Tag: Pop the bubble

ENCOURAGE FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

INCLUDE EMOTION

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

LET THE TEARS FLOW

FIND LOST RELATIONS

FIND THE LOVE

ENCOURAGE THANKFULNESS

END HAPPY

“Jamelia: Whose Hair Is It Anyway?“
A TV documentary film fronted by Jamelia, directed by Jo Hughes, produced by Morgan Matthews for Minnow Films.
Slideshow of documentary stills embedded above. BBC iPlayer page here. Watch on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

This is the example that inspired the first version of followthethings.com – an online list of ‘follow the things’ resources. In this TV documentary, legendary Birmingham pop singer Jamelia – best known for her 2010 song ‘Superstar’ – wants to find out about a hair extension that she wore on TV to present a National Lottery draw. It’s real human hair. Straight, long and black. But whose hair was it originally? Whose hair was she wearing? She asks some young women at a local school about where their extensions come from. They don’t know. Dead people? With the help of hair traders and a forensic scientist, she travels along human hair’s supply chains to find out if that’s true. First, she travels to Russia with a Russian hair trader. They drive to a village to buy the long and untreated hair of teenage girls (like Tatiana in the photo above). Their hair is worth a lot of money. Next, getting her hair forensically analysed in a lab provides some clues about its geographical origin. So, she travels to India, to the city of Chennai, and finds a woman whose hair she is convinced it originally was. But she hadn’t sold it. It had been shaved off at a temple, and the temple had sold it on. The money they made was used to feed the poor. So this isn’t a story of exploitation along supply chains that you might expect to find. Jamelia and the woman whose hair she probably wore bond over being mothers of daughters. The documentary turns into a kind of a reunion of long lost relations. This story has a happy ending and many of the people who comment on the film are suspicious of that. What have Jamelia and the film company brushed under the carpet? Do these following films always have to end up with depressing conclusions and appeals to consumers to do something for poor and powerless producers? A lot of the commentary is also about Jamelia and whether she is boycotting real hair now (like she allegedly said, or didn’t) or is a ‘hypocrite’ (that’s a criticism to expect of every example on this site). But there’s a final twist in this tale, that comes to the surface many years later. It’s a shocking example of a film like this making an impact. An important customer-base for Indian temple-sourced hair stops buying it. Because of a BBC documentary about the hair trade. It seems to be this one. Read on.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2020) Jamelia: Whose Hair Is It Anyway? followthethings.com/jamelia-who-hair-is-it-anyway.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 47 minutes.

Posted on December 2, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Step Away From The Weapon

followthethings.com
Security

“Step Away From The Weapon“
Undergraduate coursework written by Ginny Childs, originally published on followtheblog.org here.
Full text below.

In the version of the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module that was first taught at the University of Exeter, groups of students were given books, music videos, films and other example of trade justice activism to research. Their job was to produce draft pages on these sources for the followthethings.com website. Ginny Childs was in a group researching Indian rap artist Sofia Ahraf’s ‘Dow vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle’ music video [see this page in our website here]. Ginny wasn’t born when the Bhopal factory exploded in 1984 but, as a member of the university’s Office Training Corps, she notices stringent rules about toxic chemical leaks in her rifle drills. While thousands of people of Bhopal had been poisoned by Methyl Isocyanate, she was at risk from a tiny dose of the radioactive hydrogen isotope called tritium that was in her rifle battlesight. The safety procedures in place if that leaked its tritium are stringent. So she investigates the safety procedures the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in the 1980s and wonders if she’s benefitted from better chemical safety regs that emerged after the disaster. Dow still hasn’t paid compensation top the Bhopal victims. And she’s still reliant on Dow (who bought Union Carbide) as a company making chemical ingredients in the commoditiies she loves. So what can she do with what she learns? How can she make a difference? Share Ashraf’s ”toxic rap battle’ video on her socials maybe? Keep the story alive.

Page reference: Ginny Childs (2017) Step Away From The Weapon. followthethings.com/step-away-from-the-weapon.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Door key

followthethings.com
Home & Auto

2006

UNBRANDED

DOOR KEY

MADE IN MANY COUNTRIES

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“Door Key“
Undergraduate coursework written by Alice Williams published in the Primary Geographer.
Full text below.

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 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. Alice Williams writes about a recent experience. When she lost something and only then realised how important it was to her life. The key to her flat. Which gives her a sense of safety. Or at least she thinks so. Until she looks into its ingredients. Its metals. Like lead. Which is added to make it easier to cut. And its possible sources. Mines in South Africa and the USA. A smelter in Canada. A cutting plant in Italy… And the people who work with lead in these places. And the effects it has on their health. And their safety. They’re connected. Shouldn’t everyone feel safe?

Page reference: Alice Williams (2006) Door Key. followthethings.com/door-key.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on November 20, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

MILKproject

MILKproject website homepage
MILKproject installation at the local museum in Rumbini, Latvia.

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Grocery

SOLD IN THE NETHERLANDS

MULTIMEDIA ARTWORK

POP THE BUBBLE

FLIP THE SCRIPT

TAKE IT TO PIECES

“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>)

Estimated reading time: 29 minutes.

Posted on November 18, 2024February 13, 2025 by Ian Cook

Mangetout

followthethings.com
Grocery

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

FOLLOW THE PEOPLE

SHOW BOTH SIDES

“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>)

Estimated reading time: 52 minutes.

Posted on November 15, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

King Corn: Your Are What You Eat

followthethings.com
Grocery

APPLE & CRANBERRY JUICE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THINGS

TAKE THEM TO PIECES

FLIP THE SCRIPT

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

INGREDIENTS SOURCED WORLDWIDE

MAKE IT FUNNY

STREISAND EFFECT

“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>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.

Posted on November 10, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Chewing Gum

followthethings.com
Grocery

TAKE IT TO PIECES

JOIN THE DOTS

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT META

“Chewing Gum“
Undergraduate coursework written by Lucy Mayblin, published in the Teaching Geography journal.
Full text below.

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, their lecturer (now 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 – Lucy Mayblin – ends up writing about being an accidental consumer. She’s walking to class. She steps in chewing gum recently spat from someone else’s mouth. It’s stuck to her shoe. But what exactly is stuck to her shoe, and why? She buys some gum and inspects the ingredient list. She searches the internet to find out more. What she finds out is shocking. She had trodden in the ‘war on terror’?! But is it true? To add to the stickiness of her work, she prints it out, rolls it into a tube, puts it into a shoe, and hands it in with some fresh gum on the sole. It sticks to the hand-in desk.

Page reference: Lucy Mayblin (2004) Chewing Gum. followthethings.com/chewing-gum.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.

Posted on November 8, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala

followthethings.com
Grocery

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

FOLLOW THE THING

JOIN THE DOTS

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala“
An academic book by Edward F. Fischer & Peter Benson published by Stanford University Press.
Google Books preview embedded above.

There are shoppers in Nashville USA who are conscious about their health and shop for healthy vegetables like broccoli in their local supermarkets. There are farmers in Guatemala who are trying to hold onto their land and to make a living by growing vegetables like brocolli for export markets like the USA. Each has their own rich and fascinating story to tell about their lives, their work, their dreams and desires for a better future. In this book, their lives are seen as interdependent as the authors travel along Brocolli’s supply chain, connecting these worlds and lives through detailed ethnographic fieldwork and description. They find that shoppers’ and farmers’ lives, and the impacts that they have on one another, are bound together in complex geographical and historical webs of connection. Like the best ‘follow the thing’ work, this study of a commodity that many wouldn’t think twice about on the supermarket shelf. But, once you start to examine it, ask questions about it, and start following it, what you find is often staggering in its contrasts, connections, depth and feeling. For the authors, the concept of ‘desire’ is something that this vegetable’s farmers and shoppers have in common. Could shoppers’ desire for cheap food be re-aligned into a desire for more equitable relations with farmers (even if this might cost a bit more)? Can there be foods that are good for the health and wellbeing of everyone in their supply chains? This is an admirable intention, but we haven’t been able to tell if and how this book encouraged others to think this was and to act on this way of thinking. What impact can an academic book have?

Page reference: Keith DellaGrotta and Meredith Weaver (2011) Broccoli & Desire: Global Connections & Maya Struggles In Postwar Guatemala. followthethings.com/broccoli-desire-gobal-connections-maya-struggles-in-postwar-guatemala.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes.

Posted on October 16, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Gold Farmers

followthethings.com
Money & Finance

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

FLIP THE SCRIPT

USE YOUR PRIVILEGE

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

SHOW BAD & GOOD

TRANSLATE & SUBTITLE

“Gold Farmers“
A documentary film written & directed by Ge Jin
Trailer embedded above. Search here for the whole film (sometimes uploaded in parts) online.

Travelling between China and USA, filmmaker Ge Jin talks to men who play Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) like ‘World of Warcraft’ and ‘Lineage’. Its players in the USA sometimes exchange real dollars for the game’s online currency in order to pay for extra game features like swords or amulets. They could earn online currency themselves in-game but, instead, talk about buying it. But that currency is produced and sold by Chinese men who play the same games all day in ‘gold farms’ to make a meagre living. Their places of work are described as ‘virtual sweatshops’ where they earn and sell virtual money through the labour of online game-play. But – unlike most – these producers and consumers meet and interact (albeit online, in the games that they play). They inhabit in the same online worlds, but as consumers and workers, buyers and sellers. This documentary film is an early example of ‘follow the thing’ activism focused on a digital commodity. So what do these players imagine and know about one another? How is one’s enjoyable leisure time activity affecting another’s full time work?

Page reference: Jack Parkin (2012) Gold Farmers (taster). followthethings.com/gold-farmers.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

Posted on September 30, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump

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Recycle my waste

DUMPED & PROCESSED IN GHANA

DOCUMENTARY FILM

POP THE BUBBLE