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Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea

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Money & Finance

Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea
A 4 volume fictional book series by Charles Johnstone, the first two of which were originally published by T. Becket.
An 1821 version of Volume 1 is embedded in full above. Click here to read Volume 2, here to read Volume 3 and here to read Volume 4.

Here at followthethings.com we’re keen to appreciate the historical depth of our genre. Up until quite recently, we had traced everything back to Karl Marx’s chapter on the commodity (and commodity fetishism) in Capital Volume 1 which was first published in the 1860s. David Harvey’s teachings about Capital, and his appeals for geographers and otherS to get behind the veil of the commodity and tell the story of human reproduction were what encouraged us to do this work back in the day. But when you ask what inspired Marx, what literature was well known in his day, what had been written before, this impulse to know whose lives are connected by commodities goes back to the 1700s, to the birth of global capitalism (via empire), and to a genre of cheap and unglamourous ‘novels of circulation’. These make sense of this confusing, emerging world from the perspective of the commodities which were becoming part of its expanding consumer culture. There are dozens and dozens of these novels which we could choose to feature on our site, but the first one we want to add is this one – not least because it seems to have been one of the most popular and influential, but also because it’s about money – a commodity (and means of exchange) that academics have found more difficult to follow than most. This story is narrated by a gold guinea coin, starting from its mining in Peru and talking about its life connecting and witnessing the lives of a variety of people who earn, spend and steal it in different places. Because people aren’t careful what they do and say when a coin is covertly spying on them, the tales this coin tells – to an alchemist it meets at the end of volume one, who writes them down because coins can’t write – are scandalous. Some of the people whose lives are included were famous at the time, others were not. This book is both a scandalous exposé of the lives of famous people of the time and an ethical and moral tale about the emerging economic relations of capitalism and empire. It was inventive, eccentric and a huge popular hit. What would a commodity tell you about its life if it could talk? Here’s your answer! Commodities who can speak for themselves are very much part of trade justice activism today. There are lots of our examples on our site, but here’s one of the earliest. What can today’s activists learn from this? Here’s a taster. We’ll return to this later and add some more depth and detail.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea (taster page). followthethings.com/chrysal-or-the-adventures-of-a-guinea.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

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Our New Commemorative £2 coin

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Money & Finance

Our Commemorative £2 Coin
Undergraduate coursework written by Mike Swan, Will Davies, Emma Christie-Miller, Becky Woolford, Meagan Wheatley, Maddie Redfern, Robbie Black, Lucy Webber, Jade Stevens, Katy Charlton & Tom Bollands (a.k.a Royally Minted).
Available in full below. Originally posted online here.

In 2010, students start the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ by researching different examples of trade justice activism to add to the followthethings.com website (not all of them made it). Next, students who have researched different examples came together to create their own original examples of trade justice activism. They pick up some important ideas from their own research and what has already been published here on followthethings.com. They know the importance of looking beyond the usual suspects of follow the things activist – phones, fashion and food – and think about something they don’t think about, something that’s made by doesn’t have a ‘made in’ label, something that’s jangling in all of their pockets: coins. They know that they’re made of metal, but have no idea which ones or where they might be mined by whom. They’ve read about commodities embodying the labour of their creators, and being haunted by them. They’re carrying around, they’re spending, the labour of those mine workers. It’s easy to find which metals are in coins. The organisations that mint them tend to say so. And it’s not difficult to find newspaper, NGO and occupational toxicology research that profiles the labour that goes into mining these metals around the world, the multiple forms of pollution caused by this mining and the damage this does to people’s health, social structures and the environment. The group’s task is to think about how best to present their findings, to make those lives part of this thing, to insert those lives into the lives of coins and their transaction. 2010 sees the UK’s Royal Mint releasing a two commemorative £2 coins: to mark 150 years of modern nursing and the 100 years since the death of Florence Nightingale. The group – now calling themselves ‘Royally Minted’ – decide to design a third that will commemorate the labour that goes into mining those coins’ metals. They look at the Royal Mint’s commemorative coin webpages and mimic their format and content. It’s all very celebratory, very collectable. These students are particularly inspired by forms of activism – like the Suffragette Penny [see our page on this here] – which puts political issues into circulation on and as commodities. Money – with its unique status as a commodity and a means of exchange – is a perfect vehicle for political messages. If only the Royal Mint would commission this.

Page reference: Royally Minted (2010) Our New Commemorative £2 Coin. followthethings.com/our-new-commemorative-£2-coin.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

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£20 Banknote

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Money & Finance

£20 Banknote
Undergraduate coursework written by Oli Busk.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Exeter is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Oli Busk – has just got a £100 parking fine. He goes to the ATM to withdraw some cash, and then starts to think about what money is made from, its materials, its manufacture. Sure, there’s ways that it can be invested ethically and sustainability, but what about how its paper form is produced. The Royal Mint – which manufactures physical cash for the Bank of England – doesn’t say much about what it procures to make that cash. That would probably make it easier to make counterfeit money. So he indulges in some educated guesswork. There’s cotton in those notes, sooo … whose lives – apart from Queen Elizabeth – are in them? To his surprise, the hidden labour he finds is undertaken by students like him. And children.

Page reference: Oli Busk (2009) £20 Banknote. followthethings.com/£20-banknote.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

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Barracetamol’s Family Reunion

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Health & Beauty | Home & Auto

Barracetamol’s Family Reunion
A cartoon character created, brought to life, placed, photographed and posted online by Elaine King, Nancy Scotford, Rosie Cotgreave, Katie Lewis, Jack Ledger, Alice Wakeley, Olivia Rogers, Dennis Yeung, Isabelle Baker and Hannah Willard.
Original interview with Barracetamol below. Family reunion photos available on Flickr here. Barracetamol’s twitter feed here. Download Barracetamol’s Family Reunion Action Pack here to print and place your own Barracetamol.

In 2012, students start the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ by researching different examples of trade justice activism to add to the followthethings.com website (not all of them made it). Next, students who have researched different examples come together to create their own original examples of trade justice activism. They pick up some important ideas from their own research and what has already been published here on followthethings.com. They know the importance of taking commodities to pieces by looking through their ingredients and searching each one for mining, factory, farm and other human stories from their origins. They know the importance for filmmakers and activists of finding or creating a charismatic character for their audience members to relate to and empathise with. They’re familiar with literature arguing – and examples showing – that commodities have their own agentic power, can teach us things, and can be imagined coming alive and teaching us a few things. One group of students chooses something they all carry around with them: paracetamol. They look through its list of ingredients on the box. And look them up online. They find stories about talc and its miners and magnesium stearate and its connection to palm oil workers. These ingredients aren’t even in the pills, but they do help to make them. They use news stories to follow these two ingredients to their possible origins, and then turn around and look back towards their consumption. Yes, these workers and these ingredients help to make the paracetamol they carry around with them. But they start looking at the ingredients in other products, and find that talc and/or magnesium stearate are loads of other commodities too: toothpaste, paint, bronzer, beer and more. The task of the paracetamol cartoon character that they create – Barracetamol – is to go shopping with them, to find his missing relations, and to have his photo taken with related commodities with a little caption to post on his socials. He’s trying to tap into the vibe of those tear-jerking family reunion shows on TV. A familiar genre. The group’s creative process seems silly. The students enjoy it. They find it funny a lot of the time. But there’s a serious message about commodity-following behind this. At a teardown-level, countless commodities have the same ingredients sourced from the same places, mined and made by the same people. So a simple ‘this comes from there and therefore I should or should not buy it’ narrative obscures the complex interconnectedness of things in the global economy. Not everything is made for its final consumer. Barracetamol tries to convey a more complex story in a relatable way. Group member Nancy imagines that these moving reunions have made Barracetamol a minor celebrity. So he’s profiled in a magazine. Below you can read the interview.

Page reference: Elaine King, Nancy Scotford, Rosie Cotgreave, Katie Lewis, Jack Ledger, Alice Wakeley, Olivia Rogers, Dennis Yeung, Isabelle Baker & Hannah Willard (2012) Barracetamol’s Family Reunion. followthethings.com/barracetamols-family-reunion.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 27 minutes.

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Kidney Trade

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Health & Beauty

Kidney Trade
Research mapping by followthethings.com intern Eeva Kemppainen.

followthethings.com intern Eeva Kemppainen is reading academic and activist work on the illegal trade in human organs. How they’re obtained, from whom, by whom, where in the world. How they’re transplanted, into whose bodies, by which surgeons, where in the world. Everybody and everything in between. The international criminal investigations and court cases where it comes to the surface. The covert journalism and ethnographic research that exposes it. It’s the most labyrinthine and startling example of ‘follow the thing’ commodity tracing and activism. But there’s no one example we can feature on our site. But something like this needs to be in our collection. Eeva does this by taking passages from lots of academic and newspaper articles that mention specific places, notes what aspect of the illegal kidney trade takes place there, and adds them as points on a google map. What she maps is an amazing, complex world of illegal activities, (un)ethical academic and journalistic practices, and the connected lives of differently desperate ‘donors’ and ‘recipients. How real can it make the traffic of these organs seem? See for yourself.

Page reference: Eeva Kemppainen (2012) Kidney Trade. followthethings.com/kidney-trade.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated browsing time: 35 minutes.

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The Pill (a.k.a. A Female Issue)

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Health & Beauty

The Pill (a.k.a. A Female Issue)
Undergraduate coursework created by Kate Ross.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Exeter is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. Because you’re a cyborg, your body cannot function without the people, animals, technologies, networks that makes its inputs like food and medicine. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. See what you can find online and write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Kate Ross – chooses a prescription drug that she takes every day called Co-cyprindiol. It’s a contraceptive pill that’s also prescribed for skin and other conditions. When searches online to find out more about it, she discovers women in China, Brazil and Taiwan who are forced to take contraceptive pills in order to work in the factories and on the farms which make the stuff she buys. Her argument is that her connection with them is not only through the goods they might produce than she might buy. Their connection is through their consumption – as women – of the same medicine, voluntarily or not. They have something in common. Their bodies. Their fertility. Their medication. Once she learns about their relationships with the drug she takes, she thinks about how she’s feeling every time she pops one out of the foil pack… and then I see that face. To make her coursework more visceral, she takes an empty Co-cyprindiol foil, sticks it to a piece of paper, and handwrites these thoughts around it, day by day. These are the same foils that the supply chain workers she’s read about will pop their pills out of every day. She writes her thoughts and footnotes these with academic and detective work readings that have helped her to think this way.

Page reference: Kate Ross (2004) The Pill (A.K.A. A Female Issue). followthethings.com/the-pill-leaflet-thyroxine-a-k-a-a-female-issue.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes.

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Hydrocortisone Relatedness

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Health & Beauty

Hydrocortisone Relatedness
A talk by Ian Cook et al, edited and updated for publication here.
Available in full below.

Sometimes the thing you want to follow chooses you. It’s October 2004. followthethings.com CEO Ian is in considerable pain. He goes to hospital. He’s got kidney stones. Lots of them. The following summer he’s diagnosed with an illness called sarcoidosis. That’s what’s causing his body to make them. It’s also causing considerable weight loss. And lethargy. And extreme thirst. This is a serious illness. It’s in his lungs. But it could spread. He’s prescribed hydrocortisone steroid tablets. They calm the sarcoid inflammation that sets off the chemical reactions that cause his body to make those stones. And he gets better. He regains his sense of self, his working body. It’s a miracle. He wants to find out more about the drug. Who makes it for him, where, from what? He wants to say thanks. He’s inspired by a student taking his ‘Geographies of material culture’ module whose medicine-following coursework was original & surprising [it’s published on our site here]. Medicines are such a mystery. Hardly anyone seems to follow them. Choosing something to follow when you have absolutely no idea what you might find can be exciting. Choosing something that you couldn’t function without but doesn’t have an ethical, sustainable, or fair trade alternative can make you think differently. If you’re used to ‘follow the thing ‘studies about the genre’s most charismatic commodities – food, fashion and electronics – medicines don’t give you what you might normally expect. Prescription medicines are procured for their consumers by healthcare services. You get what they source for you. Medicines can be made from active pharmaceutical ingredients and other materials that come from the most surprising sources. They may have been discovered / invented under the most surprising circumstances by the most unexpected people. That’s 100% the case with hydrocortisone. Ian’s pills are made and consumed in the UK in the mid 2000s. But his talk starts and ends with civil rights activism in the US the 1960s. He loves what he finds. It forces him to think differently, more thankfully, about theorising and engaging others in the lives of things: through kinship and thingship. And because of what he finds – he concludes – he is a we.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Hydrocortisone relatedness. followthethings.com/hydrocortisone-thingship.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

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Cyborg Information Leaflet: Thyroxine 50 Microgram Tablets

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Health & Beauty

Cyborg Information Leaflet: Thyroxine 50 Microgram Tablets
Undergraduate coursework created by Alison Buckler.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Birmingham is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. Because you’re a cyborg, your body cannot function without the people, animals, technologies, networks that makes its inputs like food and medicine. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. See what you can find online and write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Alison Buckler – chose the most personal example we ever saw, a medicine that’s keeping her alive. It’s not a discretionary commodity that she could do without. It’s not something where there’s an organic of fair trade alternative. So what can she find out about its origins, it’s life before it came into her life and made such a positive difference? And how can she convey what she has learned? In every box of pills, there’s a patient information leaflet. So Alison rewrites the one that comes with her Thyroxine tablets to provide a different kinds of information for a patient. A different understanding of their body and the way that it works, and what’s helping this medicine to help it work. This leaflet’s information is based on an extroverted sense of the body – a cyborg ontology – where the inside and the outside are intimately linked. What comes with this are senses of both astonishment and guilt. This was the first follow-the-meds example to appear on followthethings.com, and it inspired all the others…

Page reference: Alison Buckler (2004) Cyborg Information Leaflet: Thyroxine 50 Microgram Tablets. followthethings.com/cyborg-information-leaflet-thyroxine-50-microgram.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes.

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Mirror

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Health & Beauty | Home & Auto

Mirror
Undergraduate coursework written by Lucinda Lawrence.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Exeter is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Lucinda Lawrence – creates the most ‘meta’ example we have ever seen. It’s about a mirror that she bought in a market. It’s about the science and ingredients of mirrors. It’s about the people who mine its ingredients. Like tin. It’s about who you see when you look in the mirror, who helps you to be you. And – aaaand – she submits two things. A piece of paper with some typed writing on it. And a mirror. The writing has been reversed, so it can only be read in the mirror. And the mirror has a message written in red lipstick on its surface. ”If you fall, no one’s gonna carry you out (Rubin Age 13)’ (Cook 2007, p,2).’ It’s a fantastic piece of work. But you’ll need a mirror to read it. It’s worth the effort! When we showed this at an academic conference, one member of the audience called it ‘conceptual art’.

[If you want more ‘who I see in the mirror’ trade justice activism, see our page on a short film called Handprint here]

Page reference: Lucinda Lawrence (2009) Mirror. followthethings.com/mirror.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

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‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)

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Gifts & Seasonal

“‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)”
A letter written by ‘Mr Zhang’ (Sun Yi) in a Chinese prison factory and found in a box of Kmart Halloween decorations bought in Oregon, USA by Julie Keith (+ a documentary film starring Sun Yi and Julie Keith directed and produced by Leon Lee for Flying Cloud Productions).
Letter posted online by Julie Keith, reproduced in ‘Letter From Masanjia (trailer embedded above). Search online to watch the documentary here.

In 2013, shopper Julie Keith is unpacking a box of styrofoam Halloween decorations she bought from her local K-Mart. In between the ghoulish plastic gravestones, she finds a folded-up letter. It’s written in English by someone who says that they’re a prison factory worker in China who has helped to make this product. They give the address of the prison (called Masanjia) and say that its inmates work long hours and have been tortured, beaten and insulted. It asks its recipient to forward the letter to the ‘World Human Rights Organisation’. Julie thinks it’s genuine and posts o photo of the letter on her facebook with the caption ‘I found this in a box of Halloween decorations’. It gets a flurry of responses. Is it genuine? What should she do with it? There isn’t a ‘World Human Right Organisation’. The discussions spread. The post is shared many times. Soon it’s being reported on the local TV news. Next it’s a global news story. Who is this person? How did they write this note? How did they smuggle it into a box of Halloween decorations? How many letters did they write? What did they hope would happen? What danger were they in for doing this? Can journalists find the author and verify the story? And, most importantly, why are ‘made in China’ goods coming from factory labour? Isn’t that illegal? Next, this story is picked up by a documentary filmmaker who tries to answer these questions, and more. He find the author, now out of prison but still living in China. They film secretly. Sun Yi is not only the best travel guide but – helpfully – is also a cartoonist who draws the scenes of his captivity and factory labour to add unfilmable footage to the documentary. The filmmaker arranges for the Sun Yi and Julie Keith to meet in person. It’s an emotionally charged scene. She hands him the letter, they talk about their connected lives and the impact that the story about their connection has had on both of them. They are so happy to see eachother. They seem to care deeply about one another because, together, they have accidentally (her) and on purpose (him) become trade justice activists. They agree that they’re doing the right thing. But what are the consequences? He sought to expose this system of prison labour in China, but she didn’t. It’s illegal to import goods into the USA that are made with forced labour. That’s hugely problematic for the Chinese prison factory complex. So it’s hugely risky for him as the person who was instrumental in exposing this, helping to turn it into an international news story by hopefully writing a letter to an unknown consumer that asked for help. For us, this is an extraordinary example of trade justice activism because of its documentation (there’s so much!) and its impacts (so huge, unexpected and sad).

NB – this page currently focuses on the letter and will be updated to add details about the film.

Page reference: Harry Marriot, Alex Partington, William Finley, Milly Bowen, Sarah Murray & Jenny Sharp (2014) ‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia). followthethings.com/i-found-this-in-a-box-of-halloween-decorations.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 34 minutes.

Continue reading ‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)