It-narrative – followthethings.com

“Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea“
A 4 volume fictional book series by Charles Johnstone, the first two of which were originally published by T. Becket.
An 1821 version of Volume 1 is embedded in full above. Click here to read Volume 2, here to read Volume 3 and here to read Volume 4.

Here at followthethings.com we’re keen to appreciate the historical depth of our genre. Up until quite recently, we had traced everything back to Karl Marx’s chapter on the commodity (and commodity fetishism) in Capital Volume 1 which was first published in the 1860s. David Harvey’s teachings about Capital, and his appeals for geographers and otherS to get behind the veil of the commodity and tell the story of human reproduction were what encouraged us to do this work back in the day. But when you ask what inspired Marx, what literature was well known in his day, what had been written before, this impulse to know whose lives are connected by commodities goes back to the 1700s, to the birth of global capitalism (via empire), and to a genre of cheap and unglamourous ‘novels of circulation’. These make sense of this confusing, emerging world from the perspective of the commodities which were becoming part of its expanding consumer culture. There are dozens and dozens of these novels which we could choose to feature on our site, but the first one we want to add is this one – not least because it seems to have been one of the most popular and influential, but also because it’s about money – a commodity (and means of exchange) that academics have found more difficult to follow than most. This story is narrated by a gold guinea coin, starting from its mining in Peru and talking about its life connecting and witnessing the lives of a variety of people who earn, spend and steal it in different places. Because people aren’t careful what they do and say when a coin is covertly spying on them, the tales this coin tells – to an alchemist it meets at the end of volume one, who writes them down because coins can’t write – are scandalous. Some of the people whose lives are included were famous at the time, others were not. This book is both a scandalous exposé of the lives of famous people of the time and an ethical and moral tale about the emerging economic relations of capitalism and empire. It was inventive, eccentric and a huge popular hit. What would a commodity tell you about its life if it could talk? Here’s your answer! Commodities who can speak for themselves are very much part of trade justice activism today. There are lots of our examples on our site, but here’s one of the earliest. What can today’s activists learn from this? Here’s a taster. We’ll return to this later and add some more depth and detail.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Chrysal; Or, The Adventures Of A Guinea (taster page). followthethings.com/chrysal-or-the-adventures-of-a-guinea.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

Posted on December 9, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Barracetamol’s Family Reunion

'Hi, I'm Barracetamol.'
'This is my old friend Benson. I never knew whayt we was talking about until I read this.'
'Me, back with my half broither talc!'
'Multivitamins and iron contain maize starch and talk just like me... I was separated from the talc in those vitamins many years ago in a talc mine'.
Barracetamil put on some neon face paint. Guess what? It contains talc.
Boozy Barry 'just chilling with my maize starch pals x.'
'I LOVE UNCLE COSTA CUP. We are made of the same materials! xxxxxxxxxxx.'
'Everyone I meet says I look a bit pasty so I decided to reunite the Talc in me with another product using talc-bronzer!'
'This royal red paint may contain talc'.
'I heard my friends in people's suitcases.'
'I stopped using toothpaste as it contains talc.'
'With my American cousins in Providence, R.I.: June 2013'.

followthethings.com
Health & Beauty | Home & Auto

“Barracetamol’s Family Reunion“
A cartoon character created, brought to life, placed, photographed and posted online by Elaine King, Nancy Scotford, Rosie Cotgreave, Katie Lewis, Jack Ledger, Alice Wakeley, Olivia Rogers, Dennis Yeung, Isabelle Baker and Hannah Willard.
Original interview with Barracetamol below. Family reunion photos available on Flickr here. Barracetamol’s twitter feed here. Download Barracetamol’s Family Reunion Action Pack here to print and place your own Barracetamol.

In 2012, students start the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ by researching different examples of trade justice activism to add to the followthethings.com website (not all of them made it). Next, students who have researched different examples come together to create their own original examples of trade justice activism. They pick up some important ideas from their own research and what has already been published here on followthethings.com. They know the importance of taking commodities to pieces by looking through their ingredients and searching each one for mining, factory, farm and other human stories from their origins. They know the importance for filmmakers and activists of finding or creating a charismatic character for their audience members to relate to and empathise with. They’re familiar with literature arguing – and examples showing – that commodities have their own agentic power, can teach us things, and can be imagined coming alive and teaching us a few things. One group of students chooses something they all carry around with them: paracetamol. They look through its list of ingredients on the box. And look them up online. They find stories about talc and its miners and magnesium stearate and its connection to palm oil workers. These ingredients aren’t even in the pills, but they do help to make them. They use news stories to follow these two ingredients to their possible origins, and then turn around and look back towards their consumption. Yes, these workers and these ingredients help to make the paracetamol they carry around with them. But they start looking at the ingredients in other products, and find that talc and/or magnesium stearate are loads of other commodities too: toothpaste, paint, bronzer, beer and more. The task of the paracetamol cartoon character that they create – Barracetamol – is to go shopping with them, to find his missing relations, and to have his photo taken with related commodities with a little caption to post on his socials. He’s trying to tap into the vibe of those tear-jerking family reunion shows on TV. A familiar genre. The group’s creative process seems silly. The students enjoy it. They find it funny a lot of the time. But there’s a serious message about commodity-following behind this. At a teardown-level, countless commodities have the same ingredients sourced from the same places, mined and made by the same people. So a simple ‘this comes from there and therefore I should or should not buy it’ narrative obscures the complex interconnectedness of things in the global economy. Not everything is made for its final consumer. Barracetamol tries to convey a more complex story in a relatable way. Group member Nancy imagines that these moving reunions have made Barracetamol a minor celebrity. So he’s profiled in a magazine. Below you can read the interview.

Page reference: Elaine King, Nancy Scotford, Rosie Cotgreave, Katie Lewis, Jack Ledger, Alice Wakeley, Olivia Rogers, Dennis Yeung, Isabelle Baker & Hannah Willard (2012) Barracetamol’s Family Reunion. followthethings.com/barracetamols-family-reunion.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 27 minutes.

Posted on November 22, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Luckiest Nut In The World

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.

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

followthethings.com Shopping Bag

followthethings.com
My shopping bag

2011

FOLLOWTHETHINGS.COM

REUSABLE SHOPPING BAG

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

“followthethings.com Shopping Bag“
A limited edition run of 5,000 reusable plastic shopping bags designed by Daisy Livingston & Aidan Waller and distributed freely to support the launch of the followthethings.com website.
The last bag was given away in 2016. Still in circulation.

The followthethings.com launch team are keen to create some merchandise to promote their website. Intern Daisy had submitted a printed cotton bag she had had manufactured in China as coursework for Ian’s ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module. It was the most original, imaginative coursework he had ever seen. That’s because it wasn’t just about the geographies of material culture, it embodied them, materialised them. Ian hired Daisy as an intern and asked her to design and order some reusable shopping bags for followthethings.com’s launch. Fellow intern Aiden helped out. These needed to be just like the ones that we used for our supermarket shopping at Sainsbury’s, Tesco, ASDA, Morrisons. They were pretty standard in their construction. But where were they made? From what materials? How could you find out? What could you find out about the pay and conditions of the people who made them? Quite a bit, it turned out, if you had your own made in the same places. What insights could this privileged business-to-business customer perspective provide? And what could happen after you put these mischievous shopping bags into circulation? Especially when the meaning of ‘shopping’ in the project – and on the bags – was double: i.e. both ‘to seek or examine goods, property, etc. offered for sale in or by’ and ‘to behave treacherously toward; inform on; betray’ or ‘to give away information about’ those goods, property, etc. (Anon nd). Once you read about our bag, you can apply its lessons to the ones that you have…

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) followthethings.com Shopping Bags. followthethings.com/followthethings-com-shopping bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 21 minutes.

Posted on August 17, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Plastic Bag

followthethings.com
My shopping bag | Recycle my waste

2017

UNBRANDED

SINGLE USE PLASTIC BAG

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Plastic bag“
A short film directed by Ramin Bahrani and narrated by Werner Herzog for ITVS.
Published on YouTube, embedded in full above. Search online for other streams here.

Remember those thin plastic bags that used to be available, free, at the checkout? This is the starting point for Ramin Beahrani’s short film. What lives do they lead after the shopping is emptied from them at home? And what if one of them could tell that story for itself (in a droll Bavarian accent)? What would it say? It’s exciting to have finally been chosen, there at the checkout, to fulfil your destiny. To help a shopper carry their shopping home. The shopper-bag relationship is short-lived, but beautiful. But what if she then uses you to pick up her dog’s poo? And put you in a bin? How would you feel about her then, as your life continued, further and further away from hers? You’re not the slightest bit biodegradable. Your life is going to last for ever, starting in a landfill dump. What’s it like to be there with millions of bits of other trash? Imagine being caught in the wind, blown through the countryside, travelling hundreds of miles, and ending up in the sea, with the fish, possibly causing them all kinds of problems. Who and what might you have seen and met on your journey? What would you ponder about your life now its purpose is so far in the past? It’s a silly and unbelievable plot, but a wonderfully moving film. Viewers are surprised to find themselves empathising with a plastic bag. Caring about its fate. How its life could have been different. Maybe this is the best way to change people’s minds about the mountains of waste created by capitalism and its commodity culture. See what you think…

Page reference: Molly Healy, Josephine Thompson, Daisy Aylott, Lily Andrews, Kate Ward, Charlotte Rooker, James Swain, Edward Denton & Ethan Langfield (2024) Plastic Bag (taster). followthethings.com/plastic-bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes.