Cross cultures – followthethings.com

“Xmas Unwrapped“
A short film edited by Toby Smith and Unknown Fields Division with Tim Maughan.
Posted in YouTube, embedded above in full.

This short ‘Jingle Bells’ Chinese Christmas factory film comes from a larger initiative to rethink architecture. According to Unknown Fields Division co-founder Liam Young, ‘an architect’s skills are completely wasted on making buildings’. They should be turning their attention to the outsides that are inside them: i.e. the hidden geographies of infrastructure, logistics, commodities and connected landscapes. For ‘follow the thingers’ familiar with Geographer Doreen Massey’s concept of a ‘global sense of place’ [see this example], this extroverted sense of place may seem familiar. But there’s so much to learn from Unknown Fields’ architectural experiments. First, from the thoroughly collaborative and interdisciplinary studio practice of Unknown Fields Division. Second, from the long-running postgraduate course at the Architectural Association in London where Liam Young has taken students on infrastructural ‘expeditions’ for many years. Third, from the writers, filmmakers, data-visualisers and programmers who have accompanied these expeditions and produced its highly-professional and publicly eye-catching work. Xmas Unwrapped is one such output – a ‘Christmas card’ – from a 2014-15 expedition called A World Adrift. We’ve asked our ‘Geographies of material culture’ students to watch it before writing their coursework over the Christmas break. It doesn’t have a explicit message, but it’s catchy and thought-provoking. There’s observational footage of people working in a basic factory space in China making Christmas decorations and Santa hats by hand. Other people box these up, load them into a container, and the film finishes with a view from bridge of a container ship sailing out to sea, taking them to their consumer destinations. If you watch it with the sound down and the film footage is undramatic. People just work. Their tasks are repetitive. Their heads are down. They say nothing. The footage does not aim – it seems – to evoke any emotion in its audience. But turn up the volume and it’s accompanied by a choir of children singing ‘Jingle Bells’ in Cantonese. And it’s this combination of film footage and music that provokes a reaction. It’s catchy. This film is a gentle form of trade justice activism. You could call it an appetiser. It’s trying to ‘pop the bubble’ of Western consumption by ‘joining the dots’ to Chinese factory production. It does not explicitly address trade injustice, exploitation, labour rights or any consumer or producer activism relating to this. The factory and logistics workers it features don’t have a voice in their representation. Unknown Fields Division isn’t making this work because they want audiences to do anything. Just to know and to reflect on the fact that its audience member’s things are made by people elsewhere in the world. This film can be used as a brief and gently provocative spark for discussions of trade (in)justice in any classroom [like another example on our site, Handprint] but also – especially – around a Christmas dinner table. Because Unknown Field Division‘s expeditions have so many people on them, this film is the tip of an iceberg. The most noticeable impacts it has are not on its audiences [as far we can see] but on the expedition’s students and collaborators. They produce other work that brings attention to this Christmas story, and to the wider project on architecture’s dependence on supply chain logistics. Follow the arguments below.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Xmas Unwrapped. followthethings.com/xmas-unwrapped.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 39 minutes.

Posted on August 18, 2025September 9, 2025 by Ian Cook — Leave a comment

Who made my stuff? (⏵ Gillette Razor Blades)

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Follow it yourself (page) | Follow it yourself (examples) | Health & Beauty (⏵ example)

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TAKE IT TO PIECES

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

HUMANISE THINGS

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

JOIN WITH OTHERS

“Who made my stuff?” | example ⏵ Gillete Razor Blades
A ‘follow it yourself’ detective work task suitable for activists, journalists, filmmakers, artists, researchers, teachers and students
CEO Ian’s ‘Traces of labour’ YouTube playlist embedded above. Can be used as a task / lesson taster. The jeans paper mentioned is Hauser (2004)

Behind the followthethings.com website lies a university undergraduate module called ‘Geographies of material culture’ taught be CEO Ian from 2000 to 2025. The first version of the module (2000-2008) encouraged students to do some online detective work to see if they could find out who had made a commodity that mattered to them. He wanted his students to appreciate if and how their everyday lives were made possible – in part – by the work done by supply chain workers elsewhere in the world. He wanted to them to find out, and think, about the responsibilities that they and others had for any trade injustices they found in the process. The results were always surprising, and Ian started to share some of their writing (with permission) with geography school teachers which led Ian and his students being invited to publish some in teacher-facing journals (see Angus et al 2001, Cook et al 2006, 2007a&b). Because this detective work always began in their personal worlds of consumption, Ian was invited to bring this ‘follow it yourself’ approach into a Geographical Association and Royal Geographical Society project called the ‘Action Plan for Geography’ (see Martin 2008, Griffiths 2009). This, in turn, helped the ‘follow the thing’ approach to gain a wider audience after it the GA and RGS wanted it to be included in the 2013 UK National Curriculum for Geography as a means to teach students about trade (see Parkinson & Cook 2013, University of Exeter 2014). Ian taught this approach to trainee geography teachers at the University of Nottingham who tried this out on their placements and wrote #followtheteachers posts for the followthethings.com blog (see Whipp 2013). It was also fleshed out in the ‘Who made my clothes?” online course that Ian co-authored and presented for the Fashion Revolution movement (Cook et al 2017-2018: see here). There’s one main principle in this ‘follow it yourself’ work: if you know how and where to look, you can find a connection between your life and the lives of others who have made anything that matters to you, anything that’s part of your life. There’s been an explosion of journalism, NGO activism, academic research and corporate social responsibility initiatives relating to trade justice since the 1990s that means that there are secondary data sources that you can find, sift and create a story about anything that comes from anywhere – or so it seems. Doing this detective work in groups can encourage diverse learners to share their expertise (e.g. by drawing on their experiences of living in different parts of the world, and being able to research in different languages: see Bowstead 2014). Doing it for younger learners can motivate them to write (e.g. by asking them what they would say to the person who picked the cocoa in their Milky Bar buttons, for example – see Lambert 2015). And doing his kind of thing as an academic researcher can help you to produce ‘follow the thing’ publications (see Taffell 2022). We have updated the advice we gave in the 2000s and set it out below as a three stage process: A – reading the results of other ‘follow it yourself’ research; B – choosing the thing you want to follow; and C – doing the ‘follow it yourself’ detective work to find out who made it for you and the trade justice issues that come with this. To illustrate what this research is like to do, what sources you can find where, and how to find and follow a productive trail, we have researched a new example from start to finish: who made Ian’s pack of Gillette razor blades? Just click ⏵ example to find out.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Who made my stuff? followthethings.com/who-made-my-stuff.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time (including example detective work): 80 minutes

Posted on July 31, 2025September 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Following the white phosphorus trail

followthethings.com
Security

2009

UNBRANDED

WHITE PHOSPHORUS ARTILLERY SHELL

SHOW MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX EVILS

CROSS CULTURES

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

“Following the white phosphorus trail”
A series of four TV news stories broadcast on Al Jazeera English.
Embedded in the YouTube playlist above.

‘Follow the things’ trade justice activism tends to connect unknowing consumers to the exploited supply chain workers who make the things they buy. But not when it comes to the arms trade. Here, the direction of travel is reversed: it’s this industry’s ultimate ‘consumers’ – the people who are killed and maimed by these commodities – that activists are worried about, especially when their use can be considered a war crime. Since Hamas’ October 7th 2023 attack on Israel and the Israeli government’s military response (described by many, and denied by Israel, as a genocide), arms trade activists around the world have set out to make public the geographies of the arms trade supplying the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and to disrupt this via non-violent direct action. They have also sought to hold arms manufacturers, shipping companies, Israeli and other goverments, and the IDF accountable for their actions under international law. But who are the people who make these weapons, where in the world? What do they know about the devastating impacts of their work? How do they feel about this? How do they rationalise it? Who’s responsible for this death and destruction? Soon after Hamas’ October 7th attack, news reports emerged that accused the IDF of using white phosphorus shells to bomb civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. These shells are designed to light up the sky, and/or to provide a smokecreen, for ground troops to more safely move into an area. That’s their permitted use. But if they’re used to bomb people, that’s a war crime. White phosphorus burns when it comes into contact with oxygen, and it keeps burning for weeks. It’s fat soluble so, if it lands on people’s skin, it burns and burns. Journalists and arms trade activists could identify where these white phosphorus shells were made from production codes they found on fragments of the shells found in burning ruins. An arsenal in the small town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, USA, was the source. And not for the first time. In 2008-9, white phosphorus shells from the Pine Bluff Arsenal had been dropped on Palestinian civilians during the IDF’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The Quatari news station Al Jazeera sent a reporter there and broadcast at least four news stories that followed the trail of white phosphorus munitions there from Gaza. Reporter Mike Kirsch talked to locals, showed them images of Palestinian people burned by munitions made in their town, asked them what they felt about this, asked their mayor what he felt about this. There was a detailed Amnesty International report that he could show them. Were people in this town at least partially responsible for this death and destruction? Was the Arsenal responsible? Was the US government responsible? The IDF? Hamas? Here’s what we have been able to find.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Following the white phosphorus trail. followthethings.com/following-the-white-phosphorus-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 53 minutes.

Posted on July 10, 2025July 14, 2025 by Ian Cook

Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork

followthethings.com
Grocery

2009

JAFFA

ORANGES

GROWN IN PALESTINE / ISRAEL

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE

BRING ACADEMICS INTO VIEW

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT INDEPENDENT

STAGE A Q&A

“Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork“
A documentary film dirercted by Eyal Sivan for Trabelsi Productions.
Trailer embedded above, search online for streaming options here.

Imagine visiting your local supermarket and popping a bag of Jaffa branded oranges in your basket. Then imagine browsing your favourite news site on your phone in the checkout queue and reading the latest story about deaths in Gaza, war in the Middle East. Maybe you’ve read a lot about this conflict, or have some first hand experience. But news stories don’t tend to explain its background, how and why it began. That bag of oranges – and this documentary film – can help to do this. Jaffa is an ancient Palestinian city. It’s also where Jaffa-branded oranges have been grown by Arab and Jewish people since the 1800s. Once picked, they would wrap each individual fruit in tissue paper, pack them into wooden boxes, load them onto boats and ship them wordwide. A year after the birth of ‘practical photography’ in 1839, Palestinian photographer Khalil Khaed visited Jaffa to document everyday life and work, including in its orange groves. Photographers, filmmakers, artists and advertisiers have documented the connection between Jaffa and oranges ever since. But, as the Israeli state began to take shape in the 20th Century, this film argues that there was a concerted attempt to remove Palestine from Jaffa oranges and to rebrand them as emblems of Israeli civilisation. It’s settler Colonialism 101. To piece this history together, Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan spent five years sifting through numerous archives for Jaffa-orange photos, films, advertising and resistance. He showed what he found to Israeli and Palestinian people- academics, poets, retired orange workers, advertising executives, others – and filmed their reactions. What he created from this footage is – many have said – a profoundly insightful and moving documentary. It has generated considerable critical and public acclaim from audiences around the world. First screened in 2009, it is still a go-to documentary to spark debate about the Palestine-Israel conflict today. And Sivan continues to attend screenings to answer questions about the film and the futures that might be possible in the region. Sivan’s politics, and films, are anti-Zionist. He has struggled to raise funding and to gain screening opportunities in Israel. He and his films have generated criticisms of anti-semitism. But the main argument in ‘Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork’ is that, if Arab and Jewish people were able to work together harmoniously in the past – like they did in Jaffa’s orange groves – they can do so in the future. You have to see this to believe this. Why not watch the film? Read the comments below. See what you think. We’ve tried to captire all of the discusion we’ve found online.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Jaffa, The Orange’s Clockwork. followthethings.com/jaffa-the-oranges-clockwork.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

Posted on January 9, 2025January 12, 2025 by Ian Cook

How Sushi Went Global

followthethings.com
Grocery

2009

UNBRANDED

BLUEFIN TUNA

SOURCED IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

SOURCED IN THE USA

SOURCED IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“How Sushi Went Global“
A popular academic research article by Theordore Bestor published in the Foreign Policy journal.
Image of paper journal printout embedded above. Click image to access the .pdf version here. Click here to read the online version (which includes only the article’s text).

If you want the best bluefin tuna for your sushi, it has to be graded in the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. But the fish are farmed and caught in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and elsewhere. And the restaurants where you can eat it are all over the world. So whose lives are connected through this intricate global trade? How did it develop? And what can sushi tell us about globalisation? That’s what an American anthropologist Ted Bestor wants to find out. He travels to different places in this tuna supply chain – a fish dock in Maine, USA; a Mediterranean fishing town in Spain; and Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. He sees tuna caught and off the US and Spanish coasts being graded in Tokyo to sell in the fanciest sushi restaurants around the world. They travel, iced, in containers called ‘tuna coffins’ in the bellies of Boeing 747 jets. Years ago, except in Japan, these fish were only suitable for sports fishers or cat food manufacturers. But what’s developed as sushi has gone global is a sophisticated international trade feeding the popularisation of Japanese cuisine. These fish cross cultures and following their movements helps Bestor to vividly explain the concept of globalisation. Commenters say his article provides a view of globalisation that’s embedded in and between social relations in specific places. It’s a well old story, a gem of a ‘follow the thing’ study that’s widely used in classrooms around the world.

Page reference: Olivia Hoffman and Erin Teich (2012) How Sushi Went Global. followthethings.com/how-sushi-went-global.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 23 minutes.

Posted on December 29, 2024September 29, 2025 by Ian Cook

Blood, Sweat & Takeaways

followthethings.com
Grocery

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

TELL A STORY

MAKE A WEBSITE

“Blood, Sweat & Takeaways“
A four-episode reality TV series produced directed & produced by James Christie-Miller for Ricochet Films for television broadcast on BBC3.
Sample scene embedded above. Full series available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

Lauren, 21, and loves luxury food. Jess, 19, is a fussy eater. Manos, 20, loves fast food. Josh, 20, loves to cook. Stacey, 20, is an ethical shopper. Olu, 25, is a fitness fanatic. But this group of multicultural Brits who don’t seem to care where their food comes from. Until they are approached by a TV company which challenges them to travel to Indonesia and Thailand and to step into the shoes of the farm, factory and trawler workers who source and process it for export. Over four episodes – on Tuna, Prawns, Rice and Chicken – they’re filmed working alongside supply chain workers, earning and spending the same 40p an hour wages, and living in the same places. They relentlessly gut, behead and loin tuna fish in a factory. They work in waist-deep mud farming prawns and up to their ankles in water in a rice paddy field. It’s hot. All they have to eat each day is a banana and a slice of bread. This is a shock to their systems. This is car crash reality TV. They crack under the pressure, retch, cry, faint, fall out, fight, refuse to work, slow down the production line, get sick, feel guilty, insult and patronise their co-workers and escape to a comfortable hotel, eat at McDonalds and get first class medical care. Olu is sent home after a fight with Manos. He’s replaced by James, a young farmer. At least he knows where food comes from. But, as they get over the shock, episode by episode, they are humbled by the experience and become more appreciative consumers. This is the second ‘Blood, sweat and…’ series broadcast by the BBC. And it’s equally successful, attracting big audiences, winning awards and being shown around the world. Its aim is to encourage young people to think about who makes their stuff, and to find their own solutions like the cast members do. Because this is reality TV, much of the discussion focuses on the cast and how ‘spoilt’ they seem to be, how terrible they are as British ‘ambassadors’ in Thailand and Indonesia, how distastasteful it is for them to ogle at squalour, and how easy it is for them – unlike the people they’re working alongside – to leave. Critics say that its reality TV format encourages an enjoyment of the casts’ meltdowns more than their thoughtful reflections. Others quibble the facts and argue that the series’ narrative arc is a work of fiction. Others say that it places too much emphasis on consumer awareness, without provinding any ideas about what viewers should do next. And there’s nothing in this series about other responsible actors in these supply chains (for a comparison, see our page on the BBC’s ‘Mangetout’ documentary here) and nothing about the need for structural change (e.g. living wage legislation). But the BBC sets up a web forum for people to discuss these issues and one cast member ends up on a late night BBC news show challenging some glib trade arguments made by a represenative of the British Retail Consortium. So, what does this TV series do for its British cast? Its Thai and Indonesian participants? The production company? The last one is easy. The success of this second ‘Blood sweat and…’ series is followed by the making of the next series. ‘Blood, sweat & luxuries’. Then, years later, TV production executives in Holland and the Czech Republic reported that it has inspired new reality TV series. The whole series was uploaded to YouTube in full in 2022, where a whole new generation of viewers – around the world – could engage with the series, its characters and its message.

Page reference: Harriet Clarke, Ben Thomson, Victoria Bartley, Katie Ibbetson-Price, Emma Christie-Miller & Harry Schofield (2025) Blood, Sweat & Takeaways. followthethings.com/blood-sweat-takeaways.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 102 minutes.

Posted on December 20, 2024January 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

Gravesend, 2007

followthethings.com
Electronics

SORCED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

MAKE IT INCOMPLETE

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL

“Gravesend, 2007“
An art work / short film by Steve McQueen premiered at the Venice Biennale and exhibited at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, USA in 2007 and at the Uneven Geographies exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery, UK in 2010.
Gallery photo above. Renaissance Society exhibition photos here. Acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA here. Not available to watch online.

After a decade of rare earth metal mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for use in the growing consumer electronics sector, and recognising the history of African colonial plunder artist Steve McQueen sets out to make a short film that brings this story into one piece of art work. He travels between the coltan mines of the DRC and a coltan processing facilities in the UK. The miners, sometimes children, dig coltan from muddy trenches. This is brutal and poorly paid work wrecks the environment and funds a civil war in which 4 million people have lost their lives. The specialist metals which emerge from this ravaged place are perfect ingredients for modern consumer electronics, because they can conduct electricity without getting too hot. McQueen visits a pristine, computerised factory facility in the UK where this coltan ore is processed. The film he makes out of these loaded and shockingly different elements is described by critics and viewers as abstract, poetic, animated (sometimes), deafeningly loud (sometimes), beautiful, intense, opaque, meditative, melancholy, that works though ‘phenomenological estrangement’, has no titles or narration and scenes and moods that leap between places and dissolve into one another. The coltan miners appear in it as ‘ghostly absences of light’. For McQueen, this isn’t a documentary film. It doesn’t give supply chain workers a voice. It’s a film about looking. It takes its name from a town in the British county of Kent, which sits on the banks of the River Thames where Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness book begins. You can only watch it in an art gallery when it’s being exhibited. Some commenter are impressed with its intellectual purpose and depth, while others say they need to read the museum brochure to understand what it’s about (e.g. coltan). It seems from what people say that this isn’t an activist film or art work. It’s not setting out to motivate its viewers to understand and to act. But it is, for some, intensely haunting. Maybe you have to be there, watching it in that gallery space, with other people, other art work, the signage, the space, the lighting. This is a space where its viewers to ‘make the necessary connections.’

Page reference: Tom Bollands, Alistair Brouard, Amelia Cozon, James Hornsby, Phoebe Park & Louise Richardson (2024) Gravesend, 2007. followthethings.com/gravesend.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

Posted on December 19, 2024September 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Connectivitea Of Britain And Sri Lanka

followthethings.com
Grocery

“The Connectivitea Of Britain And Sri Lanka“
A dissertation by Sarah Wrathmell, submitted as part of their BA Geography degree at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Sample pages from its findings chapters are embedded in the slideshow above. Click them to read the dissertation.

Undergraduate Geography student Sarah Wrathmell has an ambitious idea for her dissertation research. She wants to travel to Sri Lanka to find the people who grow her morning cup of tea on a plantation in Kandy, Sri Lanka. She plans to ‘follow the thing’ and to undertake some multisited ethnographic fieldwork along the supply chain of ‘Tillings’ (a pseudonym) loose breakfast tea. She ends up writing about six places: the tea garden where the tea is grown, its collection spaces, its production factory (all in Sri Lanka), its blending factory, a specialist tea shop, and a tea garden where she shares a pot of tea with a group of friends (all in the UK). She talks to pickers, packers and drivers; visits factories and talks to people tasting, processing and packaging it to exacting standards; and finally drinks that tea with those drinkers. This is embodied, sensory work that she has to – somehow – get on the page. What she wants to understand is what, and who, are the ingredients in her tea? And how are the lives of the people involved in making and drinking it interrelated? As a reader, your job is to follow her on her travels as she tries to make sense of this. Its assessors say it’s a fantastic piece of work. So, it’s submitted for a national dissertation prize. It wins this unanimously. We have a grainy .pdf copy that you can download and read. It’s important to show that not only are there high profile films, publications, and other forms of trade justice research and activism to pay attention to. Students have been doing this work too, for much smaller audiences, for years. What can this work look like?

Dissertation reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2003) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. BA Geography Dissertation: University of Birmingham, UK (followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)

Page reference: Sarah Wrathmell (2024) The Connectivitea of Britain & Sri Lanka. followthethings.com/the-connectivitea-of-Britain-and-sri-lanka.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 60 minutes.

Posted on December 19, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Sweetness & Power: The Place Of Sugar In Modern History

followthethings.com
Grocery

GROWN IN THE CARIBBEAN

CONSUMED IN THE UK

NONFICTION BOOK

CROSS CULTURES

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Sweetness & Power: The Place Of Sugar In Modern History“
A popular academic book written by Sidney Mintz and originally published by Viking.
‘Look inside’ preview embedded above. Search online to purchase a copy here.

After living and working with sugar cane workers in Puerto Rico, anthropologist Sidney Mintz began to wonder about how sugar cane had become such an important crop, and how its cultures of production in the Caribbean and cultures of consumption in the UK and North America had developed together over time. As he studied these relations, he realised that the international sugar trade – as the iconic crop of plantation slavery and as an inexpensive source of energy (sweetening a cup of tea) for the industrial working class in Britain – were intimately connected. Writing a book about a thing – sugar – was innovative in the 1980s, and this book is said to have kickstarted a publishing genre of books-about-commodities. He wanted to publish one that could be enjoyed by academic and popular readers. Its arguments about sugar brought together perspectives from both academic anthropology and history. So the reviews were mixed. The story was bitty. It was either too academic or too simplistic. What’s certain, however, is that it has become a classic in the ‘follow the thing’ genre. Mintz was a, or the, ‘early adopter.’ Today, perhaps, what’s most important is the historical perspective that it provides, rooting contemporary capitalism in colonialism and empire, in harsh proto-industrial plantation labour and in a consumer appetite for sweetness. This page was originally written in 2012. There is so much more that we could now add.

Page reference: Anita Badejo, Josephine Korijn & Asya Rahlin (2012) Sweetness & Power: The Place Of Sugar In Modern History. followthethings.com/sweetness-power-the-place-of-sugar-in-modern-history.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 31 minutes.

Posted on December 16, 2024September 6, 2025 by Ian Cook

Who made my clothes?

followthethings.com
Follow it yourself | Follow it yourself

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“Who made my clothes?“
A ‘follow it yourself’ detective work task originally written for learners taking Fashion Revolution’s / University of Exeter’s ‘Who made my clothes?’ free online course starting in 2017 .
Introductory video embedded above. Course outline available on the Futurelearn website here (course no longer available). Course instagram feed here and twitter feed here. Search for learners’ blog posts here.

In the summers of 2017 and 2018, we ran a free online course called ‘Who made my clothes?’ with and for the Fashion Revolution movement. 16,000 people from all over the world, many with experience working in the industry, joined us for three weeks to Be Curious (week 1), Find Out (week 2), and Do Something (week 3). We’re hoping the course will run again but, in the meantime, wanted to share some of its content: the parts where we showed how fashion’s supply chains work and the places and lives they connect (via an excellent webdoc series from NPR which is featured on our site here) and then how you can do this research yourselves, with your own clothes, to create your own personal answers to the question ‘Who made my clothes?’ You can try this for yourself, set it for your class to do, whatever you like. It starts with each person choosing an item of clothing that’s special to them, one they wear every day, one they know nothing about. The mystery helps. Follow our advice… and see what you can find, and how you can creatively express and share these findings. This task will in volve a lot of educated guesswork, but you can always get in touch with the brands to see if you’ve got it right! We’ll add some of our learners’ posts along the way so you can see what’s possible.

Page reference: Ian Cook, Verity Jones & Kellie Cox (2025) Who made my clothes? followthethings.com/who-made-my-clothes.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes