In their article, while arguing for the benefits of short-term ethnographic studies, Pink and Morgan say that, “to achieve this we often need to intervene in peoples’ lives in new ways that are intensive, potentially intrusive, and involve asking what they might think are irrelevant questions. None of which is sustainable over longer periods of time” (353). This argument for the benefit of short-term ethnographic studies over long-term ones doesn’t make total sense to me, since it seems to me that people would still be reluctant to fully answer “intensive”, “intrusive” questions, even if it is only in the short term. While I do see some of the benefits of short-term ethnographic studies, I also questions whether it is possible to really get to the truth of peoples’ lives through short-term, intense interviews. The article also discusses the use of mediums such as video to collect more in-dept data on a short term basis. I think this method seems more likely to be a successful technique, because it allows researchers to collect great amounts of data, and takes a less personal observer approach, which I would think leads to more objective results.
In the section “The Ethnographic Place,” the authors argue that this place is a way in which to explain how “a range of different types, qualities and temporalities of things and persons come together asp art of the process of the making of ethnographic knowledge or ways of knowing” (354). I found this section of the text to be somewhat abstract and difficult to understand. While the authors do argue that The Ethnographic Place looks different for long term versus short term studies, the lack of examples of these differences makes their argument less clear and less convincing.