“How Sushi Went Global“ A popular academic research article by Theordore Bestor published in the Foreign Policy journal. Image of paper journal printout embedded above. Click image to access the .pdf version here. Click here to read the online version (which includes only the article’s text).
If you want the best bluefin tuna for your sushi, it has to be graded in the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. But the fish are farmed and caught in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and elsewhere. And the restaurants where you can eat it are all over the world. So whose lives are connected through this intricate global trade? How did it develop? And what can sushi tell us about globalisation? That’s what an American anthropologist Ted Bestor wants to find out. He travels to different places in this tuna supply chain – a fish dock in Maine, USA; a Mediterranean fishing town in Spain; and Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. He sees tuna caught and off the US and Spanish coasts being graded in Tokyo to sell in the fanciest sushi restaurants around the world. They travel, iced, in containers called ‘tuna coffins’ in the bellies of Boeing 747 jets. Years ago, except in Japan, these fish were only suitable for sports fishers or cat food manufacturers. But what’s developed as sushi has gone global is a sophisticated international trade feeding the popularisation of Japanese cuisine. These fish cross cultures and following their movements helps Bestor to vividly explain the concept of globalisation. Commenters say his article provides a view of globalisation that’s embedded in and between social relations in specific places. It’s a well old story, a gem of a ‘follow the thing’ study that’s widely used in classrooms around the world.
Page reference: Olivia Hoffman and Erin Teich (2012) How Sushi Went Global. followthethings.com/how-sushi-went-global.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Blood, Sweat & Takeaways“ A four-episode reality TV series produced directed & produced by James Christie-Miller for Ricochet Films for television broadcast on BBC3. All episodes embedded above. Also available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.
Lauren, 21, and loves luxury food. Jess, 19, is a fussy eater. Manos, 20, loves fast food. Josh, 20, loves to cook. Stacey, 20, is an ethical shopper. Olu, 25, is a fitness fanatic. But this group of multicultural Brits who don’t seem to care where their food comes from. Until they are approached by a TV company which challenges them to travel to Indonesia and Thailand and to step into the shoes of the farm, factory and trawler workers who source and process it for export. Over four episodes – on Tuna, Prawns, Rice and Chicken – they’re filmed working alongside supply chain workers, earning and spending the same 40p an hour wages, and living in the same places. They relentlessly gut, behead and loin tuna fish in a factory. They work in waist-deep mud farming prawns and up to their ankles in water in a rice paddy field. It’s hot. All they have to eat each day is a banana and a slice of bread. This is a shock to their systems. This is car crash reality TV. They crack under the pressure, retch, cry, faint, fall out, fight, refuse to work, slow down the production line, get sick, feel guilty, insult and patronise their co-workers and escape to a comfortable hotel, eat at McDonalds and get first class medical care. Olu is sent home after a fight with Manos. He’s replaced by James, a young farmer. At least he knows where food comes from. But, as they get over the shock, episode by episode, they are humbled by the experience and become more appreciative consumers. This is the second ‘Blood, sweat and…’ series broadcast by the BBC. And it’s equally successful, attracting big audiences, winning awards and being shown around the world. Its aim is to encourage young people to think about who makes their stuff, and to find their own solutions like the cast members do. Because this is reality TV, much of the discussion focuses on the cast and how ‘spoilt’ they seem to be, how terrible they are as British ‘ambassadors’ in Thailand and Indonesia, how distastasteful it is for them to ogle at squalour, and how easy it is for them – unlike the people they’re working alongside – to leave. Critics say that its reality TV format encourages an enjoyment of the casts’ meltdowns more than their thoughtful reflections. Others quibble the facts and argue that the series’ narrative arc is a work of fiction. Others say that it places too much emphasis on consumer awareness, without provinding any ideas about what viewers should do next. And there’s nothing in this series about other responsible actors in these supply chains (for a comparison, see our page on the BBC’s ‘Mangetout’ documentary here) and nothing about the need for structural change (e.g. living wage legislation). But the BBC sets up a web forum for people to discuss these issues and one cast member ends up on a late night BBC news show challenging some glib trade arguments made by a represenative of the British Retail Consortium. So, what does this TV series do for its British cast? Its Thai and Indonesian participants? The production company? The last one is easy. The success of this second ‘Blood sweat and…’ series is followed by the making of the next series. ‘Blood, sweat & luxuries’. Then, years later, TV production executives in Holland and the Czech Republic reported that it has inspired new reality TV series. The whole series was uploaded to YouTube in full in 2022, where a whole new generation of viewers – around the world – could engage with the series, its characters and its message.
Page reference: 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 <insert date here>)
“The Connectivitea Of Britain And Sri Lanka“ A dissertation by Sarah Wrathmell, submitted as part of their BA Geography degree at the University of Birmingham, UK. Sample pages from its findings chapters are embedded in the slideshow above. Click them to read the dissertation.
Undergraduate Geography student Sarah Wrathmell has an ambitious idea for her dissertation research. She wants to travel to Sri Lanka to find the people who grow her morning cup of tea on a plantation in Kandy, Sri Lanka. She plans to ‘follow the thing’ and to undertake some multisited ethnographic fieldwork along the supply chain of ‘Tillings’ (a pseudonym) loose breakfast tea. She ends up writing about six places: the tea garden where the tea is grown, its collection spaces, its production factory (all in Sri Lanka), its blending factory, a specialist tea shop, and a tea garden where she shares a pot of tea with a group of friends (all in the UK). She talks to pickers, packers and drivers; visits factories and talks to people tasting, processing and packaging it to exacting standards; and finally drinks that tea with those drinkers. This is embodied, sensory work that she has to – somehow – get on the page. What she wants to understand is what, and who, are the ingredients in her tea? And how are the lives of the people involved in making and drinking it interrelated? As a reader, your job is to follow her on her travels as she tries to make sense of this. Its assessors say it’s a fantastic piece of work. So, it’s submitted for a national dissertation prize. It wins this unanimously. We have a grainy .pdf copy that you can download and read. It’s important to show that not only are there high profile films, publications, and other forms of trade justice research and activism to pay attention to. Students have been doing this work too, for much smaller audiences, for years. What can this work look like?
Dissertation reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2003) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. BA Geography Dissertation: University of Birmingham, UK (followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)
Page reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2024) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Sweetness & Power: The Place Of Sugar In Modern History“ A popular academic book written by Sidney Mintz and originally published by Viking. ‘Look inside’ preview embedded above. Search online to purchase a copy here.
After living and working with sugar cane workers in Puerto Rico, anthropologist Sidney Mintz began to wonder about how sugar cane had become such an important crop, and how its cultures of production in the Caribbean and cultures of consumption in the UK and North America had developed together over time. As he studied these relations, he realised that the international sugar trade – as the iconic crop of plantation slavery and as an inexpensive source of energy (sweetening a cup of tea) for the industrial working class in Britain – were intimately connected. Writing a book about a thing – sugar – was innovative in the 1980s, and this book is said to have kickstarted a publishing genre of books-about-commodities. He wanted to publish one that could be enjoyed by academic and popular readers. Its arguments about sugar brought together perspectives from both academic anthropology and history. So the reviews were mixed. The story was bitty. It was either too academic or too simplistic. What’s certain, however, is that it has become a classic in the ‘follow the thing’ genre. Mintz was a, or the, ‘early adopter.’ Today, perhaps, what’s most important is the historical perspective that it provides, rooting contemporary capitalism in colonialism and empire, in harsh proto-industrial plantation labour and in a consumer appetite for sweetness. This page was originally written in 2012. There is so much more that we could now add.
Page reference: Anita Badejo, Josephine Korijn & Asya Rahlin (2012) Sweetness & Power: The Place Of Sugar In Modern History. followthethings.com/sweetness-power-the-place-of-sugar-in-modern-history.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail“ An academic book written by Deborah Barndt published by Rowman & Littlefield 2007 second edition Google Books preview embedded above. Search online to buy a copy here.
In 1994, preparing to do some undergraduate teaching, Environmental Studies professor Deborah Barndt finds a popular educational tool called A whirlwind tour of economic integration with your guide, Tomasita the tomato. She thinks this fictional tomato is the perfect etrée for her students’ understanding of cross-border trade – in this case from Mexico to Canada – and the often confusing complexities of globalisation – including messy relations between corporate power, genetically modified seeds, pesticides, stolen indigenous land, exploited peasant labour and environmental racism. What follows is a 5 year feminist participatory research project – called the Tomasita Project – which connects the lives of tomato growers, truckers, checkout workers and other supply chain workers living and working in Mexico and Canada. What she discovers and tries to convey is the clash between a ‘globalisation from above’ – the uniform, genetically-engineered, neoliberal, NAFTA-friendly tomato trade – and ‘globalisation from below’ – grass roots social justice projects working across borders and producing alternative foods. As Tomasita explained when Barndt first saw her story, the tomato is an iconic crop in the Americas. A brilliant one to follow, loading with meanings. It was native to South America, was first domesticated in Mexico, is central to the diets in Mexico, the USA and Canada, can be grown (at least seasonally) in all three countries, and was ‘one of the winners for Mexico in the NAFTA reshuffle’ (Barndt 2002a, p.82). What readers value the most is her book’s ‘feminist act’ that makes visible women workers in the global food system, and the way that it brings feminist theories into understandings of international trade. We researched this book early in its life (in 2011) and are keen to return to it to flesh out this page one day. This is an early, innovative, important and inspiring example of ‘follow the thing’ scholar-activism.
Page reference: Robert Conor Burke (2024) Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail. followthethings.com/tangled-routes-women-work-and-globalization-on-the-tomato-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“The Luckiest Nut In The World“ An animated film written, produced & Directed by Emily James for Fulcrum TV, broadcast in the UK on Channel 4’s Alt-TV series. Film embedded in full above. Search online for shorter versions and versions with subtitles here.
Who better to explain the rules of international trade than a commodity that has seen it all? An American peanut who wears a stetson hat, plays the guitar, and sings songs about the rules of world trade that work in his favour. Along the way he enlists help from experts and from public information films. Yes, he’s the ‘luckiest nut in the world’ and, as he learns about other less lucky nuts around the world (groundnuts in Senegal, cashew nuts in Mozambique, and brazil nuts in Bolivia), he finds out that it doesn’t have to be this way. All of the world’s nuts – and the people and economies that could benefit from growing and selling them – could be just as lucky is the rules governing world trade weren’t stacked against them. Filmmaker Emily James uses animation to do the impossible: to make these rules, and the inequalities they help to create, not only understandable but entertaining. The film becomes a hit with school teachers. Some of their students say they’re bored with its content, but others say they can’t help humming the songs, mouthing their WTO lyrics. It’s a catchy way to learn some pretty boring but important information about hope the world works (and years before Horrible Histories began). This is an early example of animated film doing what and academic cook or a documentary films cannot. In this case, making abstract content accessible, making the hidden visible, and explaining trade injustice to wider publics in an engaging – funny, weird, you name it – way. ‘What would commodities tell us about their lives if they could talk?’ is an intriguing question that’s answered in some of the earliest follow the thing ‘it-narrative’ writing [see our page on a 1760 travel novel written by a coin here]. ‘What would a commodity sing about its life if it could … um … sing?’ is a question answered, in our experience, only by this film. Thank you Emily.
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2011) The Luckiest Nut In The World. followthethings.com/the-luckiest-nut-in-the-world.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Darwin’s Nightmare“ A documentary film directed by Hubert Sauper for Mille et Une Productions. Trailer embedded above. Search online for streaming options here.
Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper examines the effects of a fish that’s been introduced to the African Great Lake Victoria for commercial reasons. They’ve displaced other fish that local people rely upon for their diet and are farmed and flown away on cargo planes to be eaten by Northern consumers. More controversially, some of those planes (allegedly) return full of weapons that fuel civil wars in neighbouring countries. Here, capitalist and colonial logics create a place where Tanzanian fishermen, homeless children, prostitutes, government minsters, Russian pilots, World Bank officials, European Union commissioners live and work together in an ‘ungodly alliance’. Viewers say the film is clever, damaging and racist, and/or artfully depressing. Its director calls it a ‘feel bad’ movie. It’s nominated for an Oscar but loses to a penguin documentary. Northern consumers who love the Omega 3 in fish like Nile Perch start to boycott it, and sales are affected for a while. Darwin’s Nightmare makes Tanzania look terrible. Its government denounces the film, accuses its director of fabricating storylines (e.g the role of this arms trade plays in the spread of HIV), demands that he apologies and pursues the subjects of his film to punish them. Western governments learning about this arms trade from the film put pressure on Tanzania to stop it, and to stop silencing African journalists who have let the world know about it. One journalist criticises the film’s one dimensional portrayal of the hell caused in Tanzania by this fish trade. It’s a mixed picture. So much of its positive effects aren’t included. One critic is sued for calling the film a hoax. There are unprecedented personal attacks on the director, accusing him of acting unethically, threatening him with death and posting fake photos online of him with Saddam Hussein. The main criticism of his film is that it plays to centuries-old Western stereotypes of African savagery and backwardness. Critics say it reveals – but also helps to do – damage to the people of Tanzania. Sauper says he’s not found anything new. All he’s done is joined the dots between well known issues. Between the global arms and food trade, for example. It’s not an out and out activist film. It’s more of a film noir. No solutions are offered. So what responsibility do you have for the impacts of your film noir? Discussions of this film are super-heated.
Page reference: Aparupa Chakravarti & Jeff Bauer (2014) Darwin’s Nightmare. followthethings.com/darwins-nightmare.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“MILK“ A locative art-mapping project by Esther Polak & Ieva Auzina Images above are of the MILKproject website homepage and of the MILK installation at the local museum in Rumbini, Latvia. Project website here.
The Milk Project literally follows a thing. It tracks milk from the cow’s udder to the cheese vendor using GPS trackers which record its geograophical location multiple times a second. The devices are given to people in the supply chain, so their movements are also being tracked. Those who have already handled on the milk, and those who are waiting for it (not to mention the partners of those who have it in the moment) can track its movements in real time. This is a locative media art work which also includes photography, storytelling and other methods that make this more than something that traces a line on a map. These supply chain workers can see their lives, and the commodities in which they trades as live, as xcrossinhg borders, as connected. For some artists and activists, GPS technology is the enemy. It’s an abstraction from the world. A tool of capitalist exploitation. But, in this project, it’s helps to paint a surprising intimate portrait of lives connected through trade: in real time for the participants, on the project website and on the rare occasions when it’s exhibited. The project gets caught up in debates about actor networks that are swirling at the time, but the artist and researcher who made see it more as an artwork about landscape. You can’t experience its liveliness now. The website animations don’t work because Adobe Flash was discontinued in 2020 [you may have a fix]. The installations were complicated top set up. The in-the-moment experience for the particpants was the most powerful. A lot has been written about it though. What’s been said?
Page reference: Elizabeth Karin & Anna Whitehouse-Lewis (2024) MILKproject. followthethings.com/milk.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Mangetout“ A documentary film directed by Mark Phillips for the BBCTV Modern ‘Times’ series. Screengrab slideshow embedded above. Documentary available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.
In this landmark ‘follow the thing’ documentary, director Mark Phillips follows the simple magetout pea (also known as a snowpea) and connects the lives of its producers, retailers and consumers. He films a dinner party in the UK’s home counties where mangetout is a side dish. The guests talk about ‘third world’ lifestyles and exploitation. He films the farm where they are grown in Zimbabwe and introduces us to some of the farm workers and their boss. He visits a UK supermarket and asks shoppers if they buy mangetout. It wasn’t a common vegetable in 1997. And he asks them where Zimbabwe is. Not many seem to know. He films the person who sources Zimbabwe-grown mangetout for the Tesco supermarket chain. And he films this person’s visit to the farm in Zimbabwe where he’s treated like royalty. He’s visiting to monitor the processes that provide the identical size, shape and quality mangetout peas at the price he needs. That’s his job. He wants the farm boss to instruct his workers to improve the quality. The customers – who he says are his boss – will demand this. This is such a fascinating film. It jumps backwards and forwards between these different people talking about mangetout peas and the ways that big business and global capitalism works. From these different perspectives, everyone has an opinion to share. The film’s inclusion of so many perspectives is unprecedented. Everyone seems to speak quite frankly. The power that the Tesco supermarket chain, and the person who sources its mangetout, is enormous. Its visiting buyer talks to the farm manager using a language of partnership, but the farmers say they have to do what they are told. The diners talk about the exploitation of ‘third world’ farmers in casual and abstract ways, and the film cuts to the farm workers talking about the lives they can lead with the money they earn. The people at the top of the ladder are white. The people at the bottom are black. With all of these different stakeholders in it means that, as a viewer, you’re not positioned as a consumer who needs to act by changing your consumption – that’s quite a common trope. You could empathise with any and all of the film’s participants, in different ways. This film was made to educate it audience – carefully, empathetically, through the careful juxtaposition of scenes and voices from a supply chain – about how capitalism works. It’s many juxtapositions give you lots to think about. And, it had a huge impact that on the UK supermarket industry in the 1990s. This was a golden time in trade justice activism. So many campaigns were starting up, and corporations hadn’t yet learned how to respond. Tesco were embarrassed. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere, this film showed ‘capitalism with its clothes off’. They had to do something. They and their rivals didn’t want ‘another Mangetout’. It’s a shame it’s so hard to find now.
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Mangetout. followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“King Corn: Your Are What You Eat“ A documentary directed and starring Ian Cheney & Curt Ellis for Mosaic Films (US) Official trailer embedded above. Search online to watch the full movie here. Movie website here.
What better way to find out where your food comes from than growing it yourself and following where it goes? That’s what college friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis do by growing an acre of corn in the US state of Iowa. This isn’t the corn you’d eat on the cob, though. This corn tastes horrible. It’s inedible. It’s a starch crop that ends up as an ingredient in countless other industrial foods: like burgers, twinkies, apple juice. Corn is ‘the raw material for an overweight society’, a major cause of obesity diabetes. You can’t get away from it. Americans are all part corn (test your hair!). But who controls this trade? And who is if good for? The consumers who eat all that junk food? The corporations who dominate its growing and processing? The government who could (maybe should) change the nation’s farming policy? Ian and Curt’s ‘grow your own’ approach to supply chain activism is innovative. They present themselves as a couple of naive, funny ‘guys’, just out of college. They have no farming experience. They move from Boston to Iowa and buy some land. Plant some corn. Watch it grow (not much work is required). They ask for help from other farmers. They follow corn from production to consumption by producing and trying to sell it to processors. But they don’t want to help, so these two guys try to process it themselves, making High Fructose Corn Syrup (the sweetener in so much junk food) in their kitchen. The film is a hit. It exposes a truth about US agriculture which the ‘Corn Producers of America’ trade body does not appreciate. They hope it will inspire audiences to act politically to chabge the health of their society for the better. Its not about shopping for different products, because corn is in everything. To counter the film’s message, the CPA invest in an advertising campaign – including an iconic TV ad – about the harmlessness of corn. The filmmakers produce a parody ad about the harmlessness of tobacco. Then iconic satirical US TV show Saturday Night Live gets in on the act, making its own parody ad about the harmlessness of corn. So much sarcasm! This is another example we have found of an industry’s attempts to silence – in this case quite a mild – critique of how things are made. As we might expect, this critique draws so much attention to the original film, that it means more people know about it. For the filmmakers, it’s free publicity.
Page reference: Yahellah Best, Melanie Garunay, Melissa Logan & Andrea McWilliams (2024) King Corn: You Are What You Eat. followthethings.com/king-corn-you-are-what-you-eat.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
