people đĄ.
Mangetoutpopped the bubble by confronting Brits ‘with their most popular supermarket Tesco actually running a farm in Zimbabwe’ (Miller in Cook et al., 2025, np). Crossing cultures and following the thing traces the journey of mangetout peas đ« ‘from African soil to English dinner plate’ (Phillips in ibid) exposing the interconnected web of commodities and their externalities along the way (Callon, 1998). BAM đ„ my commodity fetishism 𫧠was popped â Marx can #RIP đȘŠ (Cook et al., 2002).
Screenshots of the farm, the TESCO HQ & the dinner table in Mangetout.
Tesco veg buyer Mark Dady travels to Zimbabwe bringing managers into view. He inspects Chiparawe farm [code đ§âđ» for] he bullies farmers to grow the perfect đ« for minimal Ps đ· (Aaronovitch in Cook et al., 2025). Markâs arrival đŹ is accompanied by imperial music to add mood music đ” which juxtaposes extremes with Zimbabweans singing ‘Tescoâs our dear friend’ đ€(Holt in Cook et al., np; Friedberg, 2004). Juxtaposition is useful to filmmakers cos it helps highlight stark inequalities (Wenzel, 2011)!
A juxtaposition đšâđ« masterclassâŠâŠâŠ
Screenshots from Mangetout.
Mark âŹïž demands farmworkers trim the đ« leaves for the consumerâs benefit …! Grannie âŹïž explains her past traumas while a British consumer at a dinner party âŹïž says workers – like Grannie – ‘are probably happy in their mud hut’ (OâMalley in Cook et al., 2025, np).
Screenshots of the dinner party guest and farm worker Grannie from Mangetout
But The ginger đ« trail doesnât trigger strong emotions at all. đ A major flaw?
Screenshots from The ginger trail.
Itâs an I-Doc đŠ. Viewers choose clips đœ and in what order theyâre watched. Interactivity facilitates participation in making a film rather than simply consuming it â this immerses viewers (Aston, 2022). This film teaches economic geographies (Ananthanarayana, 2025). It shows slow violence caused by ginger cultivation but itâs hard to show violence that takes place over many years âł (ibid; Davies, 2022). It overcomes this by showing communities suffering consequences of slow violence which impacts viewers emotionally đ which is what Davies (2022) recommends!
IMOâŠNo. It nailed interactivity. But the lack of emotional response means the film risks creating passive awareness đ€·ââïž rather than action (Nash and Corner, 2016). Films have to get the viewer emotionally.
Thatâs where Ghosts đ» comes in. A fictional film. Based on the ‘true story’ (Broomfield in Allen et al., 2025, np) of 23 Chinese migrant workers who died đ at Morecambe Bay in 2004. It tells the truth đŻ and shows capitalist evils by telling the story of Ai Qin and ‘the chain of labour that exploits illegal immigrants’ (Romney in ibid). Telling stories are effective as they help viewers connect to characters which moves them emotionally đ (Nash and Corner, 2016). The film created characters AND found characters! Lead actors were Chinese migrants â ‘neither actors nor themselves’ (Martin in Allen et al., 2025, np).
Screenshots from Ghosts (bottom right: Ai Qin goes food shopping).
Oh and also, Ghosts showed the violence đĄâđ€ workers endured in Morecambe bay forcing the viewer to imagine themselves there (Wenzel, 2011). These tactics combine to include (so much raw) emotion in Ghosts meaning viewers know ‘this is the real thing’ (Anon in Allen et al., 2025, np).
Screenshot from Ghosts of ‘the fight between indigenous and migrant workers’ (Martin in ibid).
But … something positive … debts were paid off â ‘the crippling debts inherited by the families of the victims of the Morecambe Bay Tragedy have been paid off’ (Anon in ibid).
Screenshot from the Ghosts website.
Emotion + Knowledge = Actionâïž2008 â 2025 and a film still makes me đ. Ghosts đ» worked.
With public outcry magnified đ, corporations changed. In 2013, the Rana Plaza clothes factory collapsed killing over 1,100 people in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Cook et al., 2018). Primarkâs response was to spend ÂŁ9 million đ°to support local communities â or to (try) cover their arses (ibid).
An EFFECTIVE film. But the filmmaker who exposed Primark also found out (ibid). The film would have triggered the desired anti-capitalist reaction without the fake footage â something to avoid đ« when making your film!
Uh-oh, back to Rana Plaza. Iâm welling up. But Iâm crying đ because UDITA is inspiring.
Over 5 years, UDITA follows female garment factory workers in their mission for justice before and after Rana Plaza. Ending violence and exploitation was the goal – ‘Udita shows the agency of these women’ (Minney in Barker et al., 2025, np) to overcome injustice. It encourages feminist đ€đ»đ€đœ solidarities giving women greater confidence and knowledge to DEMAND their rights (Hale & Willis, 2007). Its ‘just the workers voices’đŁ (Rainbow Collective in Barker et al., 2025, np).
Screenshots from Udita.
In UDITA – workers take the mic đ! Collective action is key to taking down capitalism (McLaren, 2019). By finding and giving đ inspiration – ‘like the inspirational Ratna Miah’ (Hoskins in Barker et al., 2025, np), there is one overriding response: these people are ‘inspiring on a global level’ (ibid) đ. Inspiration is powerful âđœ cos it encourages the viewer to emulate the inspiring women in UDITA (Thrash and Elliot, 2003). And the best bit? It worked alongside other emotions. This is so sad. I’m so angry. This gives me hope (Season Bangla Drama in Barker et al., 2025, np).
Think of Nadya đ, Grannie đĄ, Ai Qin đââïž, the children đ§ of Primark, and the women đ§đœđ§đœđ§đœ of Dhaka.
Effective films ignite emotion. Now you know. Get out there and inspire change! âš
SOURCES
Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P., Stenholm, N., Strang, W. and Valo, T. (2025) Primark â On The Rack. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/?p=2655 last accessed 27 April 2025)
Aguigar, P., Vala, J., Correia, I. & Pereira, C. (2008) Justice in Our World and in that of Others: Belief in a Just World and Reactions to Victims. Social Justice Research 21(1), p. 50-68.
Allen, H., Heaume, E., Heeley, L., Hedger, R., Johnson, S., McGregor, O. and Webber, L. (2025). Ghosts. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/?p=10357 last accessed 27 April 2025)
Ananthanarayana, B. (2025) Untitled [Q&A video & transcript], GEO3123: Geographies of material culture. University of Exeter.
+28 sources
Aston, J. (2022) Interactive Documentary: Re-setting the Field. Interactive Film and Media Journal 2(4), p.7-18
Bannister, L. & Bergan, R. (2023) A timeline of UK trade and trade justice. London: Trade Justice Movement
Barker, T., Collier, J., Baker, A., Coppen, L. and Eve, H. (2025) UDITA (ARISE). followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/?p=1593 last accessed 27 April 2025)
Brown, G. & Pickerell, J. (2009) Space for emotion in the spcaes of activism. Emotion, space, & society 2, p.24-35
Callon, M. (1998) An essay on framing & overflowing: economic externalities revisited by sociology. The sociological review 46(1), p.244â269
Chellan, N. (2023) The life of capitalism. in his F/Ailing capitalism and the challenge of COVID-19. Leiden: Brill, p.180-216
Chouliaraki, L. (2010) Post-humanitarianism Huamitarian communication beyond a politics of pity. International journal of cultural studies 13(2), p.107-126
Cook et al, I. (2018) Inviting construction: Primark, Rana Plaza and Political LEGO. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43(3), p.477-495
Cook et al, I. (2019) A new vocabulary for culturalâeconomic geography? Dialogues in Human Geography 9(1), p.83-87
Cook et al, I. (2025) Mangetout. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed 27 April 2025)
Cook et al, I. (2002) Commodities: the DNA of capitalism. (https://followtheblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/commodities_dna.pdf last accessed 27 April 2025)
Dant, T. (2012) Mediating morality. in his Television and the moral imaginary. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 147-178
Davies, T.,(2022) Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom? Politics and Space 40(2), p.409-427
Duncombe, S. (2023) A Theory of Change for Artistic Activism. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81, p.260-268
Friedberg, S. (2004) The ethical complex of corporate food power. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22, p.513-531
Frome, J. (2014) Melodrama and the psychology of tears. Projections 8(1), p.23â40
Hale, A. & Willis, J. (2007) Women Working Worldwide: transnational networks, corporate social responsibility and action research. Global Networks 7(4), p.453-476
Hambley, A., King, E., Keogh, A., Renny-Smith, C., Callow, E., Thorogood, J. & Alloy, V. (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. followthethings.com (https://followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed 27 April 2025)
Kemp, D. (2025) Comparing disgust and sadness: examining the interaction of emotion and information in charity appeals. Journal of Social Marketing [online early], pp. 42-58.
McLaren, M. (2019) Global Gender Justice: Human Rights and Political Responsibility. Critical Horizons 20(2), p.127-144.
Micheletti, M. & Stolle, D. (2008) Fashioning social justice through political consumerism, capitalism and the internet. Cultural Studies 22(5), p.749-769
Nash, K. & Corner, J. (2016) Strategic impact documentary: contexts of production & social intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), p.227â242
Natter, W. & Jones III. J.P. (1993) Pets or meat: class, ideology & space in Roger & Me. Antipode 25(2), p.140-158
RyynÀnen, M., Kosonen, H. & Ylönen, S. (2023) From visceral to the aesthetic: tracing disgust in contemporary culture. in their (eds.) Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral. London: Routledge, p.3-16
Stolle, D. & Micheletti, M. (2013) Does political consumerism matter? Effectiveness and limits of political consumer activism repertoires. in their Political consumerism: global responsibility in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.204-243
Thrash, T. & Elliot, A. (2003) Inspiration as a Psychological Construct. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84(4), p.871-889
Wenzel, J. (2011) Consumption for the common good? Commodity biography film in an age of postconsumerism. Public culture 23(3), p.573-602
Blood, sweat & takeaways Girl model UDITA Mangetout
INGREDIENTS
INTENTIONS
Pop the bubble Cross cultures Show capitalist evils Tell the truth Teach economic geography Show what’s possible
TACTICS
Have a theory of change Choose an audience Make it familiar Bring managers into view Involve consumers Fund the unions Humanise workers Workers take the mic! Lie to tell the truth Silence your critics
RESPONSES
This is so sad Capitalism is sh*t I won’t buy it Liar! Fraud! It’s so badly mad Who to believe? I’m humming that music These people are inspiring
IMPACTS
Now I know Now we’re talking I shop differently now Corporations change Governments intervene Debts are paid off Can’t tell
“You can’t Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V resistance“
By Lucian Harford
IN BRIEF
Student Lucian Harford has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. He’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. He knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. He’s’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could he give? Well, it turns into a bit of a rant. He’s been riled up by these films and the ways that they’ve been discussed on their followthethings.com pages. He ends up giving some stark, unexpected advice. We can’t give you the spoiler here though.
More about this page.
We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?
When it escapes the cinema room and ambushes you in Aisle 3, Sainsburyâs, Exeter, EX1 3PF. Let me contextualise. December 2024. Deep in my nectar price era đ€, zigzagging Pinhoe Sainsburyâs. Iâm on a mission. Marx wouldâve hated me. Classic case of commodity fetishism (Cook et al., 2002).
Sainsbury’s Exeter store.
29th of March 2025. Day after my last Geographies of Material Culture seminar. Iâm back in Sainsburyâs. Innocent enough, right? Wrong. Aisle 3. Midway between the mangetout and the courgettes. Boom – my brain betrays me.
It whispers: âTescoâs our dear friend.â đ
I froze. Kenyan broccoli gave me side-eyes. Ghanaian pineapples look like theyâre organising a strike. Jamaican bananas are silently mourning my moral compass. đ It was no longer a food shop but a postcolonial reckoning under migraine-inducing strip lightingâŠâŠ..cheers (Cook and Harrison, 2003). Thanks, material culture films. You broke me. But like⊠in a good way? I guess consumption with a conscience is better than nothing (Wenzel, 2011). Now Iâm spiralling. If a film can do that to me (burrow into my nectar choices and trolley). Is that⊠âšeffectiveâš? đ€ Do you even know what âšeffectiveâš means? Hereâs a clue. Have a theory of change.
Screenshot from the Handbook.
No, itâs not just some academic buzzword. Itâs your ‘how’. HOW does ‘X’ lead to ‘Y’ (Duncombe, 2023). Think about it like a chain. Your activismâs intentions need the right tactics, as they likely to lead to specific responses and impacts. Example: If you want your filmâs response – IDK – to be ‘capitalism is sh*t‘ and its impact to be ‘I shop differently now‘ đ (or go bigger: corporations change!), then it needs the correct intentions and tactics to hopefully lead to this.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
Thatâs a theory of change 101! Easy, rightâŠâŠ.?? NOPE. Thats what REALLY pisses me off. đ€ â ïž Disclaimer: This might turn into a crazy rant â ïž
Right. Say you want to make a film to take down capitalism (slay). If thatâs where youâre starting, go back and watch Mark Phillips’ Mangetout (1997). It dropped right before the 1999 Battle of Seattle, a pivotal moment when people really started calling out the global trade injustice screwing over the Global South (Bannister and Bergan, 2023).
Mangetout popped the bubble as it was the âfirst time British viewers were confronted with their most popular supermarket, Tescoâ (Millar in Cook et al., 2025, np). And it crossed cultures of the đ«pea. From farm đżđŒ to shelf đŹđ§.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
It introduced Grannie Chabvundira, âa 25-year-old mangetout caterpillar inspectorâ (Philips in ibid), who drops the line: âlife is too hardâ (Mangetout, 2005 time 41.12), becuase of F***ing Tescoâs!!! đł
Screenshot of Grannie talking in Mangetout.
Unlike Grannie, Tesco manager Mark Dady was brought into view. On the farm, Mark and his team âwere treated like Godsâ (OâMally in Cook et al., 2025, np). âIt was sickeningâ (ibid). đ€ą
Screenshots from the Handbook.Screenshot of Mark Dady’s arrival at the farm where Grannie worked in Mangetout.
Afterwards, âTesco became evil [or sh*t]for meâ (Chapman in ibid). I too questioned my damn shopping habits and thought ‘I wonât buy it!’ â
Screenshots from the Handbook.
Seems a good impact? You might think, ‘to be âšeffectiveâš, I gotta do what Mangetout did’. Not so fast, young activist, itâs not that simple. đ Introducing Blessing. âChief mange-tout picker at Chiparaweâ (Hall in ibid). He has never been to Tesco.
Screenshot + quotation from Mangetout.
Hopefully, the penny has dropped for you as it did for me. Blessingâs life isnât anyoneâs to interpret. Thereâs no blueprint for âšeffectiveâš activism, no one path to impact. People, contexts, and strategies vary, too (Duncombe, 2024).
Itâs like me saying Mangetout existed to make JUST ME and YOU đ«” feel something. #Embarrassed #Selfish đ So. You should choose an audience. Nisbet and Aufderheide (2009) say mobilisation begins with specificity. Your film doesnât need everyone. Just the right people.
Screenshots from the Handbook.
Take Nick Broomfieldâs 2006 film Ghosts, it knew who to talk to. Its ‘X’ was to show capitalist evils and blow the lid off the Morecambe Bay disaster to âestablish our complicity as consumers in the workersâ fateâ (McCahill in Allen et al., 2025 np). đ«„
Take this scene. Read the subtitles! Ai Quin & her co-worker are in a Tesco store. Before they harvested cockles in Morecambe Bay, they’d picked spring onions Tesco. Ghosts ripped the packaging open and said: ‘Theyâre not just onions. Theyâre testimonies of struggle’ (Cook & Woodyer, 2012).
Ghosts âshowed the dark side of globalisationâ (Bradshaw in Allen et al., 2025, np). It didnât just say the politics of consumption are broken. It âmade for an uncomfortable viewingâ (Tinniswood in ibid), making Tinniswood feel globalisation’s fracture lines (Hartwick, 2000). đ€ Great! Now I know about âthe appalling circumstancesâ (Tang in Allen et al., 2025, np) of the Morecambe Bay disaster, and that Ghosts encouraged audience to donate momey to pay off the debts of the drowned workers’ famililes in China. A couple of ‘Ys’ for this film. đ
Screenshots from the Handbook.
That’s good impact, butâŠâŠ in my opinion … MORECAMBE BAY SHOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! đ€Ź
Iâm getting riled up. Letâs talk irony and absurdity. Ilha das Flores, is a 1989 pseudo-doc that teaches economic geography as âdeep as a punch in the stomachâ (@nacaotutumbaie3559 in Pavalow, 2025 np). Itâs about ‘capitalism, told through the story of a tomatoâ (Delaney, in ibid).
Screenshot from the Handbook
The film, particularly this scene at the end (read subtitles đ), made me feel like âan alien watching a documentary about inequality on Earthâ đœ (@Canalinfantilreinabowwfriends in ibid).
Screenshots from Ilha das Flores.
People raved! âWhat an incredible documentaryâ (@rosangelafigueiredo6082 in ibid), and it was crowned âthe best Brazilian short film ever madeâ (Anon in ibid)! đ Itâs haunting, clever, and people âremember it very wellâ (@AndersonPedron in ibid). Its impact? I canât tellâŠđ€·
Screenshot from the Handbook
What now? Let’s try another example. Your intention could be topop the bubble – because âwhen it comes to food, we are spoilt for choice, but would we feel the same if we knew the human cost?â (Anon in Clarke et al., 2025 np) – and your tactics could be to make it familiar and involve some consumers. ‘X’ clearly leads to ‘Y’?
Screenshots from the HandbookScreenshots from the Handbook.
This is what BBC 3âs Blood Sweat and Takeaways series did. It followed âsix typical young British food consumersâ (Cuthbertson in ibid) who were dumped into the sweat and steam of Southeast Asiaâs food production lines. One, â[Manos] was annoying from the first 5 minsâ (HairHolic in ibid) after kindly being hosted at a supply chain workerâs home.
Screenshot from Blood, sweat & takeaways.
Another, Olu, then body slams Manos into a glass wall in a tuna factory. đ«
Screenshot from Blood, sweat & takeaways.
It was like watching Love Island sweatshop edition! These consumers were insane! Honestly, it was âso excruciating that youâre tempted toâ (Ferguson in ibid) turn off this badly made âscripted drama bsâ (keikurooka5105 in ibid) đ€Ź.
NĂ„ls (2018) was right. By involving the wrong consumers/characters, you risk your audience sitting back partially detaching, watching suffering like itâs another episodeâŠ..or worse fully detaching.
Tactic screenshots from the HandbookResponse screenshots from the Handbook
Need proof? Read below đŹ đđ
I know its a little off topic but does anyone know what song it is at 36.14, I really like it (Source: hyperventil8 2012 np link).
The song is called âWe Walkâ by The Ting Tings (Source: TopshelferDude 2012 np link).
Does anyone know the song @ 53:50 i want to know please reply D: (Source: theMarcus4131 2012 np link).
Song is âKidsâ by MGMT (Source: TopshelferDude 2012 np link).
F**k you for putting Chemical Brothers and Justice on such a sh*tty documentary (Source: anevershiftingsun 2012 np link).
Discussion of Blood, sweat & takeaways in Clarke et al (2025, np).
Okay, I need to breathe. You need to breathe. This rant is not over. â Letâs talk about another example. And lies. Yes – LIES. Your doc could lie to tell the truth. Sorry, not sorry. đ
Screenshot from the Handbook.
Stam (2016) said it. Documentaries are not âpureâ, never were. Never will be. đ«ą Take Primark: On the Rack. The 2008 documentary followed a thing (a sequin top) by using âhidden camerasâ (McDougall in Adley et al., 2025 np) to uncover âthe use of child labour in the finishing of cheap clothesâ (ibid). Stam would love this đ€Ł
Screenshots from Primark – on the rack.
This was connective aesthetics – grabbing your senses, stirring emotions, making you realise that every time you throw on a ÂŁ3 Primark tee (Cook et al., 2000). But youâre also watching âthree boys in a Bangalore workshop testing stitchingâ (Anon in Adley et al., 2025 np). So this crashed headfirst into the very myth it challenged. đ And Primark tried to silence its critics. They cried LIAR, FRAUD!!!
Screenshots from the Handbook.
The âfootage could not be genuineâ (Primark in ibid). Primark even set up a website: âwww.primarkresponse.comâ, showing âwhat Primark had to do to expose this false claim and clear our nameâ (ibid). What a MESS! Now. Over to one commenter, Siddy_06 đ„Č : ‘What are we meant to dooo?! I wish someone would tell me, If I get what I would buy from another shop, who can guarantee they are not doing the same thing?’ (in ibid). YES, SIDDY_06. SCREAM IT. LOUDER. FOR. THE. PEOPLE. IN. THE. BACK. Who to believe!!!!!???? đ
Screenshot from the Handbook.
Levine (2007) would probably argue that SIDDY_06âs scepticism wasnât just ignorance or rejection – it was a complex, socially driven response to fear, stigma, and mistrust of authority in the trade justice movement. Just when youâve understood that. Now, enter Wallace Heim (2003) who says the power of a documentary lies in sowing seeds for future rethinking – quiet mindset changes that bloom into something bigger.
Thanks for the mind f*ck Wall-Ace. But WTF is one meant to do! Scatter âšeffectiveâš seeds into the wind and hope something grows (see Duncombe 2024)!? ActuallyâŠ.. maybe Wall-Ace has a point. đ If your film just tells the truth and holds it up to the light, maybe beautiful âšeffectivenessâš will bloom. Honesty is the best policy, isnât it?
TBF, the film Uditashows whatâs possible by telling the truth. Screw the official story đ„±. The real truth lies in those who live and tell their stories (Zeng, 2017).
Screenshotted intentions from the Handbook.
Udita plunges you into the chaos before, during, and after the Rana Plaza disaster to reveal âan extraordinary and raw insight into the lives of the female factory workers in Bangladeshâ (Posh in Barker et al., 2025 np). It humanises garment workers đđœ by finding their unions âđœ and letting them take the mic đ€.
Screenshotted tactics from the Handbook.Screenshots from UDITA.
It was âheart breakingâ (McCulloch in ibid) to watch; I know how they feel. This is so sad. âMy heart goes out to the aged grandmother who lost her two daughters at Rana Plazaâ (Schon-Meier in ibid). đą But wait – pause the sadness for a second. âA lot of films and articles portray garment workers as victimsâ (Minney in Ibid), but in Udita, these people are âinspiring on a global levelâ (Hoskins in ibid)!
Screenshotted responses from the Handbook.
OMG â THEN – âTrade unionists, workersâ rights activists, and local community groups will gatherâ (Salmon in ibid). NOW WEâRE TALKING. BOOM! đ„ ! Governments started intervening! There was an âacceleration in legislative change in Franceâ (Evans in ibid) because âRana Plaza was covered by newspapers, petitions of NGOS, film, and documentariesâ (ibid). Like this.
Screenshotted impacts from the Handbook.
There’s a well evidenced ‘X’ to ‘Y’ sequence here. You intend to show what’s possiblewith trade justice activism and totell the truth about workers’ involvement in it. You use tactics that can humanise them, by finding their unions and letting them take the mic. This could lead to audiences responding with sadness about their struggles and/or inspiration about their achievements. And your film’s impacts could simply be the talk that it sparks about these tradwe justice struggles and the chance that – added to other activists’ work on this topic – this could help encourage governments to intervene.
But WAIT! â Donât grab your camera just yet. Time to pop your bubble again (for the last time). Just cus it worked in Bangladesh doesnât mean you can Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V resistance (Demos, 2010). Grassroots power matters, but remember MorecambeâŠ..? Rana Plaza…? They should have never F***ing happened in the first place!! đ€Ź. NGL, when the whole global economy runs on exploitation, chasing âšdocumentary effectivenessâš just looks like damage control (Harvey, 2010).
Now this is … awkward. After all this ranting, yes technically all the films I told you about were effective … just in their own ways. #AWKWARD đ€«đ«Ł
HOWEVER! Hereâs my theory of change for you. To be effective in the trade justice movement DON’T make a documentary. đ Mic â Drop đ€ Put the camera down. Take your budget, kit, and big activist dreams. Give them to the unions, co-ops, and grassroots groups already knee-deep in it. Do it for Grannie & Blessing in Mangetout. For Ai Qin & coworkers in Ghosts. For the boys in Primark: On the Rack. For the women in Udita. Supply chain workers donât need retakes to show struggle. They live it! đ
Rant Over.
Screenshot from Mangetout.Screenshot from the Handbook.
SOURCES
Patricia Aguiar, Jorge Vala, Isabel Correia & Cicero Pereira (2008) Justice in our world & in that of others: belief in a just world & reactions to victims. Social Justice Research, 21, 50-68.
Theo Barker, Joe Collier, Annabel Baker, Lizzie Coppen & Henry Eve (2025) UDITA (ARISE). (followthethings.com/udita.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Clive Barnett & David Land (2007) Geographies of generosity: beyond the âmoral turnâ. Geoforum 38(6), 1065-1075.
Tim Bartley & Curtis Child (2014) Shaming the corporation: the social production of targets & the anti-sweatshop movement. American sociological review 79(4) 653â679
Gavin Brown & Jenny Pickerill (2009) Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Spaceand Society 2(1), 24-35
Stella Bruzzi (2018) From innocence to experience: the representation of children in four documentary films. Studies in documentary film 12(3), 208â224
Rosemary Campbell-Stephens (2021) Educational leadership & the Global Majority: decolonising narratives. Springer Nature.
Doyle Canning & Patrick Reinsborough (2012) Lead with sympathetic characters. (https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/lead-with-sympathetic-characters last accessed 2 May 2025)
Lilie Chouliaraki (2010) Post-humanitarianism: humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(2), 107â126.
Harriet Clarke, Ben Thomson, Victoria Bartley, Katie Ibbetson-Price, Emma Christie-Miller & Harry Schofield (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. (followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Ian Cook et al (2025) Mangetout. (followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Ian Cook & Tara Woodyer (2012) Lives of things. in Eric Sheppard, Trevor Barnes & Jamie Peck (eds) The Wiley Blackwell companion to economic geography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 226-241
Amy Coplan (2011) Understanding empathy: its features & effects. in Amy Complan & Peter Goldie (eds.) Empathy: philosophical & psychological perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2-18
Benjamin CuïŹ, Sarah Brown, Laura Taylor & Douglas Howat (2016) Empathy: a review of the concept. Emotion Review, 8(2), 144-153.
Stephen Duncombe (2023) A theory of change for artistic activism. The journal of aesthetics and artcriticism 81(2), 260-268
Stephen Duncombe (2024) Ăffect: the affect & effect of artistic activism. New York: Fordham University Press
Alice Evans (2020) Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains. Review of International Political Economy, 27(3), 658-685
Adele Hambly, Elaine King, Andy Keogh, Camilla Renny-Smith, Ed Callow, Joe Thorogood & Vicky Alloy (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. (followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Irene Hadiprayitno and Sine Bagatur (2022) Trade Justice, Human Rights, and the Case of Palm Oil. in Elena V. Shabliy, Martha J. Crawford & Dmitry Kurochkin (eds) Energy Justice:Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 157-172
Wallace Heim (2003) Slow activism: homelands, love & the lightbulb. Sociological review 51(2), 183-202
Deena Kemp (2025) Comparing disgust and sadness: examining the interaction of emotion & information in charity appeals. Journal of Social Marketing (online early).
Roman Krznaric (2007) Empathy and the Art of Living. Oxford: Blackbird Collective
Margaret A. McLaren (2019) Global gender justice: human rights & political responsibility. Critical horizons 20(2), 127-144
Daniel Miller (2001) The poverty of morality. Journal of Consumer Culture, 1(2), 225â243.
Jan NĂ„ls (2018) The diïŹculty of eliciting empathy in documentary. In Catalin Brylla & Mette Kramer (eds) Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 135-148.
Kate Nash & John Corner (2016) Strategic impact documentary: contexts of production & social intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), 227â242
Tony Roberts & Chris Lunch (2015) Participatory video. In Robin Mansell and Peng Hwa Ang (eds) The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society. London: Wiley, 1-6.
Tillman Wagner, Richard Lutz & Barton Weitz (2009) Corporate hypocrisy: Overcoming the threat of inconsistent corporate social responsibility perceptions. Journal of Marketing 73(6), 77-91
Erik Olin Wright (2015) How to be an anticapitalist today. Jacobin, 12 February
Blood, sweat & takeaways Girl model UDITA Mangetout
INGREDIENTS
INTENTIONS
Improve pay & conditions Show capitalist evils Change citizen behaviour
TACTICS
Tell the truth Have a theory of change Humanise workers Encourage empathy Encourage feminist solidarities Find a character Include suffering kids Spend some time Workers take the mic! Bring managers into view Hold ’em accountable Blame, shame & guilt Encourage a boycott Place things carefully Make a website Stage a Q&A
RESPONSES
I know how they feel This is so sad Capitalism is sh*t Wow đ„ WTF? I’m so angry Oh shut up
IMPACTS
Now we’re talking Activism is inspired Activists are recruited Corporations change Workers’ pay & conditions improve
“Yes, itâs small. But thatâs the point“
By Sophie Burden
IN BRIEF
Student Sophie Burden has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. She’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. She knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. She’s been asked to imagine meeting a filmmaker who’s planning a new trade justice documentary. What advice could she give? Empathy is your best friend, but don’t get sloppy. Blame the right thing. And play the long game.
More about this page.
We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?
So, you want to make a trade justice documentary that really makes a diïŹerence?
Great idea!
But letâs get one thing straight: eïŹective doesnât just mean making your audience cry into their ÂŁ5 Primark hoodie. Thatâs easy. The hard bit? Sparking activism that actually changes things. Youâve got to wade into global tradeâs murky world and make a dent, however small, to improve pay andconditions for the workers who keep it running.
Thatâs the heart of trade justice activism. It targets the deep unfairness baked into international trade – the fact that 85% of the world hustles to keep a privileged few comfy (Campbell Stephens, 2021).
Itâs about telling the truth: exposing how the global economy puts corporate profit over human rights and workersâ dignity (Hadiprayitno & BaÄatur, 2022, Miller, 2001). And asking: whoâs really winning here?
Spoiler: itâs not the workers.
The goal? Democratise trade governance – fairness, sustainability, accountability. Your film canât just show suïŹering; itâs got to hit harder. Rip back the curtain on capitalist evils and spark reflection that changes citizen behaviour.
And how do you get there? Enter your âš theory of changeâš . Duncombe (2023) calls it the Artistic Activism model: real change happens when activism blends emotion, ideas, and action. A great trade justice documentary makes us feel (empathy, anger), think (about justice, fairness, solidarity), and do (push for change).
Hereâs how you make that happenâŠ
Empathy is your best friend – but donât get sloppy
You donât just want audiences to witness suïŹering – you want them to feel it. Thatâs when you get under their skin.
Empathy is the magic sauce. âA pathway to audience engagementâ (Nash & Corner, 2016). But fragile. Your mission? Make people care, not just pity. As Krznaric (2007) puts it, true empathy is an imaginative leap into someone elseâs world.
But if all you spark is tears and a shrug, youâve missed your moment. Empathy without direction? Dead end. Turn that feeling into something stronger: encourage [feminist] solidarities.
So how? First tactic: find a character. Or a few!
Canning & Reinsborough (2012) spell it out – personal stories are what hook people in and encourage empathy. NĂ„ls (2018) adds: we need full human backstories, not snapshots. Dreams, struggles, strength. Faces, not faceless crowds.
That said – choose your characters wisely! Cough, CoughâŠ..Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. Six Brits dropped into Southeast Asian factories to âlift the veil on voiceless workersâ (Rees, 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). But my standout memory of episode one: Olu, the bodybuilder, brawling in a tuna đ factory and smashing a window đ„ . Iconic.. for all the wrong reasons. And wow, did viewers have thoughts t. âIt was ruined by a fightâ (Anon, 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). âOur greatnation couldnât have chosen worse ambassadorsâ (Whitelaw, 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). Yeah. Not quite the âtakeawayâ they were going for. đŹ
Screenshots from Blood, sweat & takeaways (centre: from the fight between Olu & Manos)
Bonus tactic: include suïŹering kids. Brutal but eïŹective. Bruzzi (2018) and Aguiar et al. (2008) show nothing hits harder than childhood innocence wrecked by adult-made systems. Thatâs emotional dynamite. đŁ
Then: spend some time with workers. Humanise them. Thatâs how you swap sympathy for real empathy. Cook & Woodyer (2012) say good films âre-attachâ workers to fetishised products, showing real people with struggles and strength. Slow it down, keep the footage raw (CuïŹ et al., 2016). Show whole lives – not just snapshots.
Screenshots of British cast members in Blood, Sweat & takeaways empathising with their Indonesian host at home in the city and visiting her son in the countryside.
And when empathy lands? The classic: This is so sad. âItâs really sadâ (CToppa, 2022, in Clarke et al., 2025). âMade me sadâ (Season Bangla Drama, 2015, in Barker et al., 2025). People hook in and canât shake it (Brown & Pickerill, 2009). Sadness sparks reflection (Kemp, 2025) – a win, but it’s only step one. As Chouliaraki (2010) warns, too much victimhood risks sliding into pity. We donât want grief tourists or white saviours (McLaren, 2019). We want viewers moved to stand with, not just cry for, workers. Encourage empathy đ€Encourage [feminist] solidarities.
One solution? Workers take the mic. đ€ Participatory filmmaking, as Roberts & Lunch (2015) explain, lets workers represent themselves – as agents, not victims.
Enter Udita: the blueprint. Five years, no Western narrator, no saviours. Just Bangladeshi garment workers telling their own stories. Factory collapse, unimaginable loss, marches, unionising, fighting back. Raw. Unfiltered. Their pain, their determination – it was contagious. Henriksen (2015, in Barker et al., 2025) nails it: âThere are no passive victims. Only men and women who fight for their rights.” đȘ
Screenshots from UDITA showing the Rana Plaza ruins & workers’ protests.
So yes – encourage empathy.
But keep your eyes on the prize: empathy opens the door; solidarity kicks it down.
Blame the right thing
Right! Weâve ruïŹed some feathers now. Emotions are high, eyes are wide. But the real question: whoâs to blame for all this pain?
Spoiler: not the consumer. â
Weâve all seen the blame, shame and guilt tactic in action. The classic move: âLook at your cheap T-shirt! Look what youâve done!â
Sure, the thinking is noble – let guilt spark change (Barnett & Land, 2007). But in practice? It flops.
Guilt paralyses, triggers defensiveness, and sends audiences straight to ‘oh shut up‘ mode (Sandlin & Milam, 2008; McLaren, 2019).
Take Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. Guilt wasnât the goal – but when you show British supermarkets and reel oïŹ stats about how much tuna we guzzle? It hit a nerve. As Simon (2009, in Clarke et al., 2025) groaned: âNow this programme wants to make me feel guilty about eatingtinned tuna – one of the few stress-free meal options I thought I had left.â Me? Smug vegetarian mode activated: popcorn out, blaming my fish-loving friends. Not my problem.
Totally missing the point.
The message? Lost for me + Simon. Swapped for a dinner-time blame game.
And guilt-tripping? Not just unhelpful – downright unfair.
Sure, you couldencourage viewers to boycott the product.
And resist endless marketing. And fight social pressure. And not shop like their friends. And spend more cash (but only on the right brands). And spot greenwashing. And cross-check the supply chain. And decode labels. And dig into corporate reports. Perhaps a degree in ethical consumption just to be sure. đ
Fair? Yeah ⊠no.
So, filmmaker: drop the guilt. If your film makes me feel like the villain? Iâm out before the credits roll.
Instead. Pinpoint the villains and hold ’em accountable.
This is where your documentary punches up. âđœ
Weâre talking corporations, governments, whole supply chains – the big players cashing in while workers sweat it out.
Your filmâs job? Expose hypocrisies, rip open empty promises, and hit em where it hurts: reputation. Corporations love their glossy ethics reports – but Wagner et al. (2020) are clear: when words clash with reality, trust collapses. Your audience needs to see those cracks.
Expose. Humiliate. Shame. Them. (Bartley & Child, 2014). đ€ Mangetout nailed it. A wild ride for a humble pea: zooming between smug Brits at dinner parties and Zimbabwean fields where workers sweat for pennies. The kicker? Tescoâs buyer struts in like royalty, barking orders while workers beam – grateful for crumbs from the kingâs table. A clever tactic: bring a manager into view – a villain. And it landed: âTesco became âevilâ for me ⊠when I saw [this] BBC2 documentary back in 1997â (Chapman 2010, in Cook et al 2025). Reputational damage delivered.
Screenshots from Mangetout, including Tesco buyer Mark Dady.
But donât stop at brands. Zoom out.
Greedy supermarkets? A symptom. Capitalism = the disease đž – the âinequality-enhancing machineâ (Wright, 2015) that keeps the whole circus spinning. Mangetout gives us a peaâs-eye view of global capitalism – bosses, farmers, consumers, trapped in a rigged game. McLaren (2019) warns, if you stop at human sob-stories without digging into the structures – you risk propping up the very hierarchies you set out to challenge. No pressure đ
Your real win: not fixing corporations overnight, but shifting how citizens see them – and the broken system behind them. Harder to trust, harder to excuse, harder to ignore.
You want anger. âIâM SO ANGRYâ đĄ . Not that useless guilt-ridden kind – something better.
Slow, collective, empathic anger (Coplan, 2011). (Wink wink: thank yourself for planting those solidarity seeds earlier.) One Udita viewer nailed it: âIt made me angry⊠United We Standâ (Season Bangla Drama, 2015 in Barker et al., 2025). Righteous fire aimed at the real culprits.
Capitalism is sh*t.
Hereâs where Iris Young (2003) comes in clutch: itâs not about guilt – itâs political responsibility. Weâre all tangled in this mess by everyday participation. Real change = Collective action. Pushing governments, corporations, the whole rigged game.
So letâs drop the tired âconsumer blameâ narrative. Your audience? Theyâre citizens, workers, voters, activists – with power way beyond their wallets (Hadiprayitno & BaÄatur, 2021).
The long game
So, after all that righteous anger⊠change? Itâs not coming fast. Sorry. But donât lose hope. This is where the real magic kicks in.
Sadness fades. Anger cools. But conversations? They ripple.đ§
Thatâs what turns a trade justice doc from a one-oïŹ gut punch into a long-haul political tool. Done right, these films slide into the cultural bloodstream – sparking awkward dinner-table debates, furious WhatsApps, late-night Googling.
Tiny shifts that start tipping the scales.
Heim (2003) calls it slow activism: quiet, persistent, woven through everyday life. No megaphones, no instant wins – but sticky + powerful.
Girl Model has no neat resolution, but it haunted. âI watched this movie a week ago and I cannot for the life of me get it out of my headâ (Zippy, 2013 in Hambly et al., 2025). The dream: a film that gnaws and wonât let go. Wow đ„ WTF?
Turbo-charge those ripples! Nash & Corner (2016) say: stage Q&As, oïŹer follow-ups, create spaces where people donât just feel but figure out whatâs next. Place things carefully.
Like Blood, Sweat and Takeaways. The BBC made a public web forum; viewers swapped tips, vented, planned. A âhub for people⊠discussing what we can do about itâ (Christie-Miller, 2010 in Clarke et al., 2025). Now weâre taking.
Yes, itâs small. But thatâs the point. Ripples grow networks, cement injustices in public memory.
And sometimes? They spark real-world wins. Activism is inspired.
Corporations can change. Mangetout + advocacy groups helped push Tesco into the Ethical Trading Initiative. Activists can be recruited. Girl Model saw one model-turned-activist pushing for legal reform.
Activism comes in all shapes: unionising, voting, campaigning, piling on pressure. More points of attack, stronger the punch. As Young (2003) reminds us: weâre all actors in this tangled system, each holding a sliver of responsibility.
The goal? Workers pay and conditionsimprove. But real change is slow, messy, and hard to pin down (LeBaron et al., 2022). No quick wins. Still, it beats flimsy âimpactâ stickers corporations love to flash and bury (Evans, 2020; Bohyn, 2025).
You wonât topple capitalism with a camera. But you can expose its cracks, pressure corporations to clean up, and – crucially – nurture a culture that refuses to forget. Wright (2015) spells it out: canât topple it? Tame it (regulate). Escape it (build alternatives). Erode it (grow co-ops, unions).
Change is a marathon, not a sprint. Your film? One hell of a starting gun. đ„
SOURCES
Patricia Aguiar, Jorge Vala, Isabel Correia & Cicero Pereira (2008) Justice in our world & in that of others: belief in a just world & reactions to victims. Social Justice Research, 21, 50-68.
Theo Barker, Joe Collier, Annabel Baker, Lizzie Coppen & Henry Eve (2025) UDITA (ARISE). (followthethings.com/udita.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Clive Barnett & David Land (2007) Geographies of generosity: beyond the âmoral turnâ. Geoforum 38(6), 1065-1075.
Tim Bartley & Curtis Child (2014) Shaming the corporation: the social production of targets & the anti-sweatshop movement. American sociological review 79(4) 653â679
Gavin Brown & Jenny Pickerill (2009) Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Spaceand Society 2(1), 24-35
Stella Bruzzi (2018) From innocence to experience: the representation of children in four documentary films. Studies in documentary film 12(3), 208â224
Rosemary Campbell-Stephens (2021) Educational leadership & the Global Majority: decolonising narratives. Springer Nature.
Doyle Canning & Patrick Reinsborough (2012) Lead with sympathetic characters. (https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/lead-with-sympathetic-characters last accessed 2 May 2025)
Lilie Chouliaraki (2010) Post-humanitarianism: humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 3(2), 107â126.
Harriet Clarke, Ben Thomson, Victoria Bartley, Katie Ibbetson-Price, Emma Christie-Miller & Harry Schofield (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. (followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Ian Cook et al (2025) Mangetout. (followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Ian Cook & Tara Woodyer (2012) Lives of things. in Eric Sheppard, Trevor Barnes & Jamie Peck (eds) The Wiley Blackwell companion to economic geography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 226-241
Amy Coplan (2011) Understanding empathy: its features & effects. in Amy Complan & Peter Goldie (eds.) Empathy: philosophical & psychological perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2-18
Benjamin CuïŹ, Sarah Brown, Laura Taylor & Douglas Howat (2016) Empathy: a review of the concept. Emotion Review, 8(2), 144-153.
Stephen Duncombe (2023) A theory of change for artistic activism. The journal of aesthetics and artcriticism 81(2), 260-268
Alice Evans (2020) Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains. Review of International Political Economy, 27(3), 658-685
Adele Hambly, Elaine King, Andy Keogh, Camilla Renny-Smith, Ed Callow, Joe Thorogood & Vicky Alloy (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. (followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed 2 May 2025)
Irene Hadiprayitno and Sine Bagatur (2022) Trade Justice, Human Rights, and the Case of Palm Oil. in Elena V. Shabliy, Martha J. Crawford & Dmitry Kurochkin (eds) Energy Justice:Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 157-172
Wallace Heim (2003) Slow activism: homelands, love & the lightbulb. Sociological review 51(2), 183-202
Deena Kemp (2025) Comparing disgust and sadness: examining the interaction of emotion & information in charity appeals. Journal of Social Marketing (online early).
Roman Krznaric (2007) Empathy and the Art of Living. Oxford: Blackbird Collective
Margaret A. McLaren (2019) Global gender justice: human rights & political responsibility. Critical horizons 20(2), 127-144
Daniel Miller (2001) The poverty of morality. Journal of Consumer Culture, 1(2), 225â243.
Jan NĂ„ls (2018) The diïŹculty of eliciting empathy in documentary. In Catalin Brylla & Mette Kramer (eds) Cognitive Theory and Documentary. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 135-148.
Kate Nash & John Corner (2016) Strategic impact documentary: contexts of production & social intervention. European journal of communication 31(3), 227â242
Tony Roberts & Chris Lunch (2015) Participatory video. In Robin Mansell and Peng Hwa Ang (eds) The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society. London: Wiley, 1-6.
Tillman Wagner, Richard Lutz & Barton Weitz (2009) Corporate hypocrisy: Overcoming the threat of inconsistent corporate social responsibility perceptions. Journal of Marketing 73(6), 77-91
Erik Olin Wright (2015) How to be an anticapitalist today. Jacobin, 12 February
Ilha das Fores Girl model Mangetout Blood, sweat & takeaways UDITA Ghosts Primark – on the rack
INGREDIENTS
INTENTIONS
Pop the bubble Show capitalist evils End violence & exploitation
TACTICS
Follow the people Flip the script Spend some time Tell the truth Show both sides Make it funny Workers take the mic Juxtapose extremes Hold ’em accountable
RESPONSES
These consumers are insane I laughed my ass off This is disgusting Guilty as charged I gotta do something Silence your critics
IMPACTS
Corporations are punished
“Just showing up – again and again – can be the start of something.”
By Jock MacKinlay
IN BRIEF
Student Jock MacKinlay has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. He’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. He knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. He reflects on what he’s learned about how these films work and what they can do. He centres capitalism’s commodification of objects and people, how filmmakers and their subjects can turn grief into power, and how this work can gently and persuasively unravel the logic of global trade.
More about this page.
We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called The ginger trail). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?
What makes a trade justice documentary effective isnât just what it shows – itâs how it brings you into complicity. A tomato in Ilha das Flores. A child raising a Tesco flag in Mangetout. These arenât just images. Theyâre arguments. And they donât plead for change – they implicate. Iâve come to believe that the most powerful trade justice documentaries donât persuade. They disrupt. They use irony, juxtaposition, grief, silence, repetition, and time to make global injustice unmissable – and unbearable.
Across this reflection, alongside learning from follow-the-things (2025) I draw on seven films from the module and analyse their techniques using ingredient phrases, emotional reactions, and viewer responses drawn from followthethings.com. I explore how films confront trade injustice – the structural exploitation baked into global supply chains that privilege profit and ownership over worker dignity (Chellan, 2023; Cook et al., 2002). Because if a documentary wants to challenge that system, it canât just inform. It has to implicate. Thatâs the kind of effectiveness Iâm tracing here
Commodification: objects and people
One way in which trade justice documentaries can be effective is by showing capitalist evils not through spectacle, but through logic – systems that make exploitation feel routine. Ilha das Flores made me laugh at first. The narration traced a tomatoâs journey from plantation to middleman to supermarket shelf. It was absurd in its neatness – every movement tracked, measured, rationalised. But then came the landfill. The tomato was discarded, fed to a pig, and finally scavenged by children. By juxtaposing extremes, the film folds waste đź, animal đ, and human đđœ into the same supply chain. One viewer said: âI just felt like being sick⊠people who have to sift through garbageto find foodâ (Redroom Studios in Pavalow, 2025).đ«Ł I felt the same – but not because of the image. This is disgusting, I thought, because it felt so coldly logical – sicking not in tragedy, but routine.
Screenshots from Ilha das Flores.
RyynĂ€nen et al. (2022) argue that disgust isnât just emotional – itâs a moral alarm that ruptures what we accept as normal. This wasnât an image designed to horrify. It became horrifying because I recognised it too late. Bloomfield and Sangalang (2014) describe juxtaposition as a âvisual argumentâ – a structure that forces the viewer to connect what theyâd rather keep apart. The film doesnât explain the logic. It makes you feel it. Chellan (2023) helped me make sense of that discomfort: capitalism isnât just cruel by accident. Itâs a system that âprivileges ownership over life.â Ilha das Flores doesnât accuse. It implicates.
Girl Model continues this logic through quiet observation. Nadya, thirteen, is sized, and measured. Thereâs no voiceover. No commentary. Just a girl turned product. By following the people, the film shows how global capitalism doesnât just move things – it moves bodies. âThey are commodities.Easily replaceableâ đȘ (Dowling in Hambly et al., 2025). I agreed – and thatâs what disturbed me.đ Wenzel (2011) calls this a âcommodity biographyâ: a mapped transformation from subject to stock. I didnât feel pity. I wasnât the only one who felt guilty as charged, others agreed with me on followthethings.com âeveryperson⊠[is] a collaborator or perpetrator of a⊠soul-sucking enterpriseâ (Anon, 2012e in Hambly et al., 2025). Not because I caused this – but because we all see models in every advert ever!!! Young (2003) calls this political responsibility: the moment you realise youâre inside the structure.
Screenshots from Girl Model.
Whose pain are we watching?
If Section 1 left me wondering why I hadnât noticed the violence sooner, these films show what happens when trade justice documentaries make that distance impossible to ignore – when they pop the bubble between comfort and consequence. In Mangetout, we begin at a Home Counties dinner party. Guests sip wine, eating mangetout, and debate âfairnessâ like itâs an abstract puzzle. Then, without warning, we cut to a Grannie, a Zimbabwean mangetout sorter discussing her suicide attempt. Sheâs calm. Precise. Not pleading – just speaking. By showing both sides, the film draws an initial equivalence between Global North opinion and Global South reality – but then cracks it open. One reviewer called it âthe short and simple annals of the poor intercut with achampagne-fuelled dinner partyâ (Banks-Smith 1997 in Cook et al, 2025)
Screenshots from Mangetout.
I agreed – but for me, it wasnât just contrast. It was interruption. Thatâs what makes this technique effective – it shifts focus from guilt to voice. It asked who gets the last word. Cook et al. (2002) describe commodities as âeconomic DNAâ – the buried trace of hands and histories. Mangetout doesnât just reference that. It shows it. The peas arenât just served. Theyâre stitched to lives. Thatâs what it means to pop the bubble: to let the dinner table speak back. Valenti (2020) warns that âbalanceâ can become distortion when all voices arenât equally free to speak. And by flipping thescript, the film resists pity. The worker isnât reduced to pain. Her voice carries its own narrative – one that didnât need translation. Siddiqi (2009) calls this a refusal of âglobal moralismâ – a rejection of pity and a reclamation of voice, where workers donât need saving, just listening.
Blood, Sweat & Takeaways overwhelmed me in a different way. The British volunteers are exhausted. They break down in the factories. Cry into their hands. Scream at each other. Theseconsumers are insane, I thought – not because they couldnât cope, but because their breakdowns became the story. One reviewer nailed it: âignorance and insouciance is the important flavour hereâŠthe BBC has carefully sifted all the good apples out to leave us only with the spoiled onesâ (Sutcliffe 2009 in Clarke et al., 2025). Exactly. It didnât feel like we were watching transformation. It felt like punishment – and the workers became props in that performance. Wood (2020) calls this âemotional optimisationâ: where Western pain takes centre stage, and the system itself fades. It left me frustrated, not moved.
Screenshots from Blood, Sweat & Takeaways.
Grief into power
But not every film works through contrast. Some stay – showing what happens after the worst has already occurred. One way trade justice documentaries can be effective is by seeking to endviolence and exploitation not through shock, but through duration – by staying with grief long enough for it to organise. In UDITA, we see two children walking through the wreckage of Rana Plaza. They see clothing in the rubble, labelled. Each tag still reads âMade in Bangladesh.â Later, their grandmother Razia stands among a crowd of women, fists raised, chanting for justice. One reviewer captured this transformation: â[Razia] now has to care for her daughterâs children⊠theywalk over the rubble⊠each one has a Western labelâ (Anon 2015b in Barker et al., 2025). I kept noticing those labels. They werenât just part of the debris – they were the thread connecting Raziaâs grief to my comfort. That scene broke me đ« đ- not because it was loud, but because it wasnât. Thatâs what makes it effective: it invites presence, not pity.
Screenshots from UDITA.
Thatâs why this film works. It doesnât just drop in to extract stories. It spends some time. Filmed over five years, UDITA captures the slow work of building trust – between filmmaker and subject, between worker and union. Robertson (2005) calls this âpresence as methodâ – not just seeing, but staying. The camera doesnât race. It follows Razia at a walking pace – into homes, into the streets, into grief. Evans (2020) describes this kind of duration as a way to break the âdespondency trapâ: when change feels impossible, just showing up – again and again – can be the start of something – exactly!!
Ghosts struck differently. The camera doesnât narrate. It just watches Ai Qin, a real undocumented migrant worker, re-enact the moment of her survival. She stands on the roof of a white van as the tide rises, calling her son from the very bay where others drowned. I gotta do something, I thought. But it wasnât guilt. It was something closer to reverence. âI wonât easily forget the shot of Ai QinâŠ[North Sea] waves about to engulf the van⊠making a final call to her sonâ (Sandhu 2007 in Allen et al, 2025). I couldn’t agree more – because it explained the scene, but because it admitted how unforgettable it was. That final call felt like it was for us. Richardson-Ngwenya and Richardson (2013) describe this as ethical representation: workers take the mic not through speech alone, but through presence. The silence becomes the point.
Screenshots from Ghosts.
Unravel capitalism
But grief doesnât just stay personal. Some films turn their lens toward systems – and ask who gets to speak when the damage is done. Effective trade justice documentaries aim to hold corporationsaccountable â – not just by criticising them, but by showing how they fall short of ethical practice. In Mangetout, thereâs a scene that almost dares you to laugh: the Tesco flag being raised, while schoolchildren sing the Tesco song đ¶đ¶đ¶ âTesco our dear friendâ đ¶đ¶đ¶ and dance the Tesco dance. âItâs not just bizarre,â I remember thinking.âItâs dystopian.â đœđœ One reviewer described it bluntly: âThe Tesco flag was raised while children sang the Tesco song and danced the Tescodanceâ (Holt 1997 in Cook et al., 2025). Itâs funny until you realise the brand is being treated like a country – with rituals, pledges, even propaganda. The scene never tells us what to think. It just lets the lie speak.
Screenshots from Mangetout.
Thatâs the tactic: tell the truth by letting performance unravel itself. Bartley & Child (2014) argue that when corporations become the subject of focused critique – especially ones wrapped in ethical branding – theyâre vulnerable to targeted shaming. Mangetout never yells. It just watches. The effect is stronger than accusation. Cook et al. (2015) describe this kind of visual strategy as one that turns âspectacle into satireâ – without needing to say a word. They make it funny. The scene made me flinch – Tesco, this is disgusting. Then I laughed my ass off. Then I felt guilty as charged. So effective – because it didnât instruct. It implicated. It made me ask why this had ever felt normal.
Primark: On the Rack hits differently. It shows what happens when corporations donât just deny wrongdoing – they try to silence their critics. In response to the BBCâs undercover footage surrounding child labourers, Primark didnât quietly back away. They launched an aggressive counter-narrative. âMillions of people have been deceived by Panorama,â one spokesperson declared. âTeachers and pupils⊠have been badly let downâ (Primark 2008 in Adley et al., 2025). That tone stuck with me – not because it was firm, but because it felt scolding. Like they werenât responding to a crisis – just punishing someone for pointing it out. Thatâs what it means to silenceyour critics: not to rebut, but to erase. Cook et al. (2018) call this the âStreisand effectâ – where trying to bury a critique only makes it louder. It backfired. Corporations are punished not always in court, but through public exposure. And the louder the denial, the more visible the problem becomes.
Screenshots from Primark – on the rack.
Concluding thoughts
What Iâve learned is that effective trade justice documentaries donât just expose injustice – they make it undeniable. Not with guilt, but with structure. With editing, juxtaposition, silence, re-enactment, and time. The most effective films donât preach – they disorient. They hold back. They let injustice implicate itself. When I first watched Ilha das Flores, I thought the image of a woman scavenging waste would shock me. It didnât. The shock came from the voiceover â that cold, rational tracking of a tomatoâs value. That was my first lesson: effective trade justice films donât just show harm – they reveal the logic behind it.
That logic reappears across the films that stayed with me: a model commodified, a corporation mythologised, a migrant re-enacting her own pain. None of these scenes told me what to feel. They let the structure speak – and made me realise I was part of it. If I were to make a trade justice documentary now, Iâd focus less on persuading, more on positioning. Iâd start with the worker. Iâd spend time. Iâd resist neat conclusions. Because effectiveness isnât clarity – itâs complexity.
Thatâs what these films offered me: not closure, but craft. Not answers, but better questions. And a deeper understanding of how form can confront power – and why it must.
SOURCES
Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P., Stenholm, N., Strang, W. and Valo, T. (2025) Primark â on the rack. (http://followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)
Allen, H., Heaume, E., Heeley, L., Hedger, R., Johnson, S., McGregor, O. and Webber, L. (2025) Ghosts. (http://followthethings.com/ghosts.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)
Barker, T., Collier, J., Baker, A., Coppen, L. and Eve, H. (2025) UDITA (ARISE). (http://followthethings.com/udita.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)
Bartley, T. & Child, C. (2014) Shaming the corporation: the social production of targets and the anti-sweatshop movement. American Sociological Review 79(4), p.653â679
+18 sources
Bloomfield, E. F. & Sangalang, A. (2014) Juxtaposition as visual argument: health rhetoric in Super Size Me and Fat Head. Argumentation and Advocacy 50(3), p.141â156.
Chellan, N. (2023). The life of capitalism. in his F/Ailing capitalism and the challenge of COVID-19. Leiden: Brill, p.180-216
Clarke, H., Thomson, B., Bartley, V., Ibbetson-Price, K., Christie-Miller, E. and Schofield, H. (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. (http://followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)
Cook, I. et al., 2018. Inviting construction: Primark, Rana Plaza and political LEGO. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43(3), p.477â495
Cook et al, I. (2025) Mangetout. (http://followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)
Cook et al, I. (2002) Commodities: The DNA of capitalism. (https://followtheblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/commodities last accessed May 14th 2025)
Cook, R.F., Vos, T.P., Prager, B. & Hearne, J. (2015) Journalism, politics and contemporarydocumentaries: a ‘Based on a True Story’ dossier. Visual Communication Quarterly 22(1), p.15â33
Evans, A., 2020. Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains. Review of International Political Economy 27(3), p.658â685
Hambly, A., King, E., Keogh, A., Renny-Smith, C., Callow, E., Thorogood, J. & Alloy, V. (2025) Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour. (http://followthethings.com/girl-model.shtml last accessed May 14th 2025)
Pavalow, M. (2025) Ilha das Flores. (http://followthethings.com/ilhadasflores.html last accessed May 14th 2025)
Richardson-Ngwenya, P. & Richardson, B. (2013) Documentary film and ethical foodscapes: three takes on Caribbean sugar. Cultural Geographies 20(3), p.339â356.
Robertson, R. (2005) Seeing is believing: an ethnographerâs encounter with television documentary. in A. Grimshaw & A. Ravetz (eds) Visualizing anthropology. Bristol: Intellect Books, p.42â54
RyynÀnen, M., Kosonen, H. & Ylönen, S. (2023) From visceral to the aesthetic: tracing disgust in contemporary culture. in their (eds.) Cultural Approaches to Disgust and the Visceral. London: Routledge, p.3-16
Siddiqi, D.M. (2009) Do Bangladeshi factory workers need saving? Sisterhood in the post-sweatshop era? Feminist Review 91(1), p.154â174
Valenti, J.M. (2020) When environmental documentary films are journalism. in Sachsman D. & Valenti, J.M. (eds) Routledge handbook of environmental journalism. London: Routledge, p.99-112
Wenzel, J. (2011) Consumption for the common good? Commodity biography film in an age of postconsumerism. Public Culture 23(3), p.573â602
Wood, R., (2020) âWhat Iâm not gonna buyâ: Algorithmic culture jamming and anti-consumer politics on YouTube. New Media & Society 23(9), p.2754â2772
Young, I.M. (2003) From guilt to solidarity: sweatshops & political responsibility. Dissent 50(2), 39-44
Flip the script Workers take the mic Find the unions Join with others Encourage feminist solidarities Find a character Spend some time Include suffering kids Juxtapose extremes Make it incomplete Make Music Encourage curiosity Encourage detective work Make it funny
RESPONSES
These people are inspiring I’m humming that music I laughed my ass off I’m so angry This is so sad I just cried This is disgusting Creeperific I get what it’s like I gotta do something
IMPACTS
Now I know Now weâre talking I shop differently now Audiences are empowered
“It’s funny how you can be so angry at someone who is just doing their job.”
By Katie Smart
IN BRIEF
Student Katie Smart has taken the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter. She’s been watching trade justice documentaries, analysing the comments on their followthethings.com pages, and making sense of them using a draft copy of ‘The followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’. She knows a thing or two about how trade justice documentaries work and what they can do. She imagines meeting a filmmaker who’s thinking of making one of these films for the first time. He’s called Dan. He asks if she can give him some advice. She guesses he wants to present the hardships of Global South workers to Global North audiences. To do this, you’ve got to make it relevant, choose your audience, engage the right emotions, and make it memorable, she says.
More about this page.
We are slowly piecing together a followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism and are publishing draft pages here as we write them. This is an ‘advice’ page. The main text is an example of student work from the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module which followthethings.com CEO Ian ran at the University of Exeter in the 2024-25 academic year. Students watched 8 films, and read their pages on followthethings.com (with the expeption of an unfinished film called From Indiaâs ginger fields to the table). They were asked to pair the comments brought together on each of the films’ followthethings.com pages with the appropriate ingredients phrases (naming their intentions, tactics, responses and impacts – show in bold below) being drafted for the Handbook. Using these phrases as a pattern language (see FAQs), students were tasked to work out how specific intentions (e.g. improve workers’ pay & conditions) needed specific tactics (e.g. flip the script) to generate different kinds of responses (e.g. this is disgusting), which could generate different kinds of impacts (e.g. audiences are empowered). [NB pages about each of these ingredients are coming soon] At the end of the module, students were asked to imagine that they had met someone who was about to make their first trade justice documentary. Drawing on what they had learned in the module, what advice could they give them on how to make it effective?
đ Hiya Dan!
You want to make a trade justice documentary???
Well, from what Iâve learnt in a Trade Justice module this year, your goal should be achieving two key outcomes: A) improve workersâ pay and conditions in the Global South, and B) change consumer behaviour in the Global North. These objectives are intertwined and can be approached through targeted filmmaking strategies.
First: check out Duncombeâs (2023) book . Itâs all about theories of change and will give you the tools you need to make your documentary as impactful as possible. There are two main strategies you can use to achieve both A and B:
For A – use a materialist theory of change-this means seizing the âmeans of productionâ (Duncombe, 2023, p. 265) – here you could focus on the workers’ control over their own labour in the Global South.
For B – go with an activist theory of change-targeting emotions to âstir up the massesâ (Duncombe, 2023, p. 265).
Iâll walk you through how various techniques can be used to empower workers in the Global South and spark emotional engagement in the Global North, to drive social change in Trade Justice.
Stage 1: make it relevant
Before diving into audience specifics, think about how you can ensure its relevance to the social context. This worked for Ilha das Flores, cuz it appeared during Brazilâs âdemocratization periodâ (Trujillo in Pavalow, 2025, np). The filmmaker, Furtado, could capture social issues when the audience was receptive to them, so that he could make a doc about social injustices.
Screenshot from Ilha das Flores.
But relevance alone wonât make your documentary effective. For instance, if you wanted to make a doc about Global South trade injustices, a topic like Trump and his tariffs threatening global supply chains might have to be watered down to comply with regulations for mainstream TV. Ilha das Flores works cuz it breaks from convention. weird!!! Furtado made it funny. The line in the screenshot above is both hilarious (I laughed my ass off) and random. Furtado can make a serious point about capitalist exploitation while entertaining; âfunny at first, demolishing in the endâ (TrufĂł in Pavalow, 2025, np).
This is SO effective cuz humour sparks public discussion better than âserious or emotional appealsâ (Morreall in Cameron, 2015, p. 278). Conversations about their own complicity in global capitalist systems. Now weâre talking. If you want your documentary to be impactful AND be picked up by mainstream TV, make it current and make it funny to highlight the absurdities in supply chains.
Stage 2: choose your audience
Screenshot from the draft Handbook.
Now, decide who to engage, and how. If your intention is to educate workers and improve their pay and conditions in the Global South, centre the documentary on them. If workers see others fighting for their rights, theyâre empowered to act.
Take UDITA, for example. The filmmakers flip the script and workers take the mic. Women, garment workers, and trade union activists are at the âcentre of [the] filmâ (Anon in Barker et al., 2025, np), encouraging feminist solidarities.
As Duncombe (2023) speaks about in his Materialist Theory of Change, it is the material realities of workersâ lives that spur them into action. UDITA brings this theory to life; we see workers empower themselves – not just learning but fighting against âunsafe conditionsâ (Crawford in Barker et al 2025, np). The protagonist explains that five years ago the wage was $9/month; now itâs $68/month through campaigns. Your audience may resonate with unfairness and want to transform their own realities.
If you wanted to document the Bangladeshi protests over Trumpâs tariffs, show whatâs already happening to be effective for your intended audience. Show how material conditions, like uncertainty, are catalysts for organising. Find the unions, join with others that are already doing the same. Capture the âgrassroots resistanceâ (Hoskins in Barker et al., 2025, np). YOU can help to apply pressure by documenting the ongoing struggle and building solidarity with these efforts.
In Bangladesh, document unions like the âNational Garment Workers Federationâ pushing for better conditions (Hoskins in Barker et al., 2025, np). Support the âTrade Justice Movementâ of the Global South (Bannister and Bergan, 2023, p. 3). By showing workers that their fight can lead to change, theyâll think, âthese people are inspiringâ!! Audiences become empowered. The viewer could join a union themselves by seeing how collective bargaining can transform their realities.
Screenshot of UDITA’s viewing data from YouTube.
BUT if your intention is to educate workers, are you sure theyâll even see the documentary? UDITA is on YouTube-accessible to anyone with a smartphone, which is lots of people nowadays. BUT ⊠UDITA has low views. As Nora put it, “Iâm so angry!!… UDITA needs more views!” (Nora in Barker et al., 2025, np). While itâs easy to make a doc accessible, getting the right people to watch it is a different challenge.
Primark – on the rack reached â4.2 million viewersâ (Dowell in Adley et al., 2025, np). Good for awareness, BUT if your goal is to educate workers, think about âbreadthâ vs. âdepthâ (Duncombe, 2024, p. 71). Reaching millions is fine, but if theyâre not the right people, impact is limited. Which are YOU aiming for?
Stage 3: engage the right emotions
If you choose to target a Global North audience, you need to think about how to engage them. You need to spark the right emotions- but avoid pity or sadness. From my Global North perspective, those emotions are passive and donât drive real engagement.
Films like Girl Model and Primark – on the rack encourage empathy by:
Find a character -> spend some time -> include suffering kids
But does including children evoke the right emotions for activism (Brown and Pickerell, 2009)? Girl Model [left] shows âminorsâ in the exploitative modelling industry (Edelson in Hambly et al., 2025) …
Screenshot of 13 year old Siberian model Nadya Vall, the central character in Girl Model
while Primark – on the rack shows children working on garments (BBC Trust in Adley et al., 2025, np).
Screenshot of two unnamed children in India sewing sequins onto tops in Primark – on the rack.
Itâs hard not to feel something when you see children suffering, to empathise with their vulnerability, understand the world from their perspective (Krzanic, 2007). I was once young. The close-up shots help us to read their emotions too.
But empathy fades fast cuz the distance between myself, an able-bodied, privileged person-and these kids is huge!! I donât get what itâs like. Iâm feeling âfor themâ (Keen in NĂ„ls, 2018, p. 145) not with them. Sympathy. Chouliaraki (2010) says victim-oriented campaigns turn the sufferer into an object we contemplate from afar. Us vs. Them. You canât just show a victim, Dan, cuz look at the implications this has on Girl Modelâs followthethings.com page: @DisturbedPixie, how is giving âNadia a hugâ (in Hambly et al., 2025, np) going to help in the grand scheme of activism? AWWWWWW. This is so sad. But sympathy canât motivate action. Was I moved? Yes. Empowered? No. I just cried. I gotta do something. But what đ€ ?
You HAVE to move emotions from âaffective to ĂŠffectiveâ (Duncombe, 2024, p. 46) – turning empathy into action. Otherwise, the film risks being an emotional spectacle without real impact.
So, Dan, evoke deep, âhigh-certaintyâ emotions, like anger and disgust (Kemp, 2025, p. 46), choose to shock and disrupt (Duncombe, 2024). How? Start by finding the right character. Shift your gaze from the teenage models to Ashley Arbaugh, the ex-model-turned-scout in Girl Model. She hides her camera to take non-consensual photos of girls. This is disgusting – creeperific.
Screenshot of a collection of photos taken by model scout Ashley Arbaugh in Girl Model.
Disgust is âvisceralâ (RyynĂ€nen et al., 2023, p. 3) – something you feel. Going beyond âAWWWWâ for these girls, it unsettles you. Just the thought of Ashley still makes me squirm đ€ą. Thatâs how you make a documentary that matters. I feel it. Itâs memorable. For me, now I know. Disgust makes me rethink my consumer habits and drives me to support ethical brands. Feeling disgust at exploitative practices means I can no longer ignore my complicity. I shop differently now. Want to apply this approach? Look for an exploitative figure in the Bangladeshi unions. Spend time with them. If you capture something that sparks disgust, itâll engage your audience. It worked in Girl Model – give it a try!
Stage 4: make it memorable
Screenshots from the Handbook.
Another way to make it stick is to make it memorable. You could make music. I didnât think âhumming that musicâ would be a response to Mangetout, which explores the journey of mangetout from Zimbabwe to a dinner party in London. But here I am months later, still remembering every word from the kidsâ performance for Tescoâs inspectors đ¶ âDown the valley, up the mountain / Tescoâs our dear friend!â đ¶ (Holt in Cook et al., 2025, np).
The tune didnât âstop in silenceâ (Williamson & Jilka, 2014, p. 653). It followed me home, reciting it at Easter. Cut from the performance…
Screenshots from Mangetout where Zimbabwean children sing to visiting Tesco buyer Mark Dady (in red).
âŠto Grannie, âthe farmâs âcaterpillar examinerâ explaining how she tried to kill herselfâ đ± (OâMalley in Cook at al., 2025, np):
Screenshot from Mangetout of interview footage with caterpillar examiner Grannie.
Not so sweet anymore, is it, @Tongue? Me singing happily to myself at home only reminds me more of the exploitation-the unease lingers as the song is lodged. Iâm thinking about my role as a consumer. CleverâŠ
Another tactic to make ur doc memorable is juxtaposing extremes of people. This works because viewers must work hard to understand why you chose these contrasts, and that effort makes the message stick. In Mangetout, produce buyer Mark Dady, âthe great man from Tescoâ (Holt in Cook et al., 2025, np), struts in, while the farmers he âbulliedâ (Aaronovitch in Cook et al., 2025, np) praise him. Girl Model too uses a glaring contrast between Nadya and Ashley, placed on âopposite ends of the businessâ (Smith in Hambly et al., 2025, np). One is a vulnerable girl exploited for profit, the other a scout capitalising on that vulnerability. Itâs funny how you can be so angry at someone who is just doing their job. But the way their lives fit together is atrocious to the audience đ€. This tactic can evoke anger – I spoke about strong emotions earlier. The hope is that these spark action (Kemp, 2025).
You can also make it memorable by doing something different. You can make it incomplete / encourage curiosity. As Cook (2015) argues, the excitement of discovering things for ourselves fuels curiosity and critical questions. An interatcive documentary called From Indiaâs ginger fields to the table by Bharath Ananthanarayana, did this. Ananthanarayana (in Ananthanarayana, 2025, np) wanted to encourage detective work đ”ïžââïž. Like he had invented a game – Cluedo meets documentary. Two-minute clips where my classmates and I choose the sequence. Boje (in Connor and Phelan, 2013) developed an antenarrative approach, which Ananthanarayana uses. Through jumbled clips which unsettle âordered narrativesâ (Connor and Phelan, 2013, p. 150), Ananthanarayana documents the many stories circulating within the narrative. My first clip was âLabouring the Fieldâ (Ananthanarayana, 2025). One shot of digging đȘ, the only sound being the rhythmic thwack of labour.
Screenshot from the ‘Labouring in the field’ sequence in From Indiaâs ginger fields to the table.
Then, I chose a sequence called âHow It Beganâ. Wait-shouldnât this have come first? Nope. Ananthanarayana hands the audience choice of how the story unfolds. Thatâs influential: just like how I have the power to create the story of documentary, I have the power to choose how I source commodities in my life. Dan, if you want people like me to feel that urgency of âI gotta do somethingâ, you need to make them actively involved in the process – like Bharath did. Make them feel they have a part to play in changing the system.
By engaging the right emotions, you can create real impact. For me, I now know about the exploitation behind commodities like mangetout and girl models – that I had no clue about before. No longer ignorant. The deeper emotions inspired me to talk. Even this small step leads to change. Now weâre talking đŁïž đŹ. This is the impact you should aim for, Dan, cuz by sharing these films, the conversation passes through the âsocial realmâ (Heim, 2003, p. 187), raising awareness and demystifying exploitation. Even by talking/singing to my dad about Mangetout, Iâve pushed the conversation outside âtraditional art and activism worldsâ (Duncombe, 2024, p. 74).
So, see what you can achieve for workers in the Global South and audience members in the Global North audience by thinking about all these things. Let me know what approach you decide to take!
SOURCES
Adley, K., Keeble, R., Russell, P., Stenholm, N., Strang, W. & Valo, T. (2025) Primark â on the rack. (followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml last accessed 28 March 2025).
Ananthanarayana, B. (2025) Untitled [Q&A video & transcript], GEO3123: Geographies of material culture. University of Exeter.
Bannister, L. & Bergan, R. (2023) A timeline of UK trade and trade justice. London: Trade Justice Movement.
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Type: Protest & activist campaign Dates: 8 Sept 2005 & 1 Jan 2007 Organisers: Amnesty International, Reprieve, Save Omar Campaign, Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign, Muslim Public Affairs Committee Location: Hiatt & Co., Baltimore Road, Birmingham, UK
INGREDIENTS
INTENTIONS
Change government behaviour Change corporate behaviour
TACTICS
Target the right brand Hold ’em accountable Put your bodies in the way Embody exploitation Make the hidden visible
RESPONSES
There is no alternative Who’s responsible?
IMPACTS
Corporations change Workers suffer
Image credit
followthethings.com
Tackle the shackles
IN BRIEF
British citizens are detained in the USAâs Guantanamo Bay detention centre, but none are charged with a crime. They notice the shackles restraining them are âMade in Englandâ, just like them. When some go on hunger strike in 2005, and when the 5th anniversary of the centreâs opening takes place in 2007, musicians, doctors, lawyers, comedians and activists protest outside the factory where they are made. Their use at Guantanamo, they argue, is unethical and illegal.
How to read this page
We are slowly piecing together a ‘followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’ and are publishing the pages here as we write them. This is an ‘example’ page. The wide column paraphrases and condenses this example’s followthethings.com page, section by section. The narrow column contains some details about the commodity, some key facts about the activism that took place around it, and a list of its ‘ingredients’: its intentions, tactics, responses and impacts. These have been identified during the writing of this example page and, as more handbook pages are added, you will be able to click each one to read about it, and there will be links to other examples where we have found that ingredient, and a list of linked ingredients. This hypertext format, we believe, will help readers to understand how trade justice activism can work, and what it can do.
Original
Description
Human rights activists wearing Hiatt shackles protest outside Birmingham factory where they are made. A band plays on a flatbed truck as 20 people dressed in orange Guantanamo Bay jumpsuits dance the âShackle Shuffleâ. Comedian Mark Thomas, doctor David Nicholls, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and the brother of Omar Deghayes, a hunger-striking British detainee, climb up to speak. Media, police and locals watch them accuse Hiatt of being complicit in, and profiting from, this torture and illegal detention. 14 months later, 70 or 80 are back in orange to âcelebrateâ the fifth anniversary of Guantanamoâs opening. Sandy Mitchell, tortured in Saudi Arabia in Hiatt shackles, speaks and returns his shackles through the factoryâs letterbox. A birthday cake is made for Hiatt with a detainee inside. This old company made ân***er collarsâ for the slave trade. âIf William Wilberforce were aliveâ, Nicholls says, âheâd be standing here today, doing the Shackle Shuffle, saying âthis is outrageousââ. The UK government, with its âethical foreign policyâ, should press the US to charge the detainees with their crimes, or set them free.
Inspiration / process / methodology
The Three Piece Suit chains your hands in front of you and attaches to a waist belt. Another chain links the belt to your ankle where a foot-long chain ties both feet together so you can only shuffle, not walk. They can tie you to a ring in the floor, as you stand or squat, or to a ceiling or the top of a cage where you can hang, for hours. Each has âHiattâ, âMade In Englandâ stamped into it, British detainees told their lawyer, Stafford Smith. âIt was ironicâ, Moazzem Begg said, that they were âmade in England, just like me and himâ. Nicholls wrote to Hiatt to stop US sales while their goods were being used for torture. âThis is what happens when you donât answer your postâ, he said at the protest. In 2007, NGOs published media and campaign packs to coordinate actions and focus messages. Local MPs joined in. These protests were national news.
Discussions / responses
I’d love to see President Bush and Prime Minsiter Blair shackled outside the factory. A freedom of information request was refused as not in the âpublic interestâ. It wouldnât make a difference if Hiatt ceased production. Others would make shackles and Hiattâs employees would lose their jobs. If the factory shut, its new US owner Armor Holdings could blame the protestors. Factories were shutting all around. At least this one was still making things. And maybe the Guantanamo shackles were old stock, exported years ago, before the UK export ban. Maybe they started as legally-exported handcuffs and were modified in the US? Shackles arenât illegal there. We weren’t aware of supplying Guantanamo, Hiatt said. We do sell to the US Department of Defence but we’re not responsible for what they do with stuff, said Hiatt. They donât tell you to cuff someone to the top of a door, do they?
Impacts / outcomes
Hiattâs Birmingham factory shut in 2008 and 15 people lost their jobs. This followed a consolidation process by BAE Systems who bought Armor Holdings in July 2007. Production shifted to a Hiatt factory in New Hampshire, USA, nearer its customer base, to be stamped âMade in USA.â UK police bought Hiatt handcuffs on eBay. The Hiatt brand was dropped. Protestors were glad that one less British company was supplying equipment for use in Guantanamo.
Make the hidden visible Follow the thing Show the violence Add mood music
RESPONSES
LOL capitalism They aren’t experts It’s so badly made That’s racist I’m humming that music
IMPACTS
Now we’re talking Activism is publicised
Image credit
followthethings.com
Life of a bullet
IN BRIEF
Imagine you can follow the life of a bullet from sheet metal in a factory shot into the head of a child soldier, like a Point of View (POV) video game. These are the opening credits of the Nicholas Cage movie âLord of War,â set to Buffalo Springfieldâs 1960s counterculture song âFor what itâs worthâ. For some, this 3 minute CGI creation is the best part of the movie. For us, itâs the most brutally clear follow the thing example weâve found.
How to read this page
We are slowly piecing together a ‘followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism’ and are publishing the pages here as we write them. This is an ‘example’ page. The wide column paraphrases and condenses this example’s followthethings.com page, section by section. The narrow column contains some details about the commodity, some key facts about the activism that took place around it, and a list of its ‘ingredients’: its intentions, tactics, responses and impacts. These have been identified during the writing of this example page and, as more handbook pages are added, you will be able to click each one to read about it, and there will be links to other examples where we have found that ingredient, and a list of linked ingredients. This hypertext format, we believe, will help readers to understand how trade justice activism can work, and what it can do.
Original
Description
Youâre sitting in front of the screen. The movie âLord of Warâ is about to start. Its star Nicholas Cage makes a short spech to camera. Then the music starts. Thereâs something happening here. What it is ainât exactly clear. Thereâs a man with a gun over there. Telling me I got to beware⊠Buffalo Springfieldâs 1966 song âFor what itâs worthâ. Playing over the opening credits. A three minute point of view (POV) mini-movie: the life story of a single bullet. You see what it sees. You hear what it hears. You are the bullet. Emerging from sheet metal in a Ukrainian factory and dying in the flesh of a Sierra Leone firefight. People along the way inspect, carry, load, fire and are killed by you. In the final slo-mo scene, you whiz down a street into the forehead, the brain, of a black African boy, a child soldier. He stands there, looking you in the eye as you career towards him. Death is the end product. The music stops. The credits fade to bloody red and black. Thrills give way to chills. The film starts with a bang.
Inspiration / process / methodology
Conceptualised by Andrew Niccol and overseen by Yann Blondel, it was built using Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) – XSI, Shake, After Effects, Photoshop, Matchmover – not by strapping a tiny camera to a bullet. Studying factories, they found bullet-making âinsanely complicatedâ and simplified it. Arms trade people might find it âinaccurateâ. Stephen Stills wrote the song after Hollywoodâs 1966 Sunset Strip curfew riots and it became a civil rights anthem for the Vietnam War. Blondel didnât have it in mind when the CGI was created. This jarring film and music combo nails the movieâs message: âviolence round the world begins and ends directly at your doorstepâ.
Discussions / responses
Itâs like a Bond intro. Or bowling alley graphics. An episode of âHow Itâs Madeâ. An NRA ad. âThe adventures of the little bullet who wanted to killâ. A magical journey from Russia to Africa. Seeing more of the world than I have. Bullets fear no death. I wish I was a bullet. Longest killcam ever. Wish mine played that song. A âmindblowingâ end. LOLz. He should have seen it coming. It was moving so slowly. Donât stand up in a battefield. Youâll get shot in the head. What an aim! Most bullets miss. Imagine how many bullets they had to follow to find the story they wanted. How did they strap a camera to it? Or is it CGI? That killing gave me a warm glow. It made me want to fire my BB gun. I like guns, but Iâm anti-ammo now. The killing of a child soldier, forced to fight? Yeah, but look closely. He had a gun too. Itâs like a POV game. But how many gamers have fired an actual gun? Or worked in a bullet factory? Do they know who these bullets kill? No! Itâs just a job, like any other. Gunnies will be mad. Bullets arenât made, shipped, loaded or shot like that. Itâs not a documentary. Itâs a movie. Enjoy it. Arms manufacturers should die this way. Bullets donât kill people, people do. The Russians give guns and ammo to spread communism, the US to spread democracy. White people make weapons for black people to kill each other. You could blame the âwhite manâ or get activist. Following the tradeâs money would be a better story. 10 years on, that CGI looks sooo bad. But the message is there. Donât shoot people in the face. Two fingers, repeatedly picking up the bullet. Men blankly peering at it along the way. Responsibility is collective. Whatâs that song?
Impacts / outcomes
What it showed was true, said Amnesty, Oxfam and the Internatonal Action Network on Small Arms. Audiences should sign their âcontrol armsâ petition, to press for an international arms treaty. My mates in the USA have been talking about it. Especially because the DVD has that spoof AK-47 advert on it.
