Back to school

[In the late 1980s,] I did a masters at the University of Kentucky in Geography and to pay for that I had to teach … first-year undergraduate courses. There was one … called ‘Lands & people’s of the Non-Western World’. And it was quite a traditional geography course where … you do China one week and then you do Australasia the next week, then you do Latin America the next week … And you’d just be telling people about these countries and about their exports … The students were quite unengaged and I struggled a lot to try and make it seem relevant … So, I thought to myself … ‘What would be brilliant, here, is if there [were] examples that I could find of something that they did, something that they had in their lives, that actually came from those places so that there was a direct personal connection between their own lives – or my own life as well – and the people that we were talking about’. And that’s literally where [the ‘follow the thing’ approach, for me] came from. So I just thought, ‘Well I’ve got to [do this]’.

followthethings.com CEO Ian Cook (in University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School 2016, np).

Resources for educators

Who makes my stuff?

The followthethings.com project began in the classroom and, from the start, took a material culture approach to teaching and learning about trade (in)justice (see Angus et al 2001, Cook et al 2007, Hawkins et al 2011, Evans et al 2013, Anon 2014, Cook et al 2017). Inspired by the political philospher Iris Marion Young (2003), we avoid addressing students (and wider audiences) through the more negative ‘Blame, shame & guilt‘ approach in favour of more positive, collaborative, future-oriented solidarity-building and world-making.

We follow the pedagogical mantra of the Fashion Revolution movement, encouraging students to ‘Be Curious. Find Out. Do Something’. We ask students to start with commodities that are part of their lives and identities. We ask them to think about what these commodities bring to their lives (e.g. fitting in, keeping in touch, etc.). We then ask them to think about the supply chain workers who make those commodities and help them to be who they are, and to live the lives they live.

The idea is to ‘Pop the bubble‘ of consumer culture, and then to encourage discussion about what happens when you see and make connections with workers worldwide. We start by addressing our students (and wider audiences) as ‘consumers’ but then try to pivot towards addressing them as fellow ‘workers’, ‘citizens’ and/or ‘activists’ of one form or another.

Below we provide a) the best prompt we have found for thinking this way, b) four classroom resources that we have created with and for trade justice activism organisations which dovetail nicely with the content of our website, c) a unique example of trade justice ecucation where an adidas brand executive, an Indonesian factory inspector and a politician were quizzed in person by students live in their classroom.

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a) a prompt

Only 2 minutes 44 seconds long, Mary Nighy’s (2013) Handprint is featured on our website here.

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b) our resources

c) when trade (in)justice came to class

Sources

Tim Angus, Ian Cook & James Evans (2001) A manifesto for cyborg pedagogy? International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 10(2), 195-201

Anon (2014) ‘Follow The Things’: developing critical pedagogies to promote geographically-informed and ethically-aware consumption in school geography curriculum. https://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=36401 [last accessed 29 January 2025]

Ian Cook et al (2024) iPhone 3G – Already With Pictures! (aka ‘iPhone Girl’). followthethings.com/iphone-3g-already-with-pictures-aka-iphone-girl.shtml (last accessed 29 January 2025: the example referred to in one of the ‘Traces of Labour. videos)

Ian Cook et al (2018) From ‘Follow the thing: papaya’ to ‘followthethings.com’. Journal of Consumer Ethics 1(1), 22-29.

+7 sources

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 (includes discussion of the ‘CSI’ kit discussed in one of the ‘Traces of labour’ videos)

Ian Cook, James Evans, Helen Griffiths, Rebecca Morris, Sarah Wrathmell et al (2007) ‘It’s more than just what it is’: Defetishising commodities, expanding fields, mobilising change… Geoforum 38(6), 1113-1126

James Evans, Ian Cook & Helen Griffiths (2013) Creativity, Group Pedagogy and Social Action: A departure from Gough. Educational Philosophy & Theory 40(2), 330-345

Kity Hauser (2004) A garment in the dock or, how the FBI illuminated the prehistory of a pair of denim jeans. Journal of material culture 9(3), 293-313 (the paper referred to in one of the ‘Traces of Labour’ videos)

Harriet Hawkins, Shelley Sacks, Ian Cook, Eleanor Rawling, Helen Griffiths, Di Swift, James Evans, Gail Rothnie, Jacky Wilson, Alice Williams, Katie Feenay, Linzi Gordon, Heather Prescott, Claire Murphy, Daniel Allen, Tyler Mitchell, Rachel Wheeldon, Margaret Roberts, Guy Robinson, Pete Flaxman, Duncan Fuller, Tom Lovell & Kye Askins (2011) Organic Public Geographies: ‘Making the Connection’. Antipode 43(4), 909-926

University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School (2016) Why Ethical Consumption? With Professor Ian Cook, University of Exeter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CY686xLKHQ [last accessed 29 January 2025]

Iris Marion Young (2003) From guilt to solidarity: sweatshops and political responsibility. Dissent 50(2), 39-44