There is a common conception about ethnography as a discipline that only involves long research. Nonetheless, short-term ethnography is more and more being used, where people use diverse methods to analyze something in a shorter period of time, but often with more intensity in order to compensate for the shorter time. However, there are many people who criticizes short term ethnography as superficial, as it might not derive in the same conclusions as long term research because it is less extensive. The authors of this article are not trying to define the characteristics or methods used in short-term ethnography, but rather try to argue short-term ethnography can be as good as long-term ethnography. They conducted a research to try to understand the everyday work of healthcare professionals. In this research both Pink and Morgan were physically involved as they went to the sites to interview and record people working there. This can be opposite to long term ethnography, where researchers observe for longer time withouth getting involved too much. A possible disadvantage I find in this type of research is that they were very intrusive so people working in these places might have described what they do innaccurately or lied about their emotions. The same could happen when they started to record them as they might have changed their behaviour after knowing they were being recorded. An interesting remark made by the authors is the use of visuals in short-term ethnography because even though they migh record something for a short period of time, ethnographers can reproduce this recording multiple times in order to anaylze it in detail which can have similar results than long-term ethnography. I think short-term ethnography is not a better but different technique and I think depending on what you are researching about, it might be more useful than using long term ethnography.
Response to Sophie Woodward – Salomon Ruiz
In this text Sophie Woodward highlights the importance of understading fashion practices in order to develop a real sustainable fashion. Rather than blaming people for consuming clothes in great amounts, it is important to understand the reasons why people do so, as fashion, the author suggests, seems to be embedded to our culture. Therefore, in order to be able to design sustainable clothes, designers must first understand people’s behaviour regarding fashion. Woodward here explains how jeans, for instance, are a good example of how fashion can be sustainable, as most people keep their jeans for a long time because they are durable, comfortable and trendy, which limits them to consume in great amounts. Just some pairs of jeans seem good enough in most people’s wardrobe. The author describes jeans as “‘accidentally’ sustainable”, as it is one of the clothes that people preserve the most, so we do not need to buy a lot. In my opinion this is true, as whenever I go shopping I prefer just to buy one or a few pairs of jeans and more t-shirts that I can match with the jeans and it is the same case among many of my friends. Moreover, I still have jeans that I bought long time ago or that I transformed into shorts because I did not like them as jeans anymore. So if fashion designers could create other clothes such as shirts, t-shirts, socks, etc., that are as durable, comfortable and trendy as jeans we probably would consume less of them, although fast-fashion companies would not probably want this. A big issue I feel is that textile materials used for many clothes are light and comfortable but not that durable. In the case of jeans the textiles used are thicker and more rigid, which for legs feels ok, but for more sensitive parts of the body these kind of materials might not be that comfortable, therefore more research about textile materials should be done.
Another big issue raised by the author is that “the life of the clothing does not always fit with the desired life of the clothing as people may wish to discard an item they no longer like, or wish to extend the life of one that has fallen apart”. Many people keep clothes they do not use because they do not like them anymore or because it is not their right size, but these clothes could be used by other people who really need it. Other people just throw them into the trash, even though they could still be worn. Understanding these mechanisms are essential for designers in order to create clothes with a long lifetime and that people will feel less likely to get rid of. Perhaps clothes should be designed in a way that people could transform them easily into something else, according to their needs, so they do not throw them away that easily.