Can embroidery (un)stitch ethnography?

Abstract

The article reflects on ethnographies aimed at understanding textile trades and the way in which they are affected by the material make-up of the practices they study. The text gives an account of the intimate, everyday and collective dimensions that frame textile work and concentrates on three constitutive practices of these tasks: sewing as writing, unravelling and unweav-ing, and mending. It is pointed out that these dimensions and practices have the potential to interweave ethnographies allowing them to be imagined as therapeutic practices of research and accompaniment, capable of questioning the temporalities and subjectivities of contemporary research.