Include haunting & horror – Page 2

“Socks“
Undergraduate coursework written by David Roberts, published in the Teaching Geography journal.
Full text above. Reference below (Cook et al 2007).

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. 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 what properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming’ it. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives via that thing. One student – David Roberts – thinks about his Marks & Spencer socks. He has a drawer full of them. And none of them has a ‘made in’ label. After some online detective work, he’s finds one pair were made for him far away in Bulgaria in a factory owned by an Israeli company that’s fighting battles against consumers boycotting their goods because they’re also made by non-unionised workers in factories in Palestine’s Occupied Territories. Marks & Spencer encourages its shoppers to ‘Look Behind The Label’. And that’s exactly what he’s done. He finds some uncomfortable geopolitical issues are protecting his feet.

Page reference: David Roberts (2006) Socks. followthethings.com/socks.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024January 28, 2025 by Mark

The Eternal Embrace

followthethings.com
Fashion

“The Eternal Embrace“
A photograph by Taslima Akhter.
Photo blurred due to sensitive content. Available online.

Bangladeshi photographer and activist Taslima Akhter visits the ruins of the collapsed Rana Plaza factory. On April 24th 2013, over 1,100 garment workers were crushed to death there as they made clothes for high street brands including GAP, Primark and H&M. In the rubble, she spots two dead factory workers – a woman and a man – who appear to have died in each other’s arms. Her head is tipped back and a bloody tear has fallen from his eye. She takes a photo and posts it online. There are thousands of press photos of the disaster, but this one is said by many to be the most heart-wrenching and haunting. Commentators are repelled and drawn to its horror and beauty in equal measure. What were the final moments of these garment workers’ lives like? What was their relationship? What caused them to be killed like this? What impacts can a photo like this have on people who buy clothes made in factories like this? It’s profound.

Page reference: Nancy Scotford (2013) The Eternal Embrace. followthethings.com/the-eternal-embrace.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 47 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Fugitive Denim

followthethings.com
Fuel & Auto

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

“Fugitive Denim“
A non-fiction book by Rachel Louise Snyder published by W.W. Norton & Company.
Preview available on Google Books (embedded above).

Journalist Rachel Louise Snyder visits five countries and talks with factory workers, designers and many others who work in the global denim trade to make a pair denim jeans. She’s trying to appreciate the complex geographies connecting the people (she jokes) ‘in our pants’. To do so, she meets and works alongside the people who pick their cotton, weave their cloth, design, sew and sell them. But this isn’t another ‘sweatshop’ exposé. It’s charming, funny, haunting. And it’s showing what’s possible. The jeans she chooses to follow are more ‘progressive, humane [and] environmentally secure’ than most. So, if one brand can make jeans better, what’s stopping the others?

Page reference: Gabriela Camargo, You Bin Kang and Yvonne Yu (2011) Fugitive Denim. followthethings.com/fugitive-denim.shtml last accessed (<insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.