Made in ?

Appreciating
the everyday geographies
of connected lives
80

Ian Cook, James Evans, Helen

Griffiths, Lucy Mayblin, Becky
Payne and David Roberts look
at our relationships with the
random objects we encounter
in everyday life.

any of us pay little or

no attention to where the
things in our lives come from.
We may be concerned about factory
conditions in other parts of the world,
but not feel any direct sense of connection with the people working there.
Made in labels and ingredient information dont tell us much about these
connections and relationships. But they
can be starting points for geographical detective work (Hartwick, 2000).
This can allow teachers and students to
piece together their understanding
of commodities and their complex
geographies, and provoke classroom
discussion about the impacts of consumers decisions, which inevitably
draw upon the key geographical
concepts including:

globalisation
uneven development
interdependence
scale and connection
proximity and distance
relational thinking
identity
responsibility
futures
(see Griffiths, 2004; Jackson, 2006;
Massey, 2004).

This article illustrates the kinds of connections and issues that can be made
and raised through such detective work,
and introduces the additional concepts
of cyborgs and commodity fetishism
that this draws upon.

Verrucas, dirt, cold, pain. Whenever I

am barefooted, unpleasant things tend
to invade my feet, and thats why I like
socks. They are barriers to my discomfort; I am secure, safe in their company.
Yet, I do seem to like them a little too
much. They take up a whole drawer in
my room after all. I cant imagine life
without them.
But socks are strange beings. In
improving my life, offering comfort,
warmth and protecting me against disease, they seem to have sacrificed their
own identities. They are the only free
item of clothing I have free from tags,
labels or any clues to their origin or
even what they are made from. I have
to delve deeper, literally, into my bin
and retrieve the packet before I can
make out that they were Made in
Bulgaria. By buying them in my local
Marks & Spencer store in London, I
became part of an intricate and widereaching network of people and
machines.
In purchasing these socks, I was one
of 15 million customers in one of 400
M&S stores in the UK that employ
65,000 people (Anon, 2005). The socks
that ended up on the checkout conveyor-belt are part of the countless
number transported from a factory in
Rousse, Bulgaria, packaged by automated production lines and made by
over 600 workers (Anon, 2002) who
knit, sew, seam, bleach, iron, shape and
sort my socks assisted by 200-needle
single and double-cylinder machines
(Anon, no date). Not to mention the
thousands of workers in Bulgaria

involved in manufacturing the

polyamide and elastane lycra, the farmers planting, tending and cultivating
the cotton plants, and those getting
these and other materials to the factory.
This simple transaction links me
with hundreds, thousands, millions(?)
of people across the world. If my socks
could become more than mere garments sock puppets who could talk!
what would they tell me about the
conditions, education, wealth, future of
the people involved in putting them on
my feet (Cook et al., 2006)? This transaction links me to more than just
individual people.
The factory in Bulgaria, contributing to hundreds of job losses in the
UK (Anon, 1999), is owned by Delta
Socks, an Israeli company fighting its
own battles against boycotters who
have identified how its Israeli factories
benefit from operating on illegally confiscated Palestinian land by employing
labourers in dreadful non-unionised
conditions (Scheid, 2002). The headquarters of these sock boycotters are
located in London, just a couple of Tube
stops away from the M&S I bought
them in.
Putting my foot into the oh-sofluffy, comforting sock, it seems Im
helping to perpetuate the ArabIsraeli
conflict, to disrupt the lives of hundreds
of fellow Brits, and to contribute to the
lives of thousands in Bulgaria. Who
lives, dies, profits or suffers depends,
in a small part, on me. My socks have
spoken, and what they have said matters. Oppression doesnt sit well with
me and what I do with my money. I
can change what socks I buy. I must
change. Sacrificing quality for ethics is
a small price to pay. I may be just one
person, but what I do makes a difference, to a lot of people, in a lot of
different places.
But Im not the only one that can
or should act differently. Surely, this
cant all be my responsibility as a consumer. Others are shaping my options
and they have to change too, including
M&S bosses, and the people who decide
what socks get onto their shelves. A
new range of fairtrade cotton socks has
just started to appear there (Anon,
2006a; 2006b). Would you believe it?
Their marketing pitch was Your M&S:
Look Behind the Label! Just what I was
doing. Their cotton is grown by farmers in Gujurat, India. Its good for them.
But what about those sock workers in
the UK, Bulgaria and Israel/Palestine
(ONions, 2006)? What good has this
done them? And what should I do with
the socks Ive already got? The ones
lying in my drawer? Put them on, as
usual, I suppose, for a run this morning, then to walk into uni.

TEACHING GEOGRAPHY . SUMMER 2007

Teaching File

 TEACHING GEOGRAPHY . SUMMER 2007

I really enjoy the walk into uni. Striding

out, breathing in the morning air just
me, my socks, my shoes and the pavement working in perfect harmony, like
a well-oiled machine. Were out on our
own in the urban wilderness doing
what we do best, what we came
together to do. S**t! Trod in some chewing gum. Cant walk properly, the gum
is sticking shoe and pavement together,
interrupting the flow of the system. I
hate chewing gum, never chew it, yet
here it is, invading my life. The chewer
must have only dropped it a minute
ago. Their DNA, now stuck to the bottom of my shoe, could tell me all kinds
of intimate details about their life a
life which has intruded upon my own
and stuck to me like a parasite.
The story that brought this gum to
my shoe is mind-bogglingly complex.
A little research starting with the
information printed on a pack of gum1
brings stories of factory workers in
Plymouth (the only UK Wrigley2 factory), the fact that E903 (a.k.a.
carnauba wax) is also the main ingredient of car polish (Anon, 2004a;
2006c), and allegations of the carcinogenic effects of Acesulfame K, a.k.a.
acetoacetamide, (Anon, no date; 2004c)
I could go on for ever it seems
through more surprising connections.
Like the one made shortly after the 9/11
attacks between the gum arabic trade
and the war on terror:
Early this morning I was listening to
the news. One of the commentators said
that Osama Bin Laden owns a HUGE
amount of stock in the company that
makes Gum Arabic. Gum Arabic is
known to be in some soft drinks and
many other food items. Check your
cupboards and refrigerators, if you have
products that use Gum Arabic get rid of
them and do not buy products with the
Gum Arabic additive. If we continue to
use these products that contain Gum
Arabic we are in essence supporting this
mans terrorist attacks against OUR
FELLOW AMERICANS! One way that
the US helps Osama Bin Laden is, he
owns the COMPANY that makes GUM
ARABIC mostly used in pop,
MOUNTAIN DEW IS ONE OF THEM,
and other things. GUM ARABIC keeps
things from settling in bottles and cans.
STOP BUYING ANYTHING WITH GUM
ARABIC IN ITS CONTENTS. THE
MONEY goes to Bin Laden company.
PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERYONE.
This was on the news today
(Mikkelson, 2001).

So, that anonymous chewer wasnt

just littering that street (and my shoe),

but was also helping to fund international terrorism. I feel better. I never
chew gum. So Im not responsible for
any of this. What a relief!
But wait, hold on a sec! The whitening agent in chewing gum is the same
chemical that makes my acrylic paint
white. Gum arabic is used in all kinds
of sweeteners for foods and drinks, not
to mention pill capsules and make-up
(Anon, 2004a). I put many of those
things into or onto my body, every day.
I couldnt be myself without many of
them. My trainers wouldnt work the
way they do without elastomers the
ingredient that gives gum its rubbery
texture and cushions my feet. Chewing
gum shares properties with car tyres,
shock absorbers and glues. So, a stick
of gum could be produced from my
body and its attachments. I am a walking stick of chewing gum its/my
ingredients are related. Blimey!

Im in the second row from the back of

the computer cluster in the uni library
sitting at a screen, tapping away like
the other 34 people in the room. But,
thanks to my Apple iPod, I have created my own sonic bubble in which to
hide. The instrumental Icelandic overtures of Sigur Ros pulsate through my
head, the soft beats rippling from ear
to ear, down through my spine and
through my limbs, the rhythms dictating the tap of my foot, the speed of my
fingers, my mood, my whole psyche,
what youre reading now. This innocent-looking white and chrome
contraption has me in its grips. As the
Apple slogan goes, iPod therefore I am.
This morning I unplugged my little
white friend from his nightly recharge,
where his internal Sony lithium battery
had spent the night sucking the juice
from the national grid. I removed him
from his cosy plastic dock, inserted the
long white headphones deep into my
ears and let the powerful vocal harmonising and amplified funk beats of
Jurassic Five provide the upbeat soundtrack to inspire my legs to get going for
my morning run. As I ran I was transported back in time to the night I saw

J5 live. I smiled. Then a pang of guilt

hit me. I had copied the J5 CD from a
friend, so is listening pleasure illegal?
Am I eroding the music industry? I then
let the shuffle setting randomly select
some of the 2459 songs I have installed
and let the various rhythms and
melodies determine the speed I move
and where my mind wanders. We have
been travelling together on powerful
musical adventures for 6 months now
but Ive just realised I have never even
asked where he comes from!
My little white friend openly tells
me that he was designed by Apple in
California and assembled in China, but
is less forthcoming about the origins of
his hidden components, let alone how
many other peoples lives he has
touched. His sleek exterior doesnt give
much away. Hes now trying to get me
off track by transmitting the smooth
grooves of Morcheeba. Im gone.
Somewhere calm. I let the sultry vocals
of Skye Edwards and the symphonic
strings wash over me. But how did I get
here?
Morcheeba recorded. Sire label paid.
HMV bought. I bought. Inserted into
laptop. Installed onto iTunes software.
Connected iPod via USB connection.
Data transferred through Sharp
Electronics Flash memory chip and
PortalPlayer controller chip designed by
134 designers in Silicon Valley; through
Texas Instruments 1394 FireWire interface onto the Toshiba 1.8-inch hard
drive. Connected headphones. Listen.
Now Im somewhere calm.
Yes, Apple sources the 20GB hard
drive from Toshiba (Allen, 2005). But
Toshiba gets them from SAE Magnetics.
They have a plant in Dongguan, China.
Here, there are reports that the predominantly female, rural, assembly workers
are forced to work 16-hour days to
make the heart of my little white friend.
Wages are low and supervisors brutal
(Frew McMillan, 2002).
Can I still be calm? It turns out that
I and my little white friend are not so
independent, individual and innocent
as I thought. I cant hide in my sonic
bubble any more. I can only feel so separate because Im so connected so
implicated. iPod therefore I am.

Its amazing what you can find out when

youre sitting at a computer, surfing
doing detective work, 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?

81

gender relations, ruralurban migration. My iPod geographies

Theres more, much more: academic
sources, too, to corroborate these ideas
flesh them out, critically, giving academic rigour and balance. In academic
dictionaries, journal articles, books,
chapters, academic studies of these
things, these places, the lives of the
people who shape and make them. Use
the right keywords and youre almost
bound to find an academic researcher
somewhere whos an expert on what
you want to know; someone whos been
to the places you have identified, talked
to the people involved, or worked
alongside them perhaps. The match will
rarely be exact. But their writing
especially if its based on ethnographic
research should help make a better
sense of the relations that online
research can only hint at; providing
more vivid and empathetic insights into
the lives of those who dont/cant go
online and tell their stories; explaining
the processes and actors that shape
these relations hopefully.
Try a search engine for academic
research: www.googlescholar.com.
Type Bulgaria, textile, factory and
ethnography. There are 50 hits, including a journal article called Regions,
spaces of economic practice and diverse
economies in the New Europe (Smith,
2004). Its keywords include clothing
industry and Eastern Europe. It might
be worth a look. Next: chewing gum
and commodity 1190 hits, including
an online 2003 article called Chewing
gum and the shadowlands of consumption (Redclift, 2003), which looks at
the processes through which consumer
cultures have become globalised, leaving the marginalised producers in the
shadowlands. Download that, then
key in China, electronics, factory
and ethnography 1140 hits, including a 2005 book whose author
conducted ethnographic work at an
electronics factory in Southern Chinas
Guangdong province (Pun, 2005).
Bingo! Hope the librarys got it.
Then what about some key
concepts that might help better make
and think through these relations and
connections? Ones already used in
this article, like Donna Haraways
cyborg are difficult to grasp in the
originals (Haraway, 1985; 1991). But
Hari Kunzru (1997) interviewed
Haraway for an online article in Wired
magazine. The cyborg concept is great
for thinking through the boundaryblurring
body/thing,
other/self
relations in/of our sock, gum, iPod,
other geographies (see also Angus
et al., 2001). Heres a flavour of the
argument:
An automated production line in a
factory, an office computer network, a
clubs dancers, lights, and sound sys-

tems all are cyborg constructions of

people and machines. Our bodies, fed
on the products of agribusiness, kept
healthy or damaged by pharmaceuticals, and altered by medical
procedures, arent as natural as The
Body Shop would like us to believe.
Truth is, were constructing ourselves,
just like we construct chip sets or political systems and that brings with it a
few responsibilities (Kunzru, 1997).
And this cyborg concept works
against Descartes famous saying
aped in that iPod ad I think therefore
I am. Kunzru says that this downplays
the importance of networks and interactions in making us who we are, in
forming understandings of peoples
places in the world, and the influence
we can have over these processes.
Another good one is commodity
fetishism. Karl Marxs original arguments are difficult to grasp, too. But, in
a nutshell: fetishism describes the
magic properties often given to commodities by manufacturers, advertisers
and consumers. Socks are comfy, gum
fresh, iPods escape pods. This is fine,
except that commodities are also complex and often controversial bundles
and networks of resources, ingredients,
technologies, transactions, bodies,
lives, processes, judgements, exploitations, poverty and wealth. These
aspects of their identities are usually
ascribed, respectively, to separate
worlds of consumption and production. Calls to de-fetishise commodities
are therefore calls to appreciate them
in/as one and the same world (see
Cook et al., 2002, 2007; Miller 2003).
Using these concepts can help us to
research and write about anything, its
role(s) in our lives and in the lives of
countless, usually unseen, others, near
and far. Appreciating geographies as
simultaneously there and here, abstract
and intimate. Trying to make sense of
the complexities and ethics of, and
responsibilities for, these relations and
connections. No easy answers, no easy
solutions surprise, shock, anger, guilt,
cynicism, despair, hope, irritation,
appreciation. Its all about questions,
and more questions. Why dont journalists or academics ever study how nice
it is to work in factories? Theyre just a
bunch of lefties trying to hoodwink us,
arent they? I got that iPod for my 21st
birthday a special gift from my mum
and dad. Im not responsible for where
the money went on that. And theyd be
really upset if I told them about those
factory workers, or if I sold it and gave
the money to charity. Im a poor student. Id sooner have the money myself.
I havent got much choice about what I
buy, anyway. I helped to build a school
in Guatemala in my gap year. Does that
make me a good person? How can I
make a positive difference? And be sure

TEACHING GEOGRAPHY . SUMMER 2007

82

Start with the evidence yes, keywords,

right, on those things. Look closely:
Made in or Assembled in , company names, brands, lists of ingredients
printed on these things, their labels,
their packaging somewhere.
OK, open browser: www.google.com.
Search: Marks & Spencer and socks.
There are 49,500 hits including a manufacturers website, Delta Galil (Anon,
no date); a BBC news story: King of
socks leaves the UK (Anon, 1999); a PR
Newswire story: Delta Galil addresses
discount request from Marks and
Spencer (Anon, 2004b); interesting:
Jews for Justice in Palestine (Scheid,
2002). What would they have to say
about my socks? An article in Red
Pepper (ONions, 2006): whats that
saying? That fairtrade cotton in M&Ss
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
Now try Chewing gum and
Wrigley. There are 190,000 hits,
including the factory website. Look at
those ingredients. Try chewing gum
and gum arabic 39,000 hits. Osama
Bin Laden crikey! Oh, its an internet/urban legend (Anon, 2001;
Mikkelson, 2001). Interesting though.
Try gum arabic and Osama Bin Laden
1460 hits. The Daily Telegraph online
edition? Reporting it like its true
(Bentham, 2001). Right other ingredients: try E903 (chewing gums
glazing agent). Whats that? Carnauba
wax, used in automobile waxes, shoe
polishes, as a coating for dental floss
(Anon, 2006c). Try Carnauba wax and
export. Ah, the BrazilArab News
Agency says it can only be extracted
in industrial scale in north-eastern
Brazil (Anon, 2006d). Interesting: terrorism, rumour and truth, the Arab
and Latin American worlds, export
agriculture, industrial agriculture, food,
cars, farmers, scientists, teeth, breath,
the internet, coatings, connected. My
gum geographies
Now try iPod and hard drive
1,590,000 hits. Look at that Command
tab blog (Allen, 2005). Hes taken his
iPod apart to soup it up, and photographed the process to show others
how to do it, detailing the component
parts and their technical specifications.
Right, its a Toshiba 1.8-inch hard
drive. Try Toshiba and hard drive,
and why not? China 908,000
hits. Wow! A CNN article about working conditions in Chinese electronics
factories (Frew McMillan, 2002). Bingo!
China, industrialisation, export production, electronics, factory conditions,

 TEACHING GEOGRAPHY . SUMMER 2007

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its positive, for anyone, anywhere. You

cant see where that money actually
goes. If you buy a copy of the Big Issue,
at least you know that some of the
money goes directly to the seller. And
charity begins at home, doesnt it? Is it
charity or justice? Buying fair trade
socks isnt good for all the people
involved, is it? Geographies are uneven,
unequal. If you cant act 100% ethically,
should you bother at all? Isnt being
ethical here but not there a bit inconsistent, hypocritical even? Can there
ever be a 100% ethical act? Who says
whats ethical anyway? And how could
you ever find everything you needed to
know to make an ethical decision?
Why does it feel like this is all my
fault, my responsibility to sort things
out, make a change? What about businesses, the government, the European
Union, the World Trade Organisation?
Dont they set the rules for trade, and
change them? Whos lobbying for more
ethical trade rules? Could I support
them somehow? What about our
school? Our university? Who decides
whats bought for us, here? Its so
bloody complicated! Everythings connected to everything, everyone to
everyone, everywhere to everywhere.
Theres no escape. How can we live in
a world like this? I love my iPod, and I
need socks from somewhere.

Notes
1. A box next to the barcode on the back
of the packet said: The Wrigley
Company Ltd., Plymouth, Devon, PL6
7PR, England. 10 Pieces. Sugarfree
coated chewing gum with Sweeteners.
Ingredients: Sweeteners (Maltitol,
Sorbitol, Mannitol, Aspartame,
Acesulfame K), Gum Base, Thickener
Gum Arabic, Flavourings Humectant
Glycerine (Non-Animal), Colour (E171),
Glazing Agent (E903), Antioxidant
(E320). Contains a Source of
Phenylalanine, Excessive Consumption
May Produce Laxative Effects.
2. This was most likely to be Wrigleys,
as they account for 86% of chewing
gum sales in the UK (Anon, 2003).
The nature of this gum (white, minty)
increases the chances of it belonging
to the Wrigley brand as the remaining
14% of market share includes
coloured bubblegums.

Ian Cook is a senior lecturer, James Evans

is a lecturer, and Helen Griffiths is a
PhD student in the School of Geography,
Earth & Environmental Sciences at
the University of Birmingham
(e-mail [email protected]).
Lucy Mayblin is a Research Associate at
the Centre for Urban and Regional
Research at the University of Birmingham.
Becky Payne is studying for an MA in
Visual Anthropology at the University
of Manchester. David Roberts is a
researcher for the Welsh Assembly
Government in Cardiff.

83