{"id":16917,"date":"2024-12-16T11:24:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T11:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/follow-the-things.onyx-sites.io\/?p=16917"},"modified":"2026-03-05T10:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:37:31","slug":"follow-it-yourself-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/followthethings.com\/?p=16917","title":{"rendered":"\ud83e\udec6 Follow it yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It\u2019s amazing what you can find out when you\u2019re sitting at a computer, surfing \u2013 doing \u2018detective work\u2019, using corporate, NGO and news websites, blogs, photo and video-sharing websites and online encyclopaedias. So much information! Where to start? How to narrow it down? Start with the evidence \u2013 yes, keywords, right, on those things. Look closely: \u2018Made in …\u2019 or \u2018Assembled in …\u2019, company names, brands, lists of ingredients \u2013 printed on these things, their labels, their packaging \u2013 somewhere. OK, open browser: \u2018www.google.com\u2019. Search: \u2018Marks & Spencer\u2019 and \u2018socks\u2019. There are 49,500 hits including a manufacturer\u2019s website, Delta Galil …; a BBC news story: \u2018King of socks leaves the UK\u2019 …; a PR Newswire story: \u2018Delta Galil addresses discount request from Marks and Spencer\u2019 …; interesting: \u2018Jews for Justice in Palestine\u2019 …. What would they have to say about my socks? An article in Red Pepper …: what\u2019s that saying? That fairtrade cotton in M&S\u2019s new sock range is great for farmers in India, but not for anyone else involved in their production, distribution or sale. Right: agriculture, economic restructuring, international politics, boycotts, shifting production, trade justice. In my M&S socks, with my feet, comforting them, protecting them: what geographies are these? My sock geographies…<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Source: Ian Cook, James Evans, Helen Griffiths, Lucy Mayblin, Becky Payne & David Roberts (2007, 81-2: on followthethings.com here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resources for researchers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On this page, we share some guidance on how you can become a commodity detective<\/em> in order to find out who makes your stuff.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

CEO Ian began to follow things after a frustrating couple of years attempting to teach students about the ‘Lands and peoples of the non-Western world’ in the late 1980s (see FAQs<\/a>). If only there was some work that could connect their lives to those of the ‘lands and peoples’ we were studying! In the early 2000s, his students were doing this work for themselves<\/em>, following some simple desk-based research guidelines. Some of their work – following socks, mirrors, medicine, money and more – is published here<\/a> on followthethings.com. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CEO Ian has refined these ‘follow it yourself’ guidelines though 25 years teaching the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module at the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter in the UK (from 2000-2025: see Angus et al 2000, Cook et al 2007) and through developing education resources with the Fashion Revolution movement, including its online ‘Who made my clothes?’ course (from 2017-2018: see Cook, Jones & Cox 2017-2018). He and his students have published some of this detective work in academic journals, teacher-facing journals, and on the followthethings.com ‘back office’ blog. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach is based on the conviction that when students find out who makes things that matter to them, this learning becomes more meaningful and memorable to them, and can lead to conversations about responsible and ethical consumption. But it’s important to do this work with a sensitivity a) to income inequalities among a group of students in a classroom which can uncomfortably be exposed, b) to the diversity of students’ personal connections the people and places mentioned on ‘made in’ labels because detective work can generate stereotypical – often ‘white saviour’ – narratives involving ‘us’ (consumers) and ‘them’ (producers) (see Siddiqi 2009; Tosin-Talabi 2021), and c) to making students feel solely responsible for any trade injustices they find in their things, when so many other supply chain actors – e.g. corporations to governments to labour unions – are equally, if not more, responsible for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[C]alls on solidarity in the global North invite the \u2018reader \/ consumer \/ activist\u2019 to \u2018feel smugly superior\u2019 (Siddiqi 2009, 158) by virtue of their position on the global fashion supply chain, somewhat undoing the solidarity initially invoked. This script offers an appeal to consumers about a way to make shopping matter and falls prey to the neoliberal tendency to address complex structural injustice with individual personal action … [It] essentializes garment workers
into passive victims … while highlighting the \u2018conscience\u2019 of the consumer (Horton & Street 2021 p.891 talking about Fashion Revolution’s ‘Who made my clothes?’ campaign).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Below we provide a) the two best inspirations we have found for ‘following it yourself’ to act as a spark for this work, b) two ‘follow it yourself’ detective work guides that we developed for our ‘Geographies of material culture’ courses and ‘Who made my clothes?’ courses, and c) two ways that you can use followthethings.com as a source of case studies and qualitative data for essays and dissertations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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a) inspirations<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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