Origin – UK – 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 11, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Inside Job

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Money & Finance

EXPERIENCED WORLDWIDE

DOCUMENTARY FILM

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

FOLLOW THE MONEY

FIND THE CHARACTERS

INCLUDE EMOTION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

BRING REGULATORS INTO VIEW

BRING ACADEMICS INTO VIEW

JOIN THE DOTS

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

BLAME, SHAME & GUILT

“Inside Job“
A documentary film directed by Charles Ferguson, produced by Charles Ferguson, Audrey Marrs & Jeffrey Lurie & narrated by Matt Damon for Mongrel Media & Sony Pictures Classic.
Official trailer embedded above. Search online to watch the full movie here.

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, filmmaker Charles Ferguson sets out to find out how and by whom it was caused. This involves understanding and explaining complex financial instruments (like sub-prime mortgages and collateralised debt obligations), the governance of international finance and its deregulation (and its consequences), eye-watering banking losses (over $20 trillion), the organisations and individuals responsible for this happening (in financial services, government, academia) and the people plunged into poverty and homelessness after defaulting on their mortgages. The complexity is explained clearly in the film by narrator Matt Damon. And by the talking heads who Ferguson recruits to talk about what happened, their role in it, how they see their responsibilities, why so much public money was spent bailing them out, and why none of them went to jail. For many audience members, it’s shocking to see executives explaining how business works on camera. The logics and passions that drive their work, and the values that they express, can seem removed from the world, callous and dehumanising. But the experts who come out of this film looking worst are the academic economists. One of the biggest impacts of this film is the way that it encourages university business schools to look more closely at their ethics. Who are economists working for, and how responsible is their education of new generations of economists if their ideas remain unchanged after the Crisis? This is another example showing how important and how difficult it is to ‘follow the money’. But like any following study, it’s also about the ways that responsibility – in this case, for a colossal economic injustice – is understood, shared, taken. And where it isn’t. The solution sees obvious to many – regulation! But it’s not happening. If one film was going to cause a revolution, one commentor states, it would be this one. And this is just a taster page for this film. We’ll add much more detail later…

Page reference: Dom Ebbetts, Dave Simpson, Michael Brent, Mickey Franklin, Tommy Sadler & Charlie Timms (2024) Inside Job (taster). followthethings.com/inside-job.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes.

Posted on December 6, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

Hydrocortisone Relatedness

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Health & Beauty

2005-7

MERCK, SHARPE & DOHME

HYDROCORTISONE TABLETS

REDUCE DISCRIMINATION

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

ENCOURAGE THANKFULNESS

END HAPPY

“Hydrocortisone Relatedness“
A talk by Ian Cook et al, edited and updated for publication here.
Available in full below.

Sometimes the thing you want to follow chooses you. It’s October 2004. followthethings.com CEO Ian is in considerable pain. He goes to hospital. He’s got kidney stones. Lots of them. The following summer he’s diagnosed with an illness called sarcoidosis. That’s what’s causing his body to make them. It’s also causing considerable weight loss. And lethargy. And extreme thirst. This is a serious illness. It’s in his lungs. But it could spread. He’s prescribed hydrocortisone steroid tablets. They calm the sarcoid inflammation that sets off the chemical reactions that cause his body to make those stones. And he gets better. He regains his sense of self, his working body. It’s a miracle. He wants to find out more about the drug. Who makes it for him, where, from what? He wants to say thanks. He’s inspired by a student taking his ‘Geographies of material culture’ module whose medicine-following coursework was original & surprising [it’s published on our site here]. Medicines are such a mystery. Hardly anyone seems to follow them. Choosing something to follow when you have absolutely no idea what you might find can be exciting. Choosing something that you couldn’t function without but doesn’t have an ethical, sustainable, or fair trade alternative can make you think differently. If you’re used to ‘follow the thing ‘studies about the genre’s most charismatic commodities – food, fashion and electronics – medicines don’t give you what you might normally expect. Prescription medicines are procured for their consumers by healthcare services. You get what they source for you. Medicines can be made from active pharmaceutical ingredients and other materials that come from the most surprising sources. They may have been discovered / invented under the most surprising circumstances by the most unexpected people. That’s 100% the case with hydrocortisone. Ian’s pills are made and consumed in the UK in the mid 2000s. But his talk starts and ends with civil rights activism in the US the 1960s. He loves what he finds. It forces him to think differently, more thankfully, about theorising and engaging others in the lives of things: through kinship and thingship. And because of what he finds – he concludes – he is a we.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Hydrocortisone relatedness. followthethings.com/hydrocortisone-thingship.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Made in Dagenham

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Home & Auto

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

HUMANISE WORKERS

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

TELL A STORY

SHOW FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

SHOW BAD & GOOD

FIND THE UNIONS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

SHOW HOW TO WIN

END HAPPY

“Made In Dagenham“
A docu-drama directed by Nigel Cole and produced by Stephen Wooley & Elizabeth Karlsen for HanWay Films & Lipsync Productions.
Trailer embedded above. Available to watch in full on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here. Search online for streaming options here.

In 1968, a group of 187 women sewing car seat covers at a Ford factory in the UK go on strike for equal pay. The work they do isn’t considered by the company to be ‘skilled’. So they get paid less than their officially ‘skilled’ male colleagues doing the same kind of work. Their strike action leads to the passing of equal pay legislation in the UK and overseas. In 2003, film producer Stephen Woolley is in his car listening to a radio show called The Reunion. It brings together people who lived through important historical events to talk about them. The episode that’s on brings together the women involved in this strike action forty years after it took place. Now in their 70s and 80s, he finds the way that they tell their story irreverent, hilarious, colourful and inspiring. He laughs his head off and is hooked. He’s never heard this story before. And they’re such characters! He wants to make a film about their struggle. But is it possible to make a mainstream movie that celebrates women’s involvement in successful strike action and legislative change? Despite a lack of industry interest in funding a movie about such serious topics, the answer is yes. The timing is right in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis and with the UK’s new Equality Act passing into law. The filmmaking team meets and interview the women, and create a central character who sums up the spirit of them all. Made in Dagenham is a hit. It brings an important turning point in the UK’s labour rights history to public attention. Audiences are moved to tears. This strike ‘was the spark that lit a flame that burns to this day’ says one commentator. Another calls it ‘a political movie that’s full on fun’. Some complain that it waters down the politics and overemphasises the fun. But it inspires some women who watch it to make their own claims for equal pay. There’s still along way to go on this issue. The strikers appear in the film’s credits. The fact that it’s based on real events is very clear. But what can a docu-drama do that a documentary cannot? For one thing, it has unhindered ‘access’ to all of the people involved in the story. In real life, some may refuse to take part.

Page reference: Sarah Brown, Izzy Brunswick, Julia Nientiedt, Alistair Wheeler, Camilla Windham & Becky Woolford (2013) Made in Dagenham. followthethings.com/made-in-dagenham.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.

Posted on November 10, 2024January 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

Hugh’s Chicken Run

Hugh [sobbing]: "I really don't want to kill another bird this morning'.
Hayley: 'You can afford free range. I can't. This is what I can afford.'
Hugh: 'To my delight, the response has been amazing. People really do care about chickens.'
Hugh: 'So, you are selling out of free range chickens'. Supermarket manager: 'We are'.

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Grocery

TV DOCUMENTARY SERIES

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

“Hugh’s Chicken Run“
A three-episode TV series hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for Channel 4 TV’s ‘Food Fight’ season.
Screengran slideshop embedded above. Search online to watch episodes here. Channel 4 episode guide here.

Private School-educated celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes part in a season of actvist-themed ‘Food Fight’ TV programmes on the UK’s Channel 4. His Hugh’s Chicken Run series has three episodes. He wants to persuade the shoppers of his home town of Axminster in Devon to stop buying factory-farmed chickens. You can get 2 for £5. The animal welfare issues are horrendous. And he wants the UK’s supermarket chains to stock free range alternatives to give consumers a choice. But how can he do this? He tries all sorts of tactics. For different audiences. He educates consumers in a supermarket carpark about the cramped and unsanitary conditions for factrory farmed chickens. He can’t get access to film in a commercial chicken farm, so he sets up one himself, runs it for a while, and invites cheap chicken consumers to see where their food comes from. He works with residents on a low income housing estate in the town to keep rear their own chickens. This is where he meets single mum Hayley, who ends up being the ‘mother hen’ of the project. He lobbies the supermarkets throughout the series to improve animal welfare standards. At the end of the series, he bumps into Hayley at the supermarket. She’s just bought a couple of cheap chickens. Noooo. His experiment hasn’t worked. But she’s defiant. She can’t afford what he would like her to eat, even though she agrees with everything he’s doing. He has reached, some critics say, the limit of consumer-based and celebrity activism. He’s trying to appear to ‘ordinary shoppers’, but he doesn’t understand ‘ordinary’ realities. He’s a posh boy who went to Eton. But the supermarkets do respond to his activism. And to his activism documented in follow-up programme Hugh, Chickens & Tesco Too. There are more free range chickens in the shops as a result of this series. But is that enough? Surely anyone seriously concerned about animal welfare would be advocating veganism as the alternative? Wouldn’t that be better for the chickens? What we like about this example is what it does and doesn’t do, how it does and doesn’t work, what it includes and what it leaves out. It’s open about being imperfect.

Page reference: Ellie Beattie, Fliss Browner, Rose Hughes, Rosie Marsh, Joe Parrilla, Alice Raeburn & Maddie Redfern (2024) Hugh’s Chicken Run. followthethings.com/hughs-chicken-run.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 67 minutes.

Posted on November 10, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Chewing Gum

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Grocery

INGREDIENTS SOURCED WORLDWIDE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TAKE IT TO PIECES

JOIN THE DOTS

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT META

“Chewing Gum“
Undergraduate coursework written by Lucy Mayblin, published in the Teaching Geography journal.
Full text below.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Birmingham 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, their lecturer (now 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 the properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming it’. And write a 500 word first person account that connects your lives. One student – Lucy Mayblin – ends up writing about being an accidental consumer. She’s walking to class. She steps in chewing gum recently spat from someone else’s mouth. It’s stuck to her shoe. But what exactly is stuck to her shoe, and why? She buys some gum and inspects the ingredient list. She searches the internet to find out more. What she finds out is shocking. She had trodden in the ‘war on terror’?! But is it true? To add to the stickiness of her work, she prints it out, rolls it into a tube, puts it into a shoe, and hands it in with some fresh gum on the sole. It sticks to the hand-in desk.

Page reference: Lucy Mayblin (2004) Chewing Gum. followthethings.com/chewing-gum.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.

Posted on October 16, 2024February 20, 2025 by Ian Cook

Ghosts

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Grocery

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

TRANSLATE & SUBTITLE

“Ghosts“
A documentary film written by Nick Broomfield, Jez Lewis & Hsiao-Hung Pai, directed by Nick Broomfield for Beyond FIlms
Official trailer embedded above. Available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here. Search online here for other streaming availability.

Documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield is known for his quirky, in-front-of-camera documentaries but, after a 2004 disaster where 23 Chinese migrant workers picking cockles were drowned by a fast-incoming tide in the UK’s Morecamble Bay, he decides to make a docu-drama to show what happened and why. This is a tale of people smuggling, modern slavery and violent, corrupt gangmasters sourcing and providing cheap slave labour in the UK to pick vegetables like spring onions and seafood like cockles for sale in mainstream supermarkets (which the film names). It was co-written with Hsiao-Hung Pai – a Taipei-heritage UK journalist and writer – was researched through the writers’ visit to China to visit the victims’ families, starred former illegal immigrant Chinese non-actors working with an improvised script, was filmed where the disaster happened, and ends with a plea for audience members to donate to a fund to help the dead workers’ families pay their people-smuggling debts. The tale is told from the perspective of a female worker called Ai Qin. She and her compatriots speak in Mandarin so that that ‘Ghosts’ – their white gangmasters – can’t understand they are mocking them. In the final scene, just before Ai Qin drowns, she calls her son in China to sing him a farewell song on her mobile phone. Who is to blame for their deaths? The migrant workers? The people smugglers and gangmasters? The supermarkets? The government? This film was made to be put to use, to have a positive impact. On public attitudes to migrant workers. On the law. On the victims’ families. In contrast to a documentary film, a docu-drama can script and film anything, anyone, anywhere. So a fuller picture of the challenges that workers and trade justice activists face can be pieced together to provoke change.

Page reference: Harriet Allen, Etienne Heaume, Lizzie Heeley, Rosie Hedger, Sam Johnson, Olivia McGregor & Lucy Webber (2011) Ghosts. followthethings.com/ghosts.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 51 minutes.

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

Hard To Follow Things: Natural Gas

Field photograph, taken in 2015. A Northern Gas Networks repair team responds to a reported gas leak in County Durham. The way gas drew actors such as these in to respond to its escape provided a valuable opportunity for me to talk to practitioners and to observe the practices they employed to visualise and govern natural gas.
Field photograph of a section of low-pressure distribution pipe, taken in Middlesborough in 2015. This pipe has been excavated as part of a nation-wide programme of pipeline replacement.
Field photograph taken in 2015 during a visit to a meter calibration facility, owned by DNV-GL.

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Home & Auto

SOURCED FROM THE NORTH SEA

USED IN THE UK

FOLLOW IT YOURSELF

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

FOLLOW THE THING

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“Hard To Follow Things: Natural Gas“
A blog post by Peter Forman originally published on the followthethings.com blog.
Available in full below. Originally published here.

PhD student Peter Forman wants to follow the thing, but his thing is natural gas. That’s a difficult thing to follow. Most of the things that people follow could be held in their hand, placed in their shopping bag. But it’s difficult and dangerous to do that with gas. Most of the things that people follow clearly come from somewhere. This banana was grown in this country. This phone was assembled in that country. But natural gas molecules from different sources get mixed up, so you can’t follow this commodity from source to destination, from production to consumption. It also gets from A to B underground, along pipes whose exactly network is a closely guarded secret. So how do you follow gas? For Peter, you find the places where it comes to the surface, in infrastructure, where it leaks, where the gas company vans and workers are digging holes, mending and replacing piping, that kind of thing. Thing-followers know that their thing is going to be a co-author of their work. It’s going to shape the way they work, and how they can study it. Nothing is impossible to follow, you just need some creative thinking, theorising and fieldwork strategies to work it out. As Peter says a the end of his post, ‘Every “thing” introduces its own challenges for study, and as thing-followers, we must be attentive to these specificities, continue to develop novel strategies for dealing with these difficulties, and continue to share our experiences of the challenges encountered.’ He’s sharing his experiences below.

Page reference: Pete Forman (2024) Hard To Follow Things: Natural Gas. followthethings.com/hard-to-follow-things-natural-gas.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

China, Britain And The Nunzilla Conundrum

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Gifts & Seasonal

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

FIND LOST RELATIONS

MAKE IT FUNNY

“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>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Tackle The Shackles

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Security

END VOILENCE & EXPLOITATION

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

START WITH A PARADOX

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

MAKE MUSIC

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

DISRUPT THE SUPPLY

PUT YOUR BODIES IN THE WAY

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

“Tackle The Shackles“
Two protests organised by Reprieve, Amnesty International, Save Omar Campaign & the Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign at Hiatt & Co, 111-115 Baltimore Road, Birmingham, UK (see map) on 8 September 2005 & 11 January 2007.
Selected photographs above. Featured in a scene from the documentary film ‘Taking Liberties since 1997’ (check streaming availability here and start at 1hr 20 minutes).

British citizens and residents are detained in the USA’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre, but none are charged with a crime. They notice the Hiatt & Co. leg irons restraining them are ‘Made in England’, or ‘Made in Birmingham’, just like them. When some go on hunger strike in 2005, and when the 5th anniversary of the camp’s opening takes place in 2007, musicians, doctors, lawyers, comedians and activists protest outside the Birmingham, UK factory where they are made. They dress as Guantanamo inmates and dance the ‘shackle shuffle’ to a live band performing on a flatbed truck. Former detainees, their family members, lawyers, celebrities and activists carry photos of detainees and give speeches. People chain themselves to railings and deliver a cake to the factory. Historically, protestors say, leg irons and other restraints were made in Birmingham to chain enslaved African people in the days of the British Empire. Their use at Guantanamo, they argue, is unethical and illegal. Does the export of these leg irons comply with the UK Government’s obligations under International law? Especially as Hiatt is owned by the UK’s BAE Systems and because the New Labour Government of the time had been loudly trumpeting its ‘ethical’ foreign policy. One detainee’s lawyer says, ‘If an ethical foreign policy means anything, it means not profiting from the torment of our own people.’ The protestors want to make this paradox mainstream news, and they succeed. In this trade justice activism, the violence and exploitation is found not where the commodity of produced, but where it is ‘consumed’. Hiatt closes its Birmingham factory and moves production to the USA. So, does this trade justice activism count as a success?

Page reference: Diana Shifrina (2013) Tackle The Shackles. followthethings.com/tackletheshackles.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 54 minutes.

Field photograph of a section of low-pressure distribution pipe, taken in Middlesborough in 2015. This pipe has been excavated as part of a nation-wide programme of pipeline replacement.

Field photograph taken in 2015 during a visit to a meter calibration facility, owned by DNV-GL.