followthethings.com is a database of trade justice activism that aims to make ‘real’ the hidden relations between the producers & consumers of everyday things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It brings together everything written online (almost) about the making, discussion and impacts of over 100 examples of this work. And it showcases innovative student work inspired by these examples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s a resource designed to help activists, teachers, researchers, students and others to appreciate commodity-centred trade justice activism as a whole, and to inspire and inform new work that can have positive effects on the pay and conditions enjoyed by supply chain workers worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This site’s ‘CEO’, since it opened in 2011, is Ian Cook et al – Emeritus Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter in the UK. See Ian’s university profile page here<\/a>, Wikipedia page here<\/a>, and followthethings.com’s contact page here<\/a> (if you want to get in touch).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cite this site as: <\/strong>Ian Cook et al (ed.) (2011-date) followthethings.com<\/em>. Available at: http:\/\/followthethings.com (Accessed: <add your date here>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cite this page as: <\/strong>Ian Cook et al (2025) \ud83e\uddd0 About. in Ian Cook et al (ed.) (2011-date) followthethings.com<\/em>. Available at: http:\/\/followthethings.com (Accessed: <add your date here>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n [W]e have to follow the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories (Arjun Appadurai 1986, p.5).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n As mainstream public concern emerged in the Global North in the 1990s about sweatshops and trade injustice in the Global South (see Bannister & Bergan 2023), the work of social scientists including Arjun Appadurai (1986), Cynthia Enloe (1989), David Harvey (1990), Doreen Massey (1991) and George Marcus (1995) emerged to help out. In different ways, each found limiting the ethnnographic convention of studying social life in one place and understanding what happens there in the context of a wider abstract ‘system’. For them, the ‘system’ included other people’s places, and it was the connections between these places – and the people who lived and worked in them – that needed studying (see Marcus & Fischer 1986).<\/p>\n\n\n\n One way to make these connections was to ‘follow the things’: to identify, study and make public the hidden social relations between the people who grow, mine, manufacture, ship, sell, buy, use and waste specific commodities. Once the audiences for this work could see these social relations, they would understand their dependence on, and responsibilities towards, distant others and treat them the same way they would treat their friends, family members and neighbors closer to home (see Harvey 2010). This became the logic of ‘follow the things’ trade justice activism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But research on the consumption of this activism found that audiences could get just as angry with the activists who were making them feel guilty about their bad shopping behaviour as they got with the corporations who were exploiting their supply chain workers (see Sandlin & Milam 2008). Others argued that this work too often set up middle class people in the Global North as both the cause of, and the cure for, the trade injustices suffered by workers in the Global South (see Chouliaraki 2011, Siddiqi 2009). Others argued that following things shouldn’t stop at their purchase and use, but continue through their journeys as waste (see Gregson et al 2010, Balayannis 2020, and our \u267b\ufe0f recycle my waste department<\/a>). Still others argued that even the most recent ‘follow the thing’ research and trade justice activism relied too much on an academic literature that was published when global capitalism was simpler and the internet was in its infancy (typically Appadurai 1986, Harvey 1990 and Marcus 1995: see Hulme 2017). During the decade in which the academic cornerstones of follow the thing studies was published, email had become a popular means of communication and a forwarded email exchange in 2001 between a student and Nike became the first example of trade justice activism to go ‘viral’ (see our page on the ‘Nike Email Exchange<\/a>‘). At that time, most audiences knew little about – and could be easily shocked by – sweatshops and labour exploitation (Hulme 2017) and corporations and governments could be shamed into action by revelations of trade injustice in their supply chains (Koul 2025). Partly due to trade justice activism’s successes, circumstances have changed. Its tried and tested theories and tactics may no longer work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite these challenges, ‘follow the things’ research and activism is still going strong, with relentless NGO campaiging to improve workers’ rights in supply chains (see the work of NGOs like Global Labor Justice, Fashion Revolution and the Clean Clothes Campaign<\/a> and join with others<\/a><\/strong>), activism that works with and is led by supply chain workers themselves (see the tactics: start somewhere different<\/strong><\/a>, flip the script<\/strong><\/a> & workers take the mic!<\/strong><\/a>) and – it seems – fresh waves of innovative ‘follow the thing’ research tackling important 21st Century issues (see, for example, Tsing 2015, Sodero 2019, Cowen 2020, Cullen 2020, Crutchlow & Cook 2022, Taffel 2023, Ouma 2023, Liu 2024 and the tactics: include the digital<\/strong><\/a> and track and trace<\/a><\/strong>). Activists, researchers and students continue to be motivated to ‘follow the things’ that matter to them and to others elsewhere. For us, no other approach provides such an accessible entrypoint into complex understandings of trade injustice and who and what can effectively counter it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ‘follow the things’ approach \ud83e\udd1d trade justice activism – deliberately, but also by accident. As Marcus says in his 1995 essay, getting to know people who live and work in separate parts of a supply chain, and then piecing these lives together in a single joined-up narrative can disrupt not only your own sense of self as a researcher but also those of the people featured in that narrative. Seeing your previously unknown interdependencies with (and, with them, responsibilities for) distant others can change a person (see the tactic: show it back<\/a><\/strong>). It’s often easiest and most common to include in ‘follow the thing’ work the lives of the poorest and most powerless people along a supply chain – typically farm and factory workers (see the tactic: find a character<\/a><\/strong>) – and the people who buy the things they make (either as the imagined audience and\/or as characters confronted with images of people making their cheap stuff – see the tactics: involve consumers<\/strong><\/a>). But when you can also include those of company executives and CEOs making the demands that affect and profit from the labour of supply chain workers and the manufactured desires of consumers, the impact can be extraordinary (see the tactic bring managers into view<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we have learned through this followthethethings.com project is that effective ‘follow the thing’ trade justice activism has to pay just as much attention to the relationships between the producers and consumers of that activism as it does to the relationships between the producers and consumers of the commodities it follows. The classic blaming, shaming and guilting<\/a> of ‘consumers’ for buying commodities made cheaply by exploited workers treats trade injustice as caused more or less only by ‘unethical’ shopping choices. But, if you want to improve supply chain workers’ pay and conditions<\/a>, your activism will need see responsible actors everywhere<\/em> and find mutiple ways to encourage multiple audiences to change corporate<\/a> and government behaviour<\/a> (see Young 2003). It should not only blame, and make resposible, ‘the consumer’. It should start somewhere different<\/strong><\/a>, choose the right thing<\/strong><\/a>, target the right brand<\/strong><\/a> and the right audience<\/a><\/strong>, have a theory of change<\/strong><\/a>, know your history<\/strong><\/a> and join with others<\/strong><\/a> to make its contribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n followthethings.com’s CEO Ian got caught up in these debates as a student in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Teaching a traditional ‘Lands and peoples of the Non-Western World’ module as a Masters student at the University of Kentucky in the late 1980s, he found it frustrating to present these lands and peoples as distant and separate from his (bored) students. What if there were things which they owned and relied upon that were made by people in these lands? What if there were people who studied these relationships and you could ask your students to read their work? Ian wanted to be one of these people and ended up at Bristol University undertaking a multi-sited ethnographic PhD research along a fresh papaya supply chain connecting the lives of farm workers in Jamaica to supermarket buyers in the UK (Cook et al 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n He published a paper called ‘Follow the thing: papaya’ (Cook et al 2004) that captured what he’d found and wanted to say. Its composition couldn’t be inspired by academic writing at the time (there was very little of it). Instead, he turned to a documentary film that followed canned pineapples (Amos Gitai’s 1983 Ananas (pineapple)<\/em>: see Cook, Crang & Thorpe 1996) and social sculpture that followed fresh bananas (Shelley Sacks’ 1996 Exchange Values: images of invisible lives: <\/em>see Cook et al 2001). Both presented their narratives in short accessible chunks, leaving audiences to figure out the connections between them, to add their own perspectives, and to become part of the work’s sense-making process (see the tactic: make it incomplete<\/strong><\/a>). As the production of ‘follow the thing’ trade justice activism – films, books, art work, journalism, music, pranks, academic research, etc. – began to mushroom in the late 1990s, Ian focused his research and teaching on gathering and researching these many examples as a genre in this database called followthethings.com (see Cook et al 2017). It first opened in 2011, and its design and content was updated in 2025. It’s now a database of over 100 examples of the making, reception and impacts of trade justice activism. And a work that’s still in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arjun Appadurai (1988) Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. in his (ed.) The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective.<\/em> Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.1-63<\/p>\n\n\n\n Angeliki Balayannis (2020) Toxic sights: The spectacle of hazardous waste removal. Environment & planning D: society & space <\/em>38(4), p.772-790<\/p>\n\n\n\n Laura Bannister & Ruth Bergan (2023) A timeline of UK trade and trade justice. <\/em>London: Trade Justice Movement<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lilie Chouliaraki (2010) Post-humanitarianism: humanitarian communication beyond a politics of pity.<\/a> International journal of cultural studies<\/em> 3(2), p.107\u2013126<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Cook et al (2000) Social sculpture and connective aesthetics: Shelley Sacks\u2019s \u2018Exchange values\u2019. Ecumene<\/em> 7(3), p.337-343<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Cook et al (2004) Follow the thing: papaya. Antipode <\/em>36(4), p.642-664<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Cook et al (2017) From ‘follow the thing: papaya’ to followthethings.com. <\/a>Journal of consumer ethics<\/em> 1(1), p.22-29<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Cook & Philip Crang (1996) Commodity systems, documentary filmmaking & new geographies of food: Amos Gitai\u2019s Ananas.<\/em> Paper presented at the annual conference of the Insitute of British Geographers\/ Royal Geographical Society, Glasgow, January<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deborah Cowen (2020) Following the infrastructures of empire: notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method<\/a>. Urban Geography<\/em> 41(4), p.469-486<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paula Crutchlow & Ian Cook (2022) Museum of contemporary commodities zine.<\/em><\/a> Exeter: Museum of Contemporary Commodities<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beth Cullen (2020) Constellations of weathering: following the meteorological mobilities of Bangla bricks<\/a>. Mobilities <\/em>15(6), 862-879 Cynthia Enloe (1989) Bananas, beaches & bases: making feminist sense of international politics. <\/em>London: Pandora Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nicky Gregson, Mike Crang, Farid Ahamed, Nasreen Akhter & Raihana Ferdous (2010) Following things of rubbish value: End-of-life ships, \u2018chock-chocky\u2019 furniture and the Bangladeshi middle class consumer. Geoforum<\/em> 41(6), p.846-854<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Harvey (1990) Between space and time: reflections on the geographical imagination. Annals, Association of American Geographers<\/em> 80(3), p.418-434<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Harvey (2010) Commodities and exchange. in his A companion to Marx\u2019s Capital<\/em>. London: Verso, p.15-53<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alison Hulme (2017) Following the (unfollowable) thing: methodological considerations in the era of high globalisation. Cultural geographies<\/em> 24(1), p.157-160<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scaachi Koiul (2025) What Ever Happened to the Yes Men? Slate<\/em> 16 July (https:\/\/slate.com\/culture\/2025\/07\/donald-trump-political-protest-hoax-revenge-yes-men.html<\/a> last accessed 9 September 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chen Liu (2024) Follow the digital: Methodological thoughts on doing everyday geographies in a digital world. Digital geography & society<\/em> 6 (online early)<\/p>\n\n\n\n George Marcus (1995) Ethnography in\/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual review of anthropology <\/em>24, p.95\u2013117<\/p>\n\n\n\n George Marcus and Michael Fischer (1986) Anthropology as cultural critique: an experimental moment in the human sciences.<\/em> Chicago: University of Chicago Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doreen Massey (1991) A global sense of place. Marxism today<\/em> (June), p.24-29<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stefan Ouma (2023) Defetishising the asset form. Dialogues in human geography<\/em> 14(1), 30-33<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jennifer Sandlin & Jennifer Milam (2008) \u2018Mixing pop culture and politics\u2019: culture jamming and anti-consumption activism as critical public pedagogy. Curriculum inquiry <\/em>38(3), p.323-50<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dina M. Siddiqi (2009) Do Bangladeshi factory workers need saving? Sisterhood in the Post-sweatshop era? Feminist Review,<\/em> 91(1), p.154\u2013174<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephanie Sodero (2019) Vital mobilities: circulating blood via fictionalized vignettes. Cultural geographies<\/em> 26(1), p.109\u201312<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sy Taffel (2023) AirPods and the earth: digital technologies, planned obsolescence and the Capitalocene.<\/a> Environment & planning E: nature & space <\/em>6(1), p.433-454<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sergei Tret’iakov (2006) The biography of the object. October <\/em>118, p.57-62<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anna Tsing (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. <\/em>Princeton: Princeton University Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iris van der Tuin & Nanna Verhoeff (2022) Following. in their Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities<\/em>. London: Rowman & Littlefield, p.101-103<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iris Marion Young (2003) From guilt to solidarity: sweatshops & political responsibility. Dissent <\/em>50(2), p.39-44<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n \u2026 the history of the commodity is the history of global injustice \u2026 (Bruce Robbins 2005, p.460).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The most-told origin story of ‘follow the thing’ trade justice activism begins in the mid-1980s to 1990s (see above), and often reaches back to Karl Marx’s Capital<\/em>: volume 1<\/em> – whose opening chapter on commodities introduced the concept of ‘commodity fetishism’ – published in 1867 (Harvey 1990, Cook & Woodyer 2012). But the ‘follow the thing’ approach is at least as old as capitalism itself and contributed to the emergence of popular literature, documentary film and other media before and after this (see Wenzel 2011). For example, cheap novels entertainingly explaining the emergence of global trade through the life story of a top hat or a guinea coin were being published in the mid-18th Century (see Bernaerts et al 2014, and our page on one of these novels here<\/a>). In 1843, the British satirical magazine Punch<\/em> published a poem called ‘The song of the shirt’ about the squalid conditions in which of women sewed clothes in London’s East End, which went viral through the media of the time (see our page on it here<\/a>). Formerly-enslaved authors and anti-slavery activists were informing consumers about the ‘blood’ in their sugar in the late 18th Century (see Midgeley 1996). All of this happened way before Marx theorised commodities as the ‘DNA of capitalism’ in 1867.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commodity (Marx) says is the \u2018economic cell form\u2019 of capitalism. It is as if he is saying that in the same way that the DNA sequence holds the secret to life, so the commodity is the economic DNA, and hence the secret of modern capitalism (Michael Watts 1999 p.308).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Dipping into the history of the ‘follow the thing’ genre, George Marcus (1990, 1995) has highlighted the importance of early 20th Century Russian constructivists like the filmmaker Dziga Vertov and the writer Sergei Tret\u2019iakov. In 1924, when documentary film was in its infancy, Vertov included an extended ‘follow the meat’ scene in his experimental film Kino Eye <\/em>called ‘Kopuchiska\u2019s Mother Is Shopping For Meat’ (see our page on this scene here<\/a>). His aim, to quote from the summary on that page<\/a>, was to ‘show how food shopping involves relations with hidden places, processes and people … [by following] a cut of meat that [Kopuchiska\u2019s Mother] buys in reverse motion, from a cooperative market, via the slaughterhouse where it is put back into the cow, who then stands up, walks backwards into the train, which returns the cow to the fields where it grazed. Vertov\u2019s message to the film\u2019s audience is to buy your meat from a workers\u2019 co-operative supermarket.’ Five years later, Tret\u2019iakov’s essay ‘The biography of the object’ imagined a new form of literature – and society – whose central characters would be things rather than people. He explained:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hero is what holds the novel\u2019s universe together. The whole world is perceived through him. \u2026 [In contrast] the compositional structure of the \u2018biography of the object\u2019 is a conveyor belt. Every segment introduces a new group of people. \u2026 They come into contact with the object through their social aspects and production skills. \u2026 This longitudinal section of the human masses is one that cuts across classes. \u2026 [who] necessarily share in the biography of an object. Thus: not the individual person moving through a system of objects, but the object proceeding through the system of people \u2013 \u2026 this is the methodological device that seems \u2026 more progressive \u2026 We urgently need books about our economic resources, about objects made by people, and about people that make objects. Our politics grow out of economics, and there is not a single second in a person’s day uninvolved in economics or politics. Books such as The Forest, Bread, Coal, Iron, Flax, Cotton, Paper, The Locomotive, and The Factory have not been written. We need them, and it is only through the ‘biography of the object’ that they can be adequately realized (Sergei Tret\u2019iakov 2006, p.58 & 62).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The idea that following things, making visible and appreciating the relationships between their producers and consumers, can help to appreciate human interdependence and to build more equitable societies pops up in other times and places too. We can see it, for example, in 1960s US civil rights activism where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King (1967, np) preached about his congregations’ responsibilities towards supply chain workers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And don\u2019t forget in doing something for others that you have what you have because of others. Don\u2019t forget that. We are tied together in life and in the world. And you may think you got all you got by yourself. But you know, before you got out here to church this morning, you were dependent on more than half of the world. … You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom, and you reach over for a bar of soap, and that\u2019s handed to you by a Frenchman. You reach over for a sponge, and that\u2019s handed to you by a Turk. You reach over for a towel, and that comes to your hand from the hands of a Pacific Islander. \u2026 [So] Let us be concerned about others because we are dependent on others.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And, in the mid-late 20th Century era of large-scale migration from former colonies to their European imperial ‘homelands’, Black British writers like Stuart Hall (1991, p.48-9) were explaining how commodities and people have been crossing borders and complicating ‘us and them’, ‘here and there’ distinctions for centuries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries; symbolically, we have been there for centuries. I was coming home. I am the sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea. I am the sweet tooth, the sugar plantations that rotted generations of English children\u2019s teeth. There are thousands of others beside me that are, you know, the cup of tea itself. Because they don\u2019t grow it in Lancashire, you know. Not a single tea plantation exists within the United Kingdom. This is the symbolization of English identity \u2013 mean, what does anybody in the world know about an English person except that they can\u2019t get through the day without a cup of tea? Where does it come from? Ceylon \u2013 Sri Lanka, India. That is the outside history that is inside the history of the English. There is no English history without that other history.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is important to acknowledge that there’s a deep history of people following things for different reasons and with different audiences and outcomes in mind. Authors, filmmakers and activists who have taken a ‘follow the thing’-based (or material cultural) approach to understanding trade have crossed all kinds of borders, and persuaded people who are disconnected from, or invisible to, one another to consider and act upon their relational connections <\/em>and responsibilities<\/em> for centuries (see the tactics: pop the bubble<\/strong><\/a>, know your histor<\/a>y<\/strong> & find lost relations<\/a>)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lars Bernaerts, Marco Caracciolo, Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck (2014) The storied lives of non-human narrators. Narrative<\/em> 22(1), p.68-93<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Cook & Tara Woodyer (2012) Lives of things.<\/a> in Eric Sheppard, Trevor Barnes & Jamie Peck (eds) The Wiley Blackwell companion to economic geography<\/em>. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, p.226-241<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stuart Hall (1991) Old and new identities, old and new ethnicities. in Anthony King (ed) Culture, globalisation and the world-system<\/em>. London: Palgrave, p.41-68<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Harvey (1990) Between space and time: reflections on the geographical imagination. Annals, Association of American Geographers<\/em> 80(3), p.418-434<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martin Luther King Jr. (1967) Three dimensions of a complete life.<\/em> youtube.com [https:\/\/youtu.be\/GU3AnO_PJGU<\/a> last accessed 2 November 2023]<\/p>\n\n\n\n George Marcus (1990) The modernist sensibility in recent ethnographic writing and the cinematic metaphor of montage. Visual anthropology review<\/em> 6(10, p.2-12<\/p>\n\n\n\n George Marcus (1995) Ethnography in\/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual review of anthropology <\/em>24, p.95\u2013117<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clare Midgley (1996) Slave sugar boycotts, female activism and the domestic base of British anti\u2010slavery culture. Slavery & abolition<\/em> 17(3), p.137-162 Michael Watts (1999) Commodities. in Paul Cloke, Philip Crang & Mark Goodwin (eds) Introducing human geographies.<\/em> London: Arnold, p.305-315<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jennifer Wenzel (2011) Consumption for the common good? Commodity biography film in an age of postconsumerism. Public culture<\/em> 23(3), p.573-602<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n Trade injustice consists in exploitation. Gains from trading are distributed justly only if the gains have been obtained without exploitation (Riise & Wollner 2019, p.5).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Since the Battle of Seattle in 1999, and the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory complex in 2013, the exploitation of workers in global supply chains and the discrediting of economists\u2019 assertions that international trade is a \u2018moral-free zone\u2019 have become public knowledge (Christensen 2017, Hulme 2017, Riise & Wollner 2019, Bannister & Bergan 2023). This knowledge is arguably the result of a diverse and dispersed body of trade justice activism that has applied pressure to governments and corporations to reformulate trade rules and to redistribute the benefits and burdens of trade more equitably (Hadiprayitno and Bagatur 2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those taking part in this activism have included labour rights NGOs, labour unions, politicians, legislators, filmmakers, journalists, video game designers, app designers, product designers, consultants, Fair Trade certifiers, ethical startup companies, artists, playwrights, musicians, comedians, activists, celebrities, researchers, teachers, museum curators, lawyers, investors, consumers, citizens, workers and more (Cook et al 2017, Bostrom et al 2019, Hadiprayitno and Bagatur 2022). There have been notable trade justice success stories – for example, the passing in July 2024 of the European Union\u2019s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive<\/em> to ensure sustainable and responsible corporate behaviour along supply chains within and beyond Europe (European Commission 2024, although watch this space<\/a>) – and research has recognised the importance of diverse forms of trade justice activism in raising and energising the public concern to which legislators have responded (Evans 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite such headline success stories, there is little consensus about how, individually and collectively, trade justice activism works and what it can do. Activists with diverse skill sets, audiences and leverage rarely meet to compare notes and coordinate actions. They don\u2019t have a central repository of trade justice activism to refer to, a theory of change for trade justice activism, or a common vocabulary to connect and coordinate their thoughts on this work. Where theories of change do exist, they are often presented as linear or spherical models that are easily communicated but oversimplified, or as multilinear or multidimensional models which are more accurate but difficult to communicate (Chapman et al 2023). Both, it is argued, struggle to account for the feelings and hunches, surprise and non-linearity that are essential elements in any change-making initiative (ibid<\/em>). Indeed, some argue that it is the non-linearity and loose organisation of trade justice activism that makes it effective because corporations cannot easily understand or counter it as a coherent whole (Connor & Phelan 2015).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent research reveals that activists\u2019 theories of change are often implicit, simple and linear – for example, the ‘idealist theory of change’ which believes that the creation of critical perspectives and imagining of alternative futures can inspire change. Such theories rarely include the changes to which activists’ work can (un)intentionally contribute, and don’t take account of the geographical and cultural contexts in which activism needs to take place (see Duncombe 2024). A new way to theorise change<\/a><\/strong> in trade justice activism is therefore needed, to borrow Duncombe’s words, which, while it ‘does not guarantee an outcome \u2026 does tell us where we might intervene in order to have the best chance of the outcomes we desire \u2026 [and] provides \u2026 activists a better understanding of what they are doing so they – so we – can do it better’ (p.68).<\/p>\n\n\n\n For us, followthethings.com is a kind of ‘theory of change machine’ for trade justice activism. It’s aim is to inform and inspire its shoppers to make new work that better understands the relationships between the intentions, tactics, responses and impacts of activism that may (not) work. So visit one of our departmets, choose a product, visit its page, watch or read the original, read our summary, browse the comments below, click with the intention and tactic buttons when you see them (FAQ below) and check out the beginnings of our followthethings.com handbook for trade justice activism<\/em> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Laura Bannister & Ruth Bergan (2023) A timeline of UK trade and trade justice. <\/em>London: Trade Justice Movement<\/p>\n\n\n\n Magnus Bostr\u00f6m, Michele Micheletti & Peter Oosterveer (eds) (2019) The Oxford handbook of political consumerism<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sarah Chapman, Adiilah Boodhoo, Carren Duffy, Suki Goodman & Maria Michalopoulou (2023) Theory of change in complex research for development programmes: challenges and solutions from the Global Challenges Research Fund. The European Journal of Development Research <\/em>35, p.298\u2013322<\/p>\n\n\n\n James Christensen (2017) Trade justice<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tim Connor & Liam Phelan (2015) Antenarrative & transnational labour rights activism: making sense of complexity & ambiguity in the interaction between Global Social Movements & Global Corporations. Globalizations<\/em> 12(2), p.149-163<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Cook et al (2017) followthethings.com: analysing relations between the making, reception and impact of commodity activism in a transmedia world. In Ola S\u00f6derstr\u00f6m O & Lauren Kloetzer (eds.) Innovations sociales: comment les sciences sociales transforment la soci\u00e9t\u00e9<\/em>, Neuch\u00e1tel, Switzerland: University of Neuch\u00e1tel, p.46-60<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephen Duncombe (2024) Aeffect: the affect & effect of artistic activism<\/em>. New York: Fordham University Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n European Commission (2024) Corporate sustainability due diligence. European Commission<\/em> 25 July (https:\/\/commission.europa.eu\/business-economy-euro\/doing-business-eu\/sustainability-due-diligence-responsible-business\/corporate-sustainability-due-diligence_en<\/a> last accessed 1 August 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alice Evans (2020) Overcoming the global despondency trap: strengthening corporate accountability in supply chains<\/a>. Review of International Political Economy<\/em>, 27(3), p.658-685<\/p>\n\n\n\n Irene Hadiprayitno and Sine Bagatur (2022) Trade justice, human rights, and the case of palm oil. in Elena V. Shabliy, Martha J. Crawford & Dmitry Kurochkin (eds) Energy Justice:<\/em> Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, p.157-172<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alison Hulme (2017) Following the (unfollowable) thing: methodological considerations in the era of high globalisation. Cultural geographies<\/em> 24(1), p.157-160<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mathias Risse & Gabriel Wollner (2019) On trade justice: a philosophical plea for a new global deal<\/em>. Oxrord: Oxford University Press<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\nWhy \u2018follow the things\u2019?<\/summary>\n
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Sources<\/strong><\/summary>\n
Stephen Duncombe (2023) A theory of change for artistic activism. The journal of aesthetics & art criticism<\/em>. 81, 260\u2013268
Stephen Duncombe (2024) Aeffect: the affect & effect of artistic activism<\/em>. New York: Fordham University Press<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen did people start to ‘follow the things’? <\/summary>\n
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Bruce Robbins (2005) Commodity histories. PMLA<\/em> 120(2), p.454-463
Sergei Tret\u2019iakov (2006) The biography of the object. October<\/em> 118 (Fall), p.57-62<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is ‘trade justice’ and how can it be achieved?<\/summary>\n
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What kind of trade justice activism is showcased here?<\/summary>\n