Tag: Humanise things - Page 3 - followthethings.com

“Plastic China” [also known as ‘Plastic Kingdom’]
A documentary directed by Jiuliang Wang for CNEX, Beijing TYC & Oriental Companion Media.
YouTube trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.

Recycling plastic is a good thing right? But where does it go to be recycled? Who does recycling work? And what’s that work like? This film traces the world’s plastic waste to a small village in China where families sort, clean and shred it by hand and by machine. Some of it is processed to make nurdles – the tiny plastic beads that factories buy in bulk to melt and make recycled plastic goods. A lot of it isn’t – partly because there are so many types of plastic, and those nurdles can’t mix them together. The film shows the labour of plastic recycling from the perspective of an 11 year old girl called Yi-Jie. Her family eke a living processing plastic waste shipped into their lives from all over the world. She recycles full time to help earn money for, and alongside, members of her impoverished family. Some of the plastic packaging she processes includes images of wealthy consumers enjoying the goodies that they used to contain. These images feed Yi-Jin’s dreams of a better life. She plays imaginative games with the plastic packaging that surrounds her. In one scene she makes and plays with a plastic waste computer. But her family doesn’t earn enough for her to attend school. She doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Audiences for trade justice activism are used to worrying about who makes their stuff down the supply chain. But the hidden lives and labours in commodities don’t disappear when they’re purchased. Others become attached to them when they’re thrown away. The same labour (and environmental) rights issues are there to worry about too. The materials that commodities are made from never disappear. They just appear somewhere else, in other people’s work, lives and landscapes. This film was terrible PR for the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, they banned it from being shown there. But they went much further, banning the importing and recycling of plastic waste from overseas. Shutting down an industry is perhaps the most powerful impact that trade justice activism can have. But is this what the filmmakers had in mind when they decided to make Plastic China? Could they have predicted that this might happen? What’s their responsibility towards Yi-Jie and her family?

Page reference: Lucian Harford & Ian Cook (2026) Plastic China (under construction). followthethings.com/plastic-china.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 46 minutes.

Posted on September 11, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

My Fancy High Heels

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Fashion

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“My Fancy High Heels“
A documentary film directed by Ho, Chao-ti for Conjunction Films, broadcast on Public Television Service, Taiwan.
Embedded in full above. Mandarin & English, with Mandarin subtitles.

Everyone has challenges, dreams and sources of sorrow and happiness in their lives. Wealthy young women in New York city. Impoverished slaughterhouse, tannery and factory workers in China. Maybe even baby calves. And their lives can be connected by following things. Like a pair of sculpture-like Bally, Prada, Gucci, Fendi high heel shoes that sell for $300 to $1,000 a pair. Each person connected by these shoes is worth knowing, spending time with, walking in their shoes for a while. The calves – and the people who kill, bleed and skin them – too, because their hide makes the softest leather. There’s empathy here for everyone, but connecting these lives, sorrows, happiness through these shoes is jarring for its audiences. The extremes of wealth and poverty, glamour and horror, are so extreme. Exploited workers don’t only make clothes for high street brands and retailers. The most exclusive brands, with the biggest profit margins, are just as tainted. This is a Chinese language film, and it’s difficult to find or buy a DVD with English subtitles. So a lot of the discussion below has been Google translated. The audience, for a change, is not English-speaking and not in the Global North.

Page reference: Jenny Hart & Ian Cook (2024) My Fancy High Heels (taster). followthethings.com/my-fancy-high-heels.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Posted on September 4, 2024October 24, 2026 by Ian Cook

Flip-flop: a journey through globalisation’s backroads

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Fashion

PROCESSED IN SOUTH KOREA

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

SPEND SOME TIME

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

MAKE A WEBSITE

“Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads“
A multi-sited ethnographic research monograph by Caroline Knowles (with photographs by Michael Tan), published by Pluto
Preview above. Available from good bookstores. Website here.

When academics, journalists, filmmakers and other thing-followers choose the commodity they will delve into, it’s often something important, something they couldn’t live without. Caroline Knowles takes a different approach, choosing something she doesn’t think about much, something that’s sitting at the back of her closet, something she uses only occasionally. It’s a great idea. Following different commodities brings lots of different materials, places, and people together in one story. There will inevitably be surprises. But she’s not following them back from her closet to the factories where they were made in the Global South. She’s following them forward. From the oil wells of Kuwait, to the petrochemical plants in South Korea that turn this oil into the right kind of plastic that can be shipped as granules, to the factories in China where they are turned into flip-flops, which are then shipped for sale and walking about in Ethiopia. She uses this on-the-ground following to reflect on globalisation. It’s a more complex process than many think it is. It looks this way when you follow things, especially if you de-centre the Western consumer, follow South-South trade, and connect different sites, people and places. The ‘guilty Western consumer’ is nowhere to be seen. So what can this approach tell us about trade justice? In what ways might it be, and contribute to, its activism?

Ian Cook et al (2026) Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads (under construction). followthethings.com/flip-flop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

The Song Of The Shirt

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Fashion

1843

UNBRANDED

SHIRT

MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN

WORN IN GREAT BRITAIN

POEM

POP THE BUBBLE

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

“The Song Of The Shirt“
A poem written by Thomas Hood, published in Punch magazine.
Original publication in Punch included above.

Curiosity and concern about the poverty of the people who make everyday commodities is as old as capitalism itself. One of the most iconic and influential examples in this genre is a poem called ‘The Song Of The Shirt’ which was published in the satirical British magazine Punch in 1843. This was 24 years before Karl Marx published the first volume of Capital, with its famous opening chapter on the commodity. The subject of the poem is a woman working in East London making linen shirts for the city’s well-to-do men. It contains lines that wouldn’t be out of place in Twenty-First Century trade justice activism: ‘Oh Men, with Sisters dear! O! Men! With mothers and wives! It’s not linen you’re wearing out. But other creatures’ lives’. ‘The Song Of The Shirt’ went viral through the media of its time, being reprinted and discussed in countless newspapers, pamphlets and books across Great Britain and overseas, often with accompanying illustrations of its subject at work. It also crossed over into ‘Song Of The Shirt’ paintings, songs and plays. But how did the poverty of seamstresses come to the surface, here, at this time? How did this poem become so popular and influential? What can we learn from it today?

Page reference: Rachael Midlen & Charlotte Brunton (2014) The Song Of The Shirt (taster). followthethings.com/the-song-of-the-shirt.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

Mardi Gras: Made In China

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Fashion | Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

HUMANISE WORKERS

HUMANISE THINGS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

CHOOSE AN AUDIENCE

SHOW IT BACK

“Mardi Gras: Made In China“
A documentary film directed by David Redmon for Carnivalesque Films.
First five minutes embedded above. Search online for streaming availability here.

During the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, USA, a tradition has emerged in which women who bear flesh have strings of plastic beads thrown at them to wear. Filmmaker David Redmon films this revelry and travels to Fuzhou, China to meet the ‘easy to control’ women who make those beads. He films their high speed, low wage, work and returns to New Orleans to show this footage to drunken revellers. He’d done the same thing in Fuzhou, showing the factory workers how the beads they made were ‘consumed’. The film connects women in China making plastic beads for women in the USA to wear, but under very specific, throwaway circumstances. So what were their reactions to seeing these hidden relationships? How did they make sense of this? Or push it to one side? Or find it funny? What happens when labour exploitation meets carnival excess? Where did these beads go afterwards? Who cleaned them up as trash? Why were they sent to US military personnel in Iraq in care packages? And did those factory workers really tell the director that their jobs were fun and well paid? Who can you trust to translate what people tell you? All of these dramas generated heated debate. Not least about trade justice activism like this being a ‘buzzkill’. But what’s the way forward? The film doesn’t suggest one.

Page reference: Grace Chu, Stephanie Hong & Jasmine Lee (2014) Mardi Gras: Made In China. followthethings.com/mardi-gras-made-in-china.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 53 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

Fugitive Denim

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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.

Posted on August 17, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

Plastic Bag

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My shopping bag | Recycle my waste

“Plastic Bag“
A short film directed by Ramin Bahrani and narrated by Werner Herzog for ITVS’s Futurescapes series.
Published on YouTube, embedded above. Search online for other streams here.

Remember those thin plastic bags that used to be available, free, at the checkout? This is the starting point for Ramin Bahrani’s short film. What lives do these bags lead after the shopping is emptied from them at home? How long do they live? Where do they end their lives? Do their lives ever end? And what if one of them could tell that story for itself (in a droll Bavarian accent)? What would it say? One may think it’s exciting to have finally been chosen, there at the checkout, to fulfil his destiny. To help a shopper carry their shopping home. The shopper-bag relationship is short-lived, but beautiful. But what if that shopper later uses you to pick up her dog’s poo? And put you in a bin? How would you feel about her then, as your life continued, further and further away from hers? You’re not the slightest bit biodegradable. Your life is going to last for ever, starting in a landfill dump. What’s it like to be there with millions of bits of other trash? Imagine being caught in the wind, blown through the countryside, travelling hundreds of miles, over maybe thousands of years, ending up in the sea, with the fish, possibly causing them all kinds of problems. Who and what might you have seen and met on your journey? What would you ponder about your life now its purpose is so far in the past? This film has a silly and unbelievable plot, but its also wonderfully moving, hilarious, thought-provoking. Viewers are surprised to find themselves empathising with an object. Caring about its fate. How its life could have been different. Maybe this is the best way to change people’s minds about the mountains of waste created by capitalism and its commodity culture. Maybe it’s the perfect film to illustrate vital materialism, assemblage theory, affect and/or dark ecology. Even if Bahrani didn’t set out to do so. Maybe you have to watch it to write an essay. Maybe it’s just too long or just plain stuuuuupid. Like a childish spinoff from a well-known movie franchise like Toy Story. Ugh. Watch and read for yourself! This page is a wild ‘follow the thing’ ride into debates about environmental justice and reponsibility.

Page reference: Molly Healy, Josephine Thompson, Daisy Aylott, Lily Andrews, Kate Ward, Charlotte Rooker, James Swain, Edward Denton & Ethan Langfield (2025) Plastic Bag. followthethings.com/plastic-bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 77 minutes.