Tag: Join the dots - Page 4 - followthethings.com

Posted on September 20, 2024March 5, 2026 by Ian Cook

The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself

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Health & Beauty

2014

UNBRANDED

HEART PACEMAKER

MINED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

REDESIGN THE COMMODITY

ENCOURAGE THANKFULNESS

“The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself“
Undergraduate coursework made and recorded by Jennifer Hart
Images of the pacemaker and packaging submitted is in the slideshow above, the song is embedded below.

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 what properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming’ it. Student Jennifer Hart feels guilty about the conflict minerals in her mobile phone. Then she finds that the heart pacemaker her mum is having fitted also contains those minerals. It’s a lifesaving operation. How can she reconcile her mum’s suffering and that of these minerals’ miners? How best can she express her feelings about this technological object? By making a pacemaker that knows what she knows, feels what she feels, and can sing about it. A pacemaker that can express a huge thank you.

Page reference: Jennifer Hart, J. (2014) The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself. followthethings.com/pacemaker.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated listening & reading time: 10 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

Kopuchiska’s Mother Is Shopping For Meat

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Grocery

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Kopuchiska’s Mother Is Shopping For Meat“
A scene from a documentary film called ‘Kino-Eye’, directed by Dziga Vertov.
Film embedded above, scene starts at 7.00 and finishes at 14.08. Search online to stream here and to buy DVD here.

When the genre of documentary film was in its infancy, Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov used it to show how food shopping involves relations with hidden places, processes and people. In one extended scene from his experimental documentary Kino-Eye – which starts with an intertitle saying ‘Kopuchiska’s Mother Is Shopping For Meat’ – the film follows a cut of meat that she buys in reverse motion, from a cooperative market, via the slaughterhouse where it is put back into the cow, who then stands up, walks backwards into the train, which returns the cow to the fields where it grazed. Vertov’s message to the film’s audience is to buy your meat from a workers’ co-operative supermarket. If Marx had been a filmmaker, he could have made this sequence to show a commodity’s hidden relations. For us, it’s surprising that one of the earliest and most influential documentary filmmakers made follow thing work, to show audiences where commodities came from, what difference their purchase choices made, because meat’s system of provision mattered. Vertov also used techniques of montage, reverse sequencing, extremes of light and shade, in-shot camera motion, and sped up and slowed down the pace of scenes in order to ‘move’ his audiences kinaesthetically. So, is this some of the most innovative follow the things work you’ll ever see? Or a meaningless jumble? Either way, it’s had a significant influence on the ‘follow the thing’ genre’s academic and activist work.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Kopuchiska’s Mother Is Shopping For Meat. followthethings.com/kinoeye.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 18 minutes.

Posted on September 13, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

Ilha Das Flores

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Grocery | Money & Finance | Recycle my waste

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Ilha Das Flores (Island Of Flowers)“
A short film written, directed and produced by Jorge Furtado for Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Embedded in full above. Search online to watch the film here. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

It sounds simple: filmmaker Jorge Furtado follows the life of a tomato from Mr Suzuki’s tomato field to a garbage dump ‘on the Island of Flowers’ in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Here, the rotten tomatoes binned in shoppers’ kitchens are selected to feed the local pigs. The leftovers are scavenged by local people who have queued for the chance. But, this no ordinary film. Its footage doesn’t always seem ‘real’. Its voiceover is eccentric but is delivered in monotone. It’s like an economic geography lecture – or a public information film – that’s been made for an audience visiting Planet Earth for the first time. It explains what a human being is, and what the function of money in capitalism is, for instance. It’s full of human beings whose tomato-connected lives audiences can learn a little bit about. It’s a collage made from quick cuts between filmed scenes, found media and ideas. There seem to be so many tangents. But, together, they gradually build a powerful argument that, ultimately, trashes the way that capitalism values people, animals and the environment. Humans who watched it called it a beautiful, hilarious and deeply troubling masterpiece. You’ll have to watch it to believe it. Maybe two or three times. It’s only 13 minutes long. It’s the only example of trade justice activism that we have found that follows a thing from the beginning to the end of its life. And it decentres the stereotypical shopper in fascinating and eccentric ways. But what is Jorge Furtado trying to achieve? What are his cultural reference points? Why is this highly political film presented as a kind of weird joke?

Page reference: Maura Pavalow (2025) Ilha das Flores. followthethings.com/ilha-das-flores.html (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 68 minutes.

Posted on September 4, 2024March 6, 2026 by Ian Cook

Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads

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Fashion

PROCESSED IN SOUTH KOREA

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads“
A multi-sited ethnographic research monograph by Caroline Knowles, 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 (2024) Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads (holding page). 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

Primark – On The Rack

"A little deeper into the squalour and another rung down the ladder of exploitation. Children. Several young boys working on the same Primark vest we saw those women sewing earlier...
... one could be as young as 9 or 10. They're testing the stitching so the sequins don't end up falling off in the hands of customers back in Britain. When we asked their ages, their manager kept silent."
[The film then briefly shows the vest's 'atmosphere' label. This is a Primark band promising customers affordable fresh fashion]

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Fashion

“Primark – on the rack“
A documentary film presented by Tom Heap & produced by Frank Simmonds with Dan McDougall for BBC TV’s Panorama series.
Screenshot slideshow of the contested scene embedded above. Watch on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

The BBC produces an exposé of cheap clothing retailer Primark. It finds children making its clothes, and sewing and testing their sequins, in factories, slums and refugee camps in India. Primark is asked to contribute to the film before it’s shown. Instead, they decide to cut ties with the supply chains featured, then launch a website to counter the film’s claims. They research the film’s research to pick apart its claims, and then complain to the BBC that one 45 second scene (the one in the screenshots above) is fake. Their critic-silencing strategy has mixed success. The BBC is forced to admit that it cannot be 100% sure that the scene wasn’t faked, and the Panorama team are forced to hand back an award they were given for the film. But Primark’s persistent public attempts to silence this investigative journalism draws attention – for years – to the company’s reputation as the ‘poster boy of child labour in the UK’. Supporters of the film highlight the other 3,555 minutes of the film that Primark didn’t claim the producers had faked? Then, 5 years after the film was broadcast, the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapses and over a thousand garments workers are crushed to death making high street clothes. Journalists, filmmakers and others keep this tragedy relentlessly in the news. UK newspaper headlines refer to this as the ‘Primark factory’. There’s no way that this footage is fake. Primark has to react differently this time.

Page reference: Kate Adley, Richard Keeble, Pippa Russell, Noora Stenholm, William Strang and Tuuli Valo (2025) Primark – on the rack. followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 124 minutes.

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

No Pride In Primark

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Fashion | Gifts & Seasonal

REDUCE DISCRIMINATION

WASH IT WITH WOKENESS

“No Pride In Primark“
Popular activist campaign against Primark’s ‘Pride’ clothing & accessories made in anti-LGBTQ+ countries.
To see what sparked this, watch Primark’s promotional video above.

UK LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall collaborates with high street fashion retailer Primark on its 2018 ‘Pride’ range of clothing and accessories. They will be sold throughout Europe and North America and 20% of their profits will go to Stonewall. But none of the proceeds will go to the organisers of Pride celebrations, some of whom are struggling for money. And many of the countries in which this ‘Pride’ merch is being made – like Turkey, Myanmar & China – ban LGBTQ+ events and NGOs and imprison people for homosexuality. So what should Primark & Stonewall do? Where should people shopping for Pride merch go? And what’s it like to be an LGBTQ+ worker in Turkey, Myanmar or China making t-shirts and other merch that ‘celebrates what you are not allowed to be’? These are the questions asked by social media critics and the journalists who pick up their criticisms. It’s not a huge orchestrated campaign. No NGO or other organisation orchestrates it. Nevertheless, it becomes a notorious case of a high street brand ‘pink-washing’ (a form of ‘woke-washing’) their supply chain operations. In the wake of these criticisms, Primark continues to support LGBTQ+ organisations in many countries, but has it addressed the crackdowns on LGBTQ people in those countries where its rainbow merch is made? Should it withdraw its orders from these countries? Or keep working there, supporting – via Stonewall and other organisations – the LGBTQ+ organisations and workers who need it? Does it do so? And how can it convince the media, activists and consumers that it’s doing so? LGBTQ+ people represent a big market for clothing sales.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) No Pride In Primark (taster). followthethings.com/no-pride-in-primark.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

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

Confessions Of An Eco-Sinner

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Fashion | Grocery

“Confessions Of An Eco-Sinner”
A non-fiction book by journalist Fred Pearce.
Available to preview on Google Books (embedded above).

British journalist Fred Pearce travels 180,000 miles, to over 20 countries, to meet the people who produce (and sometimes recycle) the prawns in his curry, the cotton in his shirt, the computer on his desk, the gold in his wedding ring, and many other things. He wants to explore his own personal ecological footprint, and to work out whether he should be ashamed and/or proud of the impact that his shopping has on the world. This is classic ‘follow the thing’ research. A quest narrative. Starting in the Global North. With a person asking ‘who made my stuff?’ They travel the world to meet the people who they rely upon and then reflect on what this means for them (and maybe you) as a ‘consumer’. This is an approach that critics within the ‘follow the thing’ genre would like to ‘de-centre’. This work could start somewhere else! But what can readers learn from Fred’s travels nonetheless? Is everyone, unknowingly, an eco-sinner like he is? And what can be done to prevent the damage that consumption causes, out of sight and out of mind?

Page reference: Robert Black, Naomi Davies, Tom Mead, Pete Statham, Lucy Taylor and Laura Wilkinson (2011) Confessions Of An Eco-Sinner. followthethings.com/confessions-of-an-ecosinner.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes.

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

University Lifestyle: Fabulously British

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Fashion | Grocery | Electronics | Home & Auto

“University Lifestyle: Fabulously British“
Undergraduate coursework designed & written by Charlotte Brunton.
Available in full in slideshow above. High resolution download available here.

After researching examples of trade justice activism to add to this site, students taking CEO Ian’s ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the University of Exeter are tasked to make their own. Charlotte Brunton’s inspiration comes from the junk mail arriving at her student house. Instead of getting interesting letters, she and her housemates get student fashion catalogues. In particular, Jack Wills catalogues – six or more every season. They’re selling students an ‘aspirational’ lifestyle, tempting them to buy the commodities they feature. The people in them, the things they have, the carefree, stylish and connected lifestyles they picture – the designers want students to want them. Charlotte and her friends imagine themselves using this, wearing that, experiencing the lifestyles these things can support, together. But who made these things? What about their lifestyles? Charlotte asks herself how she can create a catalogue that highlights how personal these things are both to her and to the people who made them? In real life, she has an interdependent, culture-crossing, ‘British’ life which they are very much part of. So she designs a ‘lifestyle catalogue’ that you can browse to imagine and buy into with her.

Page reference: Charlotte Brunton (2014) University Lifestyle: Fabulously British. followthethings.com/university-lifestyle-fabulously-british.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated browsing time: 15 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024March 6, 2026 by Mark

The True Cost

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Fashion

“The True Cost“
A documentary film (with website) directed Andrew Morgan & executive produced by Livia Firth for Life Is My Movie Entertainment.
Available in full on YouTube (embedded above). Website here.

American filmmaker Andrew Morgan weeps in a New York Starbucks after seeing a front page newspaper story about the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh where over 1,100 garment workers were crushed to death making clothes for Western high street retailers and brands. It’s illustrated with a photos two young boys looking at photos the of missing, assumed dead, workers pinned up near the site. They are the same age as his sons and are looking for their missing mum. He is shocked to his core. How could something this atrocious be allowed to happen? He imagines making a film that will answer this question and sets up a kickstarter campaign to raise the money to finance it. He doesn’t believe that there’s an individual or organisation who, alone, could have saved those people’s lives by acting differently (like consumers, for example). So he travels to lots of places in fashion’s supply chains. He talks to workers, farmers, managers, retired executives, ethical fashion pioneers, NGO execs, journalists, doctors and academics. Viewers get to know some – like Shima Akhter the garment factory worker in Bangladesh and LaRhea Pepper the cotton farmer in the USA – better than others. He makes the argument that Rana Plaza was a systematic failure. This film’s networky trade justice activism shows how everyone in the industry could and should act differently to make things better. Some, as his film shows, are already doing so. But can it encourage more people to get involved in the systemic change that’s needed? Who needs to see it? Where? There’s a lot of detail to digest here! Maybe too much. This film generated more discussion than any example researched on our website so far.

Page reference: Olivia Dubec, Sophie Rees, Amelia Daniel, Becca Craig, Ellie Glynn, Frankie Ward & Katy Jackson (2020) The True Cost. followthethings.com/the-true-cost.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 146 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.

Choc-full of Easter Egg-sploitation?