Origin – India – followthethings.com

“A Global Positioning System“
A art work / animated film created by Melanie Jackson, first exhibited at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK.
Two screengrabs from the film are featured above. Watch it in full on the artist’s website here.

If you’re interested in finding out who makes your stuff, it’s important to make a strategic choice about what stuff is best to follow. Artist Melanie Jackson makes an excellent choice – what better to guide your way than the technology that helps to guide your way. An in-car GPS Navigation Assistant. The kind of device you could buy in the 2000s to stick to your dashboard. Type in the destination, and it would help you on your way, showing the route on screen. She gets some funding for a trip to China to visit a factory where they are assembled. But this isn’t anything like enough of the story of this thing. She looks into its in many many ingredients, and finds out where and by whom they are sourced. She reads news stories, collects photographs, and turn to drawing to bring all of these connections together into a 12 minute animated film. There’s something magical about animation. It’s obvious that animation is not an objective account of the life of a thing, but something that’s been imagined and made. Animation allows the complexities of trade to be conveyed in a way that would otherwise be impossible either because the scale of the task would be too enormous, or because permission would not be granted to access the industrial sites that matter. There’s a powerful argument that’s made about ‘follow the thing’ research that things can be – for these reasons – ‘unfollowable (see Hulme 2017). But animation – and other creative approaches to thing-following (click the ‘make the hidden visible’ tactic button) – provide means to work around this. This is a mind-blowing film. Its amazing what you can learn in 12 minutes!

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A Global Positioning System. followthethings.com/a-global-positioning-system.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

Posted on December 3, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Jamelia: Whose Hair Is It Anyway?

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Fashion | Health & Beauty

2008

UNBRANDED

REAL HUMAN HAIR EXTENSION

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

INCLUDE EMOTION

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

LET THE TEARS FLOW

ENCOURAGE FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

FIND LOST RELATIONS

FIND THE LOVE

ENCOURAGE THANKFULNESS

END HAPPY

“Jamelia: Whose Hair Is It Anyway?“
A TV documentary film fronted by Jamelia, directed by Jo Hughes, produced by Morgan Matthews for Minnow Films.
Slideshow of documentary stills embedded above. BBC iPlayer page here. Watch on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

This is the example that inspired the first version of followthethings.com – an online list of ‘follow the things’ resources. In this TV documentary, legendary Birmingham pop singer Jamelia – best known for her 2010 song ‘Superstar’ – wants to find out about a hair extension that she wore on TV to present a National Lottery draw. It’s real human hair. Straight, long and black. But whose hair was it originally? Whose hair was she wearing? She asks some young women at a local school about where their extensions come from. They don’t know. Dead people? With the help of hair traders and a forensic scientist, she travels along human hair’s supply chains to find out if that’s true. First, she travels to Russia with a Russian hair trader. They drive to a village to buy the long and untreated hair of teenage girls (like Tatiana in the photo above). Their hair is worth a lot of money. Next, getting her hair forensically analysed in a lab provides some clues about its geographical origin. So, she travels to India, to the city of Chennai, and finds a woman whose hair she is convinced it originally was. But she hadn’t sold it. It had been shaved off at a temple, and the temple had sold it on. The money they made was used to feed the poor. So this isn’t a story of exploitation along supply chains that you might expect to find. Jamelia and the woman whose hair she probably wore bond over being mothers of daughters. The documentary turns into a kind of a reunion of long lost relations. This story has a happy ending and many of the people who comment on the film are suspicious of that. What have Jamelia and the film company brushed under the carpet? Do these following films always have to end up with depressing conclusions and appeals to consumers to do something for poor and powerless producers? A lot of the commentary is also about Jamelia and whether she is boycotting real hair now (like she allegedly said, or didn’t) or is a ‘hypocrite’ (that’s a criticism to expect of every example on this site). But there’s a final twist in this tale, that comes to the surface many years later. It’s a shocking example of a film like this making an impact. An important customer-base for Indian temple-sourced hair stops buying it. Because of a BBC documentary about the hair trade. It seems to be this one. Read on.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2020) Jamelia: Whose Hair Is It Anyway? followthethings.com/jamelia-who-hair-is-it-anyway.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 47 minutes.

Posted on November 8, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

B’eau Pal Water

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Grocery

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

MAKE IT META

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

REDESIGN THE COMMODITY

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

“B’eau Pal Water“
A spoof commodity-based activist campaign created by the Yes Men and the Bhopal Medical Appeal.
Video playlist embedded above posted on YouTube by the Bhopal Medical Appeal.

It’s the 25th anniversary of the Union Carbide chemical factory explosion in Bhopal, India. It’s the worst industrial accident in history. 3,700 people died immediately. Between 8,000 and 25,000 people had died since. And up to 200,000 were permanently injured and countless more continued to be affected by the leaching of toxic chemicals into the water table. Still, the factory’s owners (Dow Chemical, who bought Union Carbide) refuse to pay compensation. So the Bhopal Medical Appeal get together with pranksters the Yes Men to design a new brand of bottled water. It’s a mineral water. B’eau Pal Water. A taste of Bhopal. “Bottled at source”, they say. Presented in a beautifully designed bottle. The Yes Men travel to Dow’s UK HQ to challenge its executives to drink it, just as Bhopal residents have for the past 25 years. When they arrive, the building is empty. Why won’t they drink this? When they offer it to passing members of the public , everyone understandably refuses once they know what’s in it. So is this campaign a success? Does it draw renewed attention to this long-running scandal? Is it OK that what they’re doing is ridiculous, funny, and that people are disgusted but also laughing about this prank? The Bhopal explosion wasn’t funny. So is this prank in poor taste? Is it offensive? Or can its humour embarrass Dow and bring the Bhopal factory explosion back into the news cycle? Can offering people a fancy bottle of toxic mineral water that they would never drink bring them closer to the people living in Bhopal who have no choice but to drink it? What’s the logical response to this? What has to happen to make this situation right? This bottled water later becomes a potent symbol of the compensation campaign at the 2012 London Olympics – where Dow is a corporate sponsor and a Bhopal survivor challenges the chair of its organising committee to drink it – and in Bhopal itself, when the victims and their families invite the Indian politicians and scientific advisors who had dismissed their complaints about contamination to a buffet of toxic delicacies including bottled B’eau Pal Water.

Page reference: Jack Parkin (2018) B’eau Pal Water. followthethings.com/beau-pal-water.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

Posted on October 14, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle

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Home & Auto

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle“
A music video by Sofia Ashraf published on YouTube.
Embedded in full above.

Chennai rap musician Sofia Ashraf’s Nicki Minaj-sampling protest song ‘Kodakainal Won’t’ goes viral on YouTube in 2015, drawing attention to a Unilever factory in India dumping mercury into the environment. A year later, she releases this video to draw attention to the most notorious industrial disaster in Indian history: an explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal in 1984 which released poisonous gas that killed more than 15,000 people and sickened over half a million more. A campaign has been running ever since for the victims to be compensated and the toxic legacy of the explosion to be cleaned up, even after Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical. Ashraf revived a rap written and performed in 2008 to support an NGO petition to the US Government’s Department of Justice to hold Dow Chemical to account. If the petition reaches 125,000 signatures, the DoJ is obliged to respond. In the video, Ashraf performs both sides of the argument as she sees it: the Indian activist side calling Dow Chemical to account, and the US government’s disdainful approach to those demanding compensation. The video encourages people to sign the petition. The 125,000 goal is reached. But what does this unlock? What can protest music do for trade justice activism?

Page reference: Nicole Sparks, Ginny Childs, Allie Short, Kat Cook, Lauren Warner & Sophie Wolf (2016) Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle (taster). followthethings.com/dow-vs-bhopal-a-toxic-rap-battle.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Banksy’s Slave Labour

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Home & Auto | Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

POP THE BUBBLE

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

BE A CELEBRITY

START WITH A PARADOX

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

MAKE IT FAMILIAR

MOBILISE THE FANDOM

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“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>)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Machines

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Fashion

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL

MAKE IT INCOMPLETE

“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…

Page reference: Annily Skye Jeffries (2017) Machines. followthethings.com/machines.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Page also available in Finnish here (coming soon)

Estimated reading time: 62 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024February 4, 2025 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]

followthethings.com
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, 2024January 5, 2025 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, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Cries For Help Found In Primark Clothes (a.k.a. ‘Labelgate’)

Label found by Rebecca Jones
Label found by Rebecca Gallagher
Letter found by Karen Wisinska

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Fashion

“Cries For Help Found In Primark Clothes (a.k.a. ‘Labelgate’)”
Social media posts by Rebecca Jones, Rebecca Gallagher, and Amnesty International Northern Ireland.
Label photos originally posted online embedded above.

Shoppers Rebecca Jones and Rebecca Gallagher find an extra label in dresses they buy from Primark stores in South Wales. One says ‘Forced to work exhausting hours’, the other ‘Degrading sweatshop conditions’. Belfast shopper Karen Wisinska then finds a letter in the pocket of some Primark shorts. It’s written in Chinese, but starts ‘SOS! SOS! SOS!’. It seems to be a coincidence. Rebecca, Rebecca and Karen post them online to share what they have found with their friends and followers. Their posts set off an international ‘whodunnit?’ which makes the national news and ties the company’s PR department in knots. Are they genuine? Are they mischief-making of an artist or activist? Either way, is what they say true?

Will Kelleher & Ian Cook (2014) Cries for help found in Primark clothes (a.k.a. ‘labelgate’). followthethings.com/cries-for-help-found-in-primark-clothes.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 93 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024February 20, 2025 by Ian Cook

University Lifestyle: Fabulously British

followthethings.com
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.

Label found by Rebecca Jones

Label found by Rebecca Gallagher

Letter found by Karen Wisinska