Are you a student, a researcher, a teacher, a supply chain worker, a business exec, a citizen, a shopper?
Are you an activist, a filmmaker, an artist, an animator, a photographer, a playwright, a journalist?
Are you concerned about exploitation, inequality & injustice in trade?
Do you want to help create more just & sustainable futures?
Are you studying and/or developing new trade justice activism?
What can you learn from generations of activists who have tried?
followthethings.com is a 'one stop shop' for this work.
We've scoured the internet for everything ever said about 100+ examples.
We're keen to learn how this work works, and what it can do.
We want to connect:
Intentions: what trade justice activists want their work to do: e.g. "Pop the bubble" or "Improve workers' pay & conditions"
Tactics: how they bring these intentions to life: e.g. "Hold 'em accountable" or "Workers take the mic"
Responses: how audiences react to their work: e.g. "This is disgusting" or "Who's responsible?"
and Impacts: the change that trade justice activism can make: e.g. "Now we're talking" or "Governments intervene"
Trade justice activism is messy, uncertain, nonlinear, all over the place, inspiring, worrying, powerful.
On followthethings.com ‘shopping’ has an important double meaning.
On the one hand, it means “to seek or examine goods, property, etc. offered for sale”.
On the other hand, it means “to behave treacherously toward; inform on; betray” or “to give away information about” those goods, property, etc.
Anyone who makes trade justice activism, and anyone who visits this site, is a ‘shopper’.
"Whoever said money can't buy happiness, simply didn't know where to go shopping" - Bo Derek.
So, browse our store. Shop with us!
Tag: Pop the bubble
INTENTION: consumers’ experience of commodities can be personal. Providing comfort, escape, togetherness. This is the bubble of ‘commodity fetishism’ that trade justice activists like to pop. Workers of the world helped to create these experiences. Let’s, at least, acknowledge that!
“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>)
“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>)
“A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump“ A documentary film presented by Reggie Yates, produced by Harriet Morter for BBC TV. Available in full above (with ads). Available on the BBC’s iPlayer platform without ads (with login) here. Search online for streaming options here.
Agbogbloshie is a notorious e-waste dump on the outskirts of Accra, the capital city of Ghana. It’s where Western electronics ‘go to die’. It’s where migrant workers from the North of Ghana move to take up low paid and dangerous work recycling this waste. They recover valuable scrap metals like copper from discarded electrical devices, most famously by burning the plastic or rubber coatings from their wires. The smoke is acrid, poisonous. Processing this waste here has polluted the soil, the water table, the air, and the health of the people who work and live here. It’s a textbook case of the evils of Western consumption. In terms of toxic landscapes, some say, Agbogbloshie is in the same league as Chernobyl. In 2017, Reggie Yates (a British Radio and TV celebrity with Ghanaian heritage) spends a week here. It’s for an episode of a documentary TV series in which he tries to understand the lives lived by people less fortunate than himself by living with them for a week, doing the work that they do, sleeping where they sleep, eating what they eat, and being followed around by a film crew to capture every moment. In Agbogbloshie, he gets to know a group of ‘burner boys’ who are in their 20s called Razak, Awal, Yahro Muhammed and their chief. They show him what they do, burning the plastic off wires, dousing the bright orange flames in puddles of water in the mud, bagging up the bare copper, and selling it on for pennies. As Reggie gets to know these young men, he starts to care about them, becomes concerned about how they can support their families, and their children, on such low wages earned from work that will shorten their lives. They have serious health problems already. He wants viewers in the UK to feel culpable. Most don’t have a clue where their discarded electrical devices go to die. And the damage that this waste can do to people less fortunate than them in poorer countries. Like these ‘burner boys’ in Ghana. Lots of Western journalists and photographers have visited Agbogbloshie to tell this same story. Many seem to have met Razal, Awal, Yahro and Muhammed. They’ve acted as fixers, helping these visitors to tell the story they have heard about by providing testimony and burning plastic and rubber in photogenic ways. People who are in touch with the ‘burner boys’ say that they appreciated Reggie’s efforts to muck in, they thought he was cool. But waste academics in Ghana and overseas, as well as local commentators, have a problem with this story that Reggie and everyone else visits to tell. It’s one of those narratives of exploitation that has a questionable origin, quickly becomes iconic, and attracts visitors to tell ready-made versions of it over and over again. It’s a trope. Bad things happen in the Global South. Impoverished workers are suffering. Unthinking consumers in the global North are responsible for this. The media tells the story using authentic found characters with whom a celebrity presenter is able to spend time and to empathise. The audience is invited to empathise with the presenter empathising with the found characters. This encourages powerful emotional and practical responses, debates about the causes of the problem – like capitalism – potential solutions – like an industrial waste plant – and problems with the potential solutions – the ‘burner boys’ would suffer. But what if researchers and on-the-ground commenters reported that Agbogbloshie is quite a small dump, and that the e-waste processed there was mainly from Ghana? There’s next to nothing about the international waste supply chain in this film. What if the dump had been demolished in 2021, partly because of the toxic reputation that these repeated media exposés had given the place? And what if most of the online debate about this documentary had taken place two or three years after the dump had closed? Reggie’s documentary was published on YouTube in 2023 and 2024: giving it a worldwide audience that it had never originally had but also generating a huge fuss about a place that no longer existed. Everyone seem to agree that Reggie is cool, a genuinely empathetic person, but why didn’t the team behind his film seem to have done their homework? A very different story could – and maybe should – have been told.
Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Ghana: a Week In A Toxic Waste Dump. followthethings.com/ghana-a-week-in-a-toxic-waste-dump.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Where Heaven Meets Hell“ A documentary film produced by Sasha Friedlander for Sasha Films LLC & Independent Television Service Trailer embedded above. Search for online streaming here. Track down a DVD copy here.
Filmmaker Sasha Friedlander visits a stunningly beautiful active volcano in Indonesia called Kawa Ijen. Heaven. It’s a place that loads of tourists visit to take photos of this bubbling cauldron of toxic sulphur gas. They’re also shocked and amazed to see men emerging out of these sulphur clouds carrying on their shoulders baskets containing blocks of raw yellow sulphur, mined hot from the volcano’s insides. This is unbelievably picturesque, hard and dangerous work (physically and chemically). Some say it’s a vision of hell. Friedlander sticks around, her tiny crew following the sulphur miners down into the volcano to better understand the work that they do, their lives and their reasons for doing a job that’s clearly so poorly paid and so extraordinarily hazardous to their health. Making this film is hazardous to the filmmakers’ health too. They struggle with their working conditions. This film they make provides intimate portraits of four men who do this work and their families. Audiences are moved by what they see. It’s beautiful and horrific. Friedlander returns to the village where most of the miners live to show the film to their families. That’s filmed too. They’re shocked. The men hadn’t told their families what their work was like. Some commenters say that workers unhappy with their jobs should get a safer and better paid job somewhere else. They’ve ‘chosen’ to work there. This film shows why making a different ‘choice’ is not as easy as it sounds. Where Heaven Meets Hell follows the journey of sulphur up and out of the Kawa Ijen volcano, to the cabins where the miners get paid for it by weight. But that’s as far as the following goes. Sulphur (and its derivatives) can be found in countless commodities and the processes used to make them – e.g. it’s used to refine sugar, and its an essential ingredients of matches – because it brings specific properties that producers and consumers rely upon. Where Heaven Meets Hell is an excellent example of a follow the thing project that ‘starts somewhere different’. It doesn’t start or end at a factory, for example. Those followings can be nice and linear, easy to trace, easy to convey to an audience. But starting in a place where a raw material is extracted from the earth presents a different view of international trade. So many raw materials like sulphur travel along countless supply chains, and become ingredients in countless industrial processes and commodities. Following raw materials can be much, much more complex. The supply chains of something basic like sulphur can infiltrate so many other supply chains, so many other things, so many other places and lives. This means that any trade justice ‘solutions’ that audiences might want to support are from straightforward. Try boycotting sulphur! Start by looking for sulphur compounds on ingredient labels. That’s the top of the volcano.
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2016) Where Heaven Meets Hell. followthethings.com/where-heaven-meets-hell.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“China, Britain And The Nunzilla Conundrum“ A radio documentary presented by Anna Chen (a.k.a. Madam Miaow), produced by Sally Heaven for BBC Radio 4. Audio clip embedded above. Listen to the full radio documentary on the BBC website here (when available, with account, screengrab above) and on Box of Broadcasts here (with University subscription).
Chinese-English comedian and writer Anna Chen loves kitsch, ‘tat’, and (to some) offensive ‘stocking filler’ gifts like the clockwork fire breathing nun ‘Nunzilla’ and ‘Dashboard Jesus’ (not to mention elastic band holder ‘Mummy Mike’ and singing fish ‘Billy Bass’). Unsurprisingly, they’re ‘Made in China’ but, she wants to find out, what do they tell us and the people who design and make them about Western culture, religion and values? What gets lost and found in translation? And what do the factory workers who make them think they are for? How do they imagine the people who buy them? And what can tracing the relations between the designers, makers and consumers of cheap plastic kitsch tat tell us about China-UK relations? This is a serious piece of cross-cultural commodity following. It’s enjoyable and worrying. But there aren’t any exploited workers. What’s it hoping to achieve?
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) China, Britain And The Nunzilla Conundrum. followthethings.com/china-britain-and-the-nunzilla-conundrum.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Banksy’s Slave Labour“ Street art by Banksy briefly located on the wall of a Poundland Store in Wood Green, London. Removed.
It’s 2012. Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee is being celebrated in the UK. The London Olympics are also taking place. There’s Union Jack bunting everywhere. It’s cheaply and readily available in discount stores like Poundland. Including one in Peckham, South London. Where the street artist Banksy paints a mural of a child hunched over a sewing machine, making them in India. They spill onto the pavement. It’s a true story. But, like most of Banksy’s street art, it’s quickly stolen and auctioned on the international art market. The story goes viral. That’s usually what trade justice activists want. But that viral story isn’t about slave labour at all. Is the international market for celebrity street art, and the value of Banksy’s work within it, an effective channel to persuade retailers like Poundland to remove child labour from their supply chains?
Page reference: Lydia Dean, Lucinda Armstrong, Jessica Bains-Lovering, Emily Hill, Harriet Allen & Rose Cirant-Carr (2019) Banksy’s Slave Labour (taster). http://followthethings.com/banksy-slave-labour.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“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>)
“Find Your Doppelganger“ A concept for a mobile phone app submitted by Rachel Grant as part of a BA Geography dissertation at the University of Exeter, UK. Full concept text below.
Student Rachel Grant likes to try out the latest apps on her smartphone. She’s tried ones that tell you which celebrity you look like. That’s OK. But there’s a photographer who finds unrelated people who look exactly alike. The technical terms is doppelganger. He arranges for them to meet, photographs them together and finds they feel connected, like lost relations. So what if there was a phone app – like the ones that help you find your celebrity lookalike – that could scan your face and introduce you to your supply chain doppelganger? A garment worker? A tungsten miner? A tea picker? A delivry driver? A plastic recycler? Someone who helped to make your stuff? Might you feel more empathetic towards supply chain workers if they looked like you? Would it be easier to imagine walking in their shoes? What if the ‘Find Your Doppelganger’ app gave you the chance to chat? What if you met up? What impact could meeting a lost ‘relation’ like this have on you?
Page reference: Rachel Grant (2024) Find Your Doppelganger. followthethings.com/doppelganger.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“Machines“ A documentary film directed by Rahul Jain with cinematography by Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva for Jann Pictures, Pallas Film & IV Films. Trailer embedded above. Available on demand on Vimeo here and Dogwoof here. Available on Box of Broadcasts here and Kanopy here (with institutional login). Search online for other streaming options here.
Director Rahul Jain revisits the fabric factories of his youth to document machines and people that print patterns on the rolls of fabric bought by clothing manufacturers to make the shirt, dress or pair of tights that you or I might wear. His film is beautiful, atmospheric, metronomic, disturbing. Watching the machines at work, and the people tending them, is mesmerising. The cinematography is wonderful. It seems like a proper ‘fly on the wall’ documentary for a long time. When the workers later start to talk about their lives and work in this place, it’s depressing, hopeless, boring, toxic, abject, unhappy. This is a powerful film that moves audience members viscerally, but Jain doesn’t want them to do anything to help the workers. Towards the end, workers telling Jain that he’s just like a politician. He visits. He hears problems. He leaves. Nothing changes. So what can a film like this do? What’s the point of making it? How do audience members respond? What difference can it make? Is it about this factory and its workers? Or capitalism as a system? Is this trade justice activism? Or an arthouse film? The answer is open…
"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]
“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>)
