2002 – followthethings.com

“Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail“
An academic book written by Deborah Barndt published by Rowman & Littlefield
2007 second edition Google Books preview embedded above. Search online to buy a copy here.

In 1994, preparing to do some undergraduate teaching, Environmental Studies professor Deborah Barndt finds a popular educational tool called A whirlwind tour of economic integration with your guide, Tomasita the tomato. She thinks this fictional tomato is the perfect etrée for her students’ understanding of cross-border trade – in this case from Mexico to Canada – and the often confusing complexities of globalisation – including messy relations between corporate power, genetically modified seeds, pesticides, stolen indigenous land, exploited peasant labour and environmental racism. What follows is a 5 year feminist participatory research project – called the Tomasita Project – which connects the lives of tomato growers, truckers, checkout workers and other supply chain workers living and working in Mexico and Canada. What she discovers and tries to convey is the clash between a ‘globalisation from above’ – the uniform, genetically-engineered, neoliberal, NAFTA-friendly tomato trade – and ‘globalisation from below’ – grass roots social justice projects working across borders and producing alternative foods. As Tomasita explained when Barndt first saw her story, the tomato is an iconic crop in the Americas. A brilliant one to follow, loading with meanings. It was native to South America, was first domesticated in Mexico, is central to the diets in Mexico, the USA and Canada, can be grown (at least seasonally) in all three countries, and was ‘one of the winners for Mexico in the NAFTA reshuffle’ (Barndt 2002a, p.82). What readers value the most is her book’s ‘feminist act’ that makes visible women workers in the global food system, and the way that it brings feminist theories into understandings of international trade. We researched this book early in its life (in 2011) and are keen to return to it to flesh out this page one day. This is an early, innovative, important and inspiring example of ‘follow the thing’ scholar-activism.

Page reference: Robert Conor Burke (2024) Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail. followthethings.com/tangled-routes-women-work-and-globalization-on-the-tomato-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

followthethings.com
Grocery

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

TEACH ECONOMICS

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

BRING REGULATORS INTO VIEW

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT FUNNY

“The Luckiest Nut In The World“
An animated film written, produced & Directed by Emily James for Fulcrum TV, broadcast in the UK on Channel 4’s Alt-TV series.
Film embedded in full above. Search online for shorter versions and versions with subtitles here.

Who better to explain the rules of international trade than a commodity that has seen it all? An American peanut who wears a stetson hat, plays the guitar, and sings songs about the rules of world trade that work in his favour. Along the way he enlists help from experts and from public information films. Yes, he’s the ‘luckiest nut in the world’ and, as he learns about other less lucky nuts around the world (groundnuts in Senegal, cashew nuts in Mozambique, and brazil nuts in Bolivia), he finds out that it doesn’t have to be this way. All of the world’s nuts – and the people and economies that could benefit from growing and selling them – could be just as lucky is the rules governing world trade weren’t stacked against them. Filmmaker Emily James uses animation to do the impossible: to make these rules, and the inequalities they help to create, not only understandable but entertaining. The film becomes a hit with school teachers. Some of their students say they’re bored with its content, but others say they can’t help humming the songs, mouthing their WTO lyrics. It’s a catchy way to learn some pretty boring but important information about hope the world works (and years before Horrible Histories began). This is an early example of animated film doing what and academic cook or a documentary films cannot. In this case, making abstract content accessible, making the hidden visible, and explaining trade injustice to wider publics in an engaging – funny, weird, you name it – way. ‘What would commodities tell us about their lives if they could talk?’ is an intriguing question that’s answered in some of the earliest follow the thing ‘it-narrative’ writing [see our page on a 1760 travel novel written by a coin here]. ‘What would a commodity sing about its life if it could … um … sing?’ is a question answered, in our experience, only by this film. Thank you Emily.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2011) The Luckiest Nut In The World. followthethings.com/the-luckiest-nut-in-the-world.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes.