Consumers are increasingly asked to "empty out their closets," to "declutter" or in other ways detach themselves from the textile surplus of their wardrobes. In this article, fashion is examined as a process of detachment. Building on ethnographic wardrobe interviews, wardrobe clearances and group discussions with consumers, detachment is viewed as a fundamental, yet underexamined, process of fashion practices. Drawing on the queer phenomenology of Sarah Ahmed, we observe how the informants express a desire to detach themselves from the fast fashion system and become more sustainable, less dependent on consumption and more oriented toward emotional investment. Being oriented towards specific pieces of clothing allowed for attachment to that which is already here thus opening up for a relationship with clothing based on joy and care, rather than the unsustainable focus on the newly produced.

Sweden. Her upcoming dissertation investigatesentwinements of knowledge production and cultural expressions in contemporary evidence based biomedicine. They both hold a master's degree in Applied CulturalAnalysis from Lund University.Keywords: diffraction, reflexivity, ethnography, ethnology, ethnographic practices, re-configuring, closeness, proximity, articulation, participants, situatedness, agential cuts, apparatus way of doing research found in a multitude of disciplines, being performed in countless ways and places. 3 The ways of articulating ethnography are thus many and varied, but often certain research practices are put forward as its defining features. There is no denying that certain sets of (often qualitative) methods and theories, entwined in an open-ended and experimental research endeavor, form the ideal articulation of ethnography. 4 The way ethnography will be articulated in this essay does not presuppose certain methods but recognizes it more as a mode, or perhaps a mood, of being with what we research. In one way or another, an ethnographer is a person performing research through closeness and because of this, ethnography is a practice dependent on proximity. INTERFERING WITH OTHERS -Re-configuring Ethnography as a Diffractive PracticePhysical proximity might be the first kind of proximity to come to mind when one pictures an ethnographer performing participant observation or engaging in an interview, but the kinds of closeness involved in ethnography are multiple.It might be emotional closeness, stemming from the fact that relationships with people are part of what is being researched. 5 It might be the kind of proximity that emerges when one immerses oneself in large quantities of research materials. 6 It might be a "critical proximity" where the ethnographer, even if physically distant, actively engages with and is entangled in processes of decision making. 7It might be the kind of proximity that can put the ethnographer in harms way, physically as well as emotionally. 8 Or, worse still, it might be the kind of closeness that makes a careless ethnographer hurt others. 9 A worn cliché is that the ethnographer never is a neutral observer, like the proverbial fly on the wall, but it is nevertheless an understanding of our craft that rings true; doing ethnography is a way of interfering with the world. It has been argued -and we do not disagree 95Interfering with Others Kulturstudier Nr. 1, 2016 3/23 -that every kind of research is a way of interfering with the world in one way or another. 10 However, the kinds of closeness involved in ethnography enact 11 the ethnographer as someone who not only affects the world, but who is also affected by it in equal measure. Ethnography is more than an intellectual, logical or cognitive practice. It is dependent on the senses and on embodiment, on being with as much as thinking about people; culture; the world. 12 In the words of Donna Haraway, we hold ethnography to be a way of "being at risk" through the inevitable entanglement of the hopes an...

In this article the authors intend to analyze how the concept of culture is packaged, sold and delivered as a commodity. It is based on an ethnographic study of a Swedish consultancy in the field of cross-cultural communication and the relationship between the company and its clients. The clients were primarily foreign executives working in Sweden or Swedish expatriates, preparing for life abroad. The significance of culture-as-commodity will be explored from the perspective of the company as well as its clients in order to shed light on how the concept of culture can be communicated and what happens to it in the process. The study shows how the company combines theoretical perspectives from anthropology and intercultural communication with the aim to deliver a complex yet accessible understanding of culture to its clients. The analysis shows that these perspectives both clash and synergize, creating contradictions as well as turning culture into an accessible and useful tool for clients. The authors argue that researchers in the field of applied cultural analysis can learn from the example put forth by the balancing act between these two perspectives on culture performed by the company. The authors conclude that although the commodification process reduces and simplifies the meaning(s) of culture, the company still manages to put culture on the agenda, demonstrating to its clients how, why, and in what ways it matters to them

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