Among the disciplines that have incorporated ethnography into their methodological arsenals, political science is a relative newcomer. In more than two decades of ethnographic political research, the discipline has engaged in a variety of ethnographic methodologies. These approaches have tackled epistemological dilemmas (e.g., when and how ethnography can be relevant to non-interpretive approaches) and exposed a second dimension that ethnographic fieldwork negotiates but that has not been explored so systematically: the relations between researchers and research participants. This second dimension is often seen as a corollary of epistemological commitments, whereby the immersive character of participant observation—the defining methodological tool of ethnographic research—produces information that becomes meaningful through interpretation (Jacobs et al. Reference Jacobs, Büthe, Arjona, Arriola, Bellin, Bennett and Björkman2021, 196). Although this does occur, we contend that the multiple ways of practicing participant observation call for closer attention to this second methodological dimension and to the varied practices that ethnographers use as they observe and participate in the everyday lives of those they study.
We focus on this second dimension by examining its import for the ethnographic study of the far right. We argue that this methodological dimension brings to light various gradations in the emotional dynamics that pertain to all fieldwork. But our main claim is that these dynamics are particularly challenging in research with “unlikeable others” (Pasieka Reference Pasieka2019). Although these dynamics inevitably arise in interactions with participants, they are seldom seen as integral to methodological discussions in political science. On the contrary, political science has conventionally viewed emotions “as the constitutive other of ‘reason’” (Åhäll Reference Åhäll2018, 37) and thus, at best, worthy of study but distracting as a methodological and analytic tool. This is despite considerable work by feminists in various disciplines mobilizing emotions for methodological reflection (Ahmed Reference Ahmed2004; Hill Collins Reference Hill Collins1986; Lorde Reference Lorde1984) and in political theory, arguing that researchers’ emotional lives can better ground knowledge and maximize objectivity (Harding Reference Harding1990, 142).
In ethnographic fieldwork, where emotional dynamics are an inherent part of research that determines parameters such as access, quality of information, and sometimes even the duration and end of fieldwork, ignoring this dimension means missing out on a major methodological component of field research. Emotional dynamics are in this sense part and parcel of reflexive considerations regarding positionality that are increasingly being recognized in DA-RT (data access and research transparency) discussions as inextricable to qualitative research and beyond (Pearlman Reference Pearlman2023). Power differentials are intrinsic to positionality but are mostly seen through factors such as gender, age, class, and ethnicity. Political positionality—how researchers are positioned vis-à-vis the plights of their participants and their communities—is acknowledged in such discussions but at the expense of emotional positionality, with which it is often intertwined. Our discussion of the far right allows us to explore the methodologies of disconnecting political from emotional positionality in ethnographic field research.
We propose that “emotional proximity” between researcher and participant provides a clue to the puzzle of participant observation. Far from being straightforward, this balance between participation and observation in the field involves decisions over when to lean more toward the observational pole and maximize the emotional distance between researcher and participants—for example, through nonparticipant observation (Schensul, Schensul, and LeCompte Reference Schensul, Schensul and LeCompte2013)—and when to lean toward the participation pole and minimize this distance by embracing, for example, more militant ethnographic methods (Juris Reference Juris, Shukaitis, Graeber and Biddle2007). Using this methodological distinction alongside the epistemological distinction between objectivist and interpretive approaches, we proceed to outline a fourfold typology of ethnographic varieties.
We engage in a close reading of ethnographic studies of the far right (which are more prevalent in sociology and anthropology than in political science) that shed light on the distinct sets of practices that researchers craft to navigate distance and proximity. In addition to the obvious political salience of the topic, we focus on far-right ethnographies for two other reasons. First, we look to these ethnographies because the challenges they pose test the limits of ethnography (Cammelli Reference Cammelli2021; Middleton and Shoshan Reference Middleton and Shoshan2019). Specifying these challenges as those related to political positionality, we examine researchers’ navigation of emotional conundrums in our schematic typology. Second, having undertaken fieldwork with far-right actors over the last 20 years, we are aware of the challenges of ethnographic studies of these actors, especially regarding more participatory modes of research. This longitudinal work compared varied types of actors in European countries, ranging from parliamentary parties to extra-parliamentary groupuscules and including both violent and nonviolent groups. In approaching these actors, this research applied a range of qualitative methods consisting of in-depth interviews, event observations, and contextual analysis (Ellinas Reference Ellinas2010; Reference Ellinas2020; Reference Ellinas2023). The affinity of this research to ethnographic methods, as well as the differences from relevant anthropological studies, has largely prompted this analysis on the difficulties, possibilities, and limits of ethnography in such settings, especially when compared to studies of actors on the opposite side of the political spectrum (Demetriou Reference Demetriou2018; Reference Demetriou2023a; Reference Demetriou2023b). We thus take up the challenge that Schatz (Reference Schatz2009b, 8) identifies as a key ethnographic conundrum—how to square the lack of sympathy for “extremist ideologues” with immersion—by carefully explaining the reasons for this difficulty and probing possible responses to this quintessential crunch point for political ethnography.
This reflection proceeds in five steps. We first trace the ethnographic turn in political science in epistemological and methodological terms and then outline the various forms of ethnographic research we discern along epistemological lines. Third, we revisit these forms using a methodological lens and pay particular attention to the role of emotional dynamics between researchers and research participants; we then apply these forms to the ethnographic study of the far right. Finally, we discuss the implications of this exercise for political science and the potential for developing the political ethnography of the far right.
The Ethnographic Turn in Politics Research
In recent years, political science has increasingly turned to ethnography to understand complex political phenomena as varied as parliamentary deliberations (Kantola et al. Reference Kantola, Elomäki, Gaweda, Miller, Ahrens and Berthet2023), collective action in repressive states (Fu Reference Fu2017), and genocidal violence (Fujii Reference Fujii2006). Political ethnographers have spent time with regulars in gas stations and diners to understand how people make political decisions (Cramer Reference Cramer2016); with “so-called gray people” to understand civil obedience to brutal autocratic regimes (Wedeen Reference Wedeen2019, viii; see also Wedeen Reference Wedeen2010); with autocrats in palaces to understand their puzzling embrace of liberalization (Jones Reference Jones2015); and with Syrian refugees to understand the emotional drivers of revolution (Pearlman Reference Pearlman2016). Political ethnography offers unique perspectives into processes, relations, and structures that non-ethnographic approaches find more difficult to nuance. Although parts of the discipline, like critical international relations (IR) and political sociology, have readily embraced the “everyday” as a thematic approach (Mac Ginty Reference Mac Ginty2021) and called for an ethnographic turn in IR (Vrasti Reference Vrasti2008), it is anthropology’s “inroads into comparative politics” (Biecker and Schlichte Reference Biecker and Schlichte2021, 3) that have elicited the most sustained discussions over the use of the ethnographic method in political science (Schwedler, Simmons, and Smith Reference Schwedler, Simmons and Smith2019) and on which this article focuses.
Political ethnography is an established subfield within anthropology, although it is more often known as “political anthropology.” However, despite impactful early work (e.g., Fenno Reference Fenno1977; Scott Reference Scott1985), political ethnography approaches have remained on the sidelines of political scientific research (Schatz Reference Schatz2017). In part, this relates to funding priorities, which are not only limited for the social sciences but, perhaps more importantly for our purposes, are also oriented toward quantitative research or “research on problems that can be studied by objective methods” (National Science Foundation [NSF], quoted in Moustafa Reference Moustafa2025, 14). The marginality of political ethnography in political science also can be attributed to difficulties in undertaking extended immersive fieldwork in a neoliberal university context that displays limited patience for longer-term research, especially when its results are “at odds with publishing trends” (Majic Reference Majic2017, 107). Even so, in recent years, the number of political ethnography studies has steadily increased. Albeit still small, this spike in ethnographic research arises within a more general comeback of qualitative methods (e.g., Brady and Collier Reference Brady and Collier2010; George and Bennett Reference George and Bennett2005) and of single-country cases (Pepinsky Reference Pepinsky2019) that are “context-rich” (Moustafa Reference Moustafa2025, 2). The growth in ethnographic research suggests that, within a context of methodological pluralization, political scientists are also becoming more connected to their research participants by seeking forms of immersion in the field.
This “ethnographic turn” (Simmons and Smith Reference Simmons and Smith2019) also builds on earlier attempts to “marry” politics and anthropology (Swartz, Turner, and Tuden Reference Swartz, Turner and Tuden1966) and to reconcile epistemological differences that have often posed a stumbling block to this approach. Political science is generally seen as “naturalistic, individualistic, nomological, deductive, and explanatory, [while] cultural anthropology is decisively antinaturalistic, holistic, idiographic, inductive, and interpretive” (Aronoff and Kubik Reference Aronoff and Kubik2013, 9). Whereas “political scientists have attempted to restrict their focus to description, explanation, and prediction of events in the political world” (Hawkesworth Reference Hawkesworth, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2015, 41), anthropologists have embraced the notion of “partial truths” as an inherent part of knowledge (Clifford Reference Clifford, Clifford and Marcus1986); recognized “fictions, allegories, or hyperboles” as part and parcel of ethnographic practice (Metcalf Reference Metcalf2003, 21); and revered “messiness” as indispensable to both method and disciplinary knowledge (Plows Reference Plows2018; Simpson Reference Simpson, Hobbs and Wright2006).
At a time when NSF funding was not only skewed at the expense of social sciences but also “explicitly designed to bolster positivism, elevate monothetic over idiographic modes of knowledge production, and sideline critical and normative work” (Moustafa Reference Moustafa2025, 15) and when the “mere mention” of qualitative field methods in political science publications declined sharply (Curry Reference Curry2017, 115), methodological diversification by definition implied an epistemological negotiation as well. This negotiation is evident in feminist arguments for standpoint epistemology (Hartsock Reference Hartsock, Harding and Merrill1983) that embraced the methodological value of situated gendered perspectives. The language of “strong objectivity” (Harding Reference Harding1995) that feminists had mobilized to argue the validity of their work further indicates the entrenchment of this persistent objectivist bent in the discipline at the time. This persistence also manifests in more recent arguments about the value of considering intersectional power dynamics across race and class (Hancock Reference Hancock2007; Simien Reference Simien2007) that draw on critical feminist work in sociology and law (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991; Hill Collins Reference Hill Collins1986). Even today, despite the growing interest in ethnographic approaches, the “disruptive value” of political ethnography is often obscured (Forrest Reference Forrest2017, 112). The ethnographic turn was, from the beginning, not only a moment of methodological pluralization but also, and partly remains, an epistemologically fraught moment in political science.
This is evident in the development of the notion of “ethnographic sensibility” (Pader Reference Pader, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2006; Schatz Reference Schatz2009b, 5), which describes the general orientation that political ethnographers should adopt toward their participants. Schatz’s canon-setting volume brought positivist and interpretivist approaches together in an attempt to chart ways of doing participant observation (Pachirat Reference Pachirat and Schatz2009; Wedeen Reference Wedeen and Schatz2009; Wood Reference Wood and Schatz2009). Despite advances, the tension between these two approaches continues (MacKay and Levin Reference MacKay, Levin, Coleman, Hyatt and Kingsolver2016). Political ethnographers have emphasized the complementarity of interpretive and objectivist approaches, arguing that “positivist and constitutive approaches can inform one another” (Cramer Reference Cramer Walsh2012, 519) and that interpretive ethnographic insights can complement “extant conceptualizations” (Parkinson Reference Parkinson2016, 988). These statements reveal an attempt to incorporate ethnography into political science on epistemological terms by creating links and conversations with parts of the discipline embracing less interpretivist paradigms. This tension between recognizing and bridging epistemological differences is illustrated well in the findings of the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations working group on “Ethnography and Participant Observation” (Jacobs and Büthe Reference Jacobs and Büthe2021; Schwedler, Simmons, and Smith Reference Schwedler, Simmons and Smith2019) that sought to critically engage with the DA-RT initiative. Yet, even as reflexivity and positionality have become more accepted as parameters of transparency, proximity in the relations between researchers and participants remains questionable. As Biecker and Schlichte (Reference Biecker and Schlichte2021, 4) put it, political science has still not fully embraced the anthropological holistic view of ethnography as an “attitude… [that] reflects constantly about research practices and representations, [and] conduct[s] research not only about but also with people.” This adds to the challenge of reflexively analyzing not only the political but also the emotional content of field relations.
To address this challenge, we focus on the way in which researchers handle their political and emotional commitments to the communities they study; that is, how they operationalize the conduct of research with people. Schatz recognizes this challenge when he describes ethnographic sensibility as “an approach that cares—with the possible emotional engagement that implies—to glean the meanings that the people under study attribute to their social and political reality” (Reference Schatz2009b, 5; emphasis added). We build on this by explicating the emotional dynamics that such a notion of “care” entails. As Fassin (Reference Fassin2008) notes in advocating a “moral anthropology” as a study of morals, rather than as driven by them, the limits of such care remain an open question and, considering the study of the far right, an urgent one at this moment.
Emotional dynamics are evident in different forms of ethnographic practice. We distinguish four main approaches across the two dimensions of methodology and epistemology as “ideal types” of ethnography: ethnographic interviews, “context-rich” ethnography (borrowing the term from Moustafa Reference Moustafa2025), participatory ethnography, and experiential ethnography. These approaches differ in the degree to which they espouse objectivist or interpretivist epistemologies and observational or participatory methodologies. Like all ideal types, they are means to navigate the research terrain, constituting, pace Weber, heuristic devices for handling empirical—in this case, fieldwork—realities (Swedberg Reference Swedberg2018, 184).
The works we consider are indicative not only of specific practices that political ethnographers have engaged in during the conduct of their fieldwork but also their reflections on them. Therefore, the different practices entailed in each do not preclude their overlap or combination: it is clear that all ethnography engages in conversations that resemble interviews to lesser or greater extents, that it pays attention to context, that it requires forms of participation, and that it valorizes experience. But in the works we study, each of these forms of engagement is given a different emphasis that illuminates aspects of the ethnographic methodological arsenal.
In looking to illustrate these approaches, we have found particularly useful the reflections of political ethnographers on their field practice. We located these in the “paratexts” (Demetriou Reference Demetriou2008) of research findings: supplementary material to published articles, methodology sections of manuscripts, their (often unnoticed) appendices, and publications dedicated to method. We paid close attention to this material and to the ways these reflections have in some cases evolved over many years, sometimes decades, after the initial fieldwork. Although they can never encompass the entirety of political ethnography, these works offer valuable insights about the political and emotional parameters of its conduct.
Varieties of Ethnographic Epistemologies
Toward the objectivist pole of the epistemological spectrum, we locate approaches centered around ethnographic interviews and participatory ethnography. This categorization does not necessarily signal an ontological core that defines these approaches squarely as objectivist; we recognize that some interview approaches can be highly interpretivist (Skinner Reference Skinner2013), as can participatory approaches (Majic Reference Majic2014). Instead, we note that ethnographic interviews and participatory ethnography have developed ways of accounting for objectivist orientations, even within the generally interpretive frame associated with ethnography (Cramer Reference Cramer2016, 20–21, 35–37). This is less so for the other two approaches—context-rich ethnography and experiential ethnography—that afford less possibilities for objectivism.
The first approach, ethnographic interviews, relies on the accumulation of data secured through typically in-depth, semi- and unstructured interviews or life history narratives (Agar Reference Agar1980) with a number of interlocutors, often repeated over a specified amount of time or field visits. Unlike conventional interviews (Mosley Reference Mosley2013), there is an emphasis on the depth and granularity of data that arises from a greater attention to detail and context, repeated encounters, and spending time in the field, including through longitudinal research. We consider life history narratives a subset of ethnographic interviews precisely because they allow for this detail and context and for repeated encounters. These narratives differ from in-depth, semi- or unstructured interviews in that they tend to focus on the participants’ trajectory and, hence, concentrate on the priorities of the participant, rather than those of the researcher (Blee Reference Blee2002).
Epistemologically, the ethnographic interviews approach is perhaps the most receptive to positivist concerns about the reliability of field data and uses objectivist presentation tools. There may be some degree of interpretation, but the main analytic impetus often follows objectivist models of hypothesis testing or causality (Ruffa and Evangelista Reference Ruffa and Evangelista2021). Pearlman (Reference Pearlman2013), for example, analyzes the emotions spurring protesters to action during the Arab Spring, and Gade (Reference Gade2020) explores the factors galvanizing Palestinians to acts of resistance. Al Faham (Reference Al-Faham2021) uses ethnographic interviews to generate hypotheses on American Muslims’ political participation; Dornschneider (Reference Dornschneider2023) codes them into categories of noncollective resistance in the West Bank; and Nuamah (Reference Nuamah2021) codes for the effect on political participation of school closures in the United States. These epistemological concerns place emphasis on the rigor of the interviews in eliciting reliable information via rapport, uniform protocols, well-planned research activities, and a fairly large interview set. In line with this emphasis, the research “output” is a tangible body of data that can be objectively described and, to some extent, also analyzed, making ethnographic interviews particularly suited to mixed-method approaches where ethnography can be used to initiate contact, provide conceptual categories for analysis, or add depth to already established analytic concepts. Ethnographic interview data tend to be exact: the interviews are often recorded and then transcribed using interview protocols (see Gade Reference Gade2020, S33–40, for an illustrative example). They dwell extensively on researchers’ positionality in line with DA-RT considerations, which means that researchers reflect on how their nationality, gender, ethnicity, class, and age create power differentials that are echoed in the interviews.
Objectivist orientations have also been accommodated within the participatory approach, which is geared toward interactive and sometimes reciprocal ways of doing research. This approach differs from others because its emphasis on “participation” is about the participants’ involvement in the research project, rather than the participation of the ethnographer in the lives of those they study (which is taken for granted). The process of designing and carrying out participatory activities has an epistemological dimension: it can be applied with an objectivist inclination toward the rigor and reliability of data, expressed through detailing the ways in which data were secured, an emphasis on transparency, and consideration of the dynamics driving the exchange. As with ethnographic interviews, participatory approaches can often be applied in combination with other methods. Moncada (Reference Moncada2021), for example, uses focus groups as the main stage of his participatory drawing exercises with Colombian street vendors to complement the participant observation he carried out in the neighborhood. Although not incompatible with interpretivism, this approach is not dependent on it (Wood Reference Wood and Schatz2009, 139). Participatory ethnography is thus instructive as an approach that can successfully negotiate objectivist commitments to verification and reliability, while acknowledging and reflecting on ethical dilemmas and limitations during field research (e.g. how to address power differentials by “giving back”).
The other two approaches, context-rich ethnography and experiential ethnography, are clearly interpretivist and make little concessions to objectivist concerns; they question the assumptions underlying the epistemic discourses around data collection (Pachirat Reference Pachirat2015). However, even in these approaches, the focus on providing evidence for what is observed and applying rigorous standards of documentation and analysis sets political scientists’ practices apart from those of anthropologists, where the holistic approach to fieldwork and analysis produces writing that is more reflective of personal commitments and writing styles (Biehl Reference Biehl2013; Clifford and Marcus Reference Clifford and Marcus1986; Pandian and McLean Reference Pandian and McLean2017).
In the context-rich ethnography approach, contextualization drives the analysis, and the collection of data that surround the interactions between researcher and research participants is as important as the data elicited within the interaction. Interactions may take the form of interviews but are often more open-ended and dialogic; they may resemble chatting or indeed may also proceed through silent interaction. Being explicitly interpretivist, this approach relies largely on hermeneutic analysis to examine cultural symbols, concepts, and meanings (Wedeen Reference Wedeen2002). Reconciling this approach with conventional disciplinary standards has been at times a difficult task: “The positivist concepts of transparency sit awkwardly against interpretive ethnography because they grate against the improvisation necessary to ethnographic practice” (Jacobs et al. Reference Jacobs, Büthe, Arjona, Arriola, Bellin, Bennett and Björkman2021, 196). This tension not only has epistemological but also ethical and practical implications: “Field notes generally cannot be used as raw ‘data’ by others because written notes are highly contextual and interpreted in light of an ethnographer’s ‘headnotes’” (196; emphasis added). Ethnographers have been at pains to argue for alternative ways of presenting and analyzing evidence.
The other interpretivist approach, that of experiential ethnography, relies largely on incorporating the experiential component of research and the positionality of the researcher into the analysis of the data. The interpretive bent of this approach is unequivocal, seeking not merely to present participants’ points of view but also to relate to the experience (including sensorial) that gives rise to them. This approach questions the very concept of “data” as a description of the kind of empirical, contextual, and emotional information that arises through the interactions of the researcher with research participants. The interpretivist focus of these approaches places even more importance on reflexivity and positionality than do the other approaches, rendering ethnography not only a methodological but also an analytic tool. For Pachirat (Reference Pachirat2018, 124), reflexivity can be a mediating step in ethnographer’s fieldnotes between description and analysis that takes the form of a literal middle column in the ethnographic diary.
Varieties of Ethnographic Methodologies
These distinct epistemologies also have different methodological contours, as shown in Figure 1. The interactive contours of ethnographic research go well beyond the physical proximity established after lengthy ethnographic stays. We argue that such methodological contours have political and emotional elements that are, often implicitly, enfolded in field encounters.
Varieties of Political Ethnography
Ethnographic Interviews
In ethnographic interviews, the proximity to participants is observationally focused. In aligning with objectivist epistemology, the researcher’s role remains fairly clear and is signified by the format of the interaction: a set of questions, some form of recording the answers by the researcher, and varying degrees of structure. But ethnographic interviews (by comparison to others) also tend to embrace a level of reflexivity that carries significant methodological weight because they are the drivers of research, rather than asides to insights produced using other methods (Ellinas Reference Ellinas2023, 2S). The researcher feels ethically committed to make the voices of the research participants heard but keeps those voices at arm’s length—remaining an observer rather than a participant in the research environment.
This observer role shapes how researchers handle political and emotional proximity to research participants. Regardless of whether researchers declare nonaffiliation (Shesterinina Reference Shesterinina2016, 3S) or sympathy (Gade Reference Gade2020, 15S), they are largely observing or, at most, managing the political and emotional dynamics of their interactions. These dynamics include decisions around “care,” such as how far to share personal information and emotions with research participants. Cramer’s (Reference Cramer2016, 28–29) interviewees “asked to see pictures of my daughter, and I asked to see pictures of their families in return… I got insulted, and I got and gave hugs… I had to find a way to be authentic—be myself—without turning people off in this hyperpolitically charged atmosphere.” The role as observer generates a need to incorporate emotional elements in the research environment in a practice of “emotional sensibility” (Pearlman Reference Pearlman2023). These emotional elements, often mediated by gendered and racialized positionalities, are important in the generation of evidence and, as Cramer observes, gain particular salience as they align (or misalign) with political proximity. Methodologically, they thus constitute a terrain of management whereby the levels of political and emotional proximity are carefully considered in tandem and calibrated along parameters of access (for example, to multiple groups), objectivity (in the critical assessment of the information), and transparency (about the research).
Context-rich Ethnography
Many of the canonical texts in political ethnography place particular emphasis on context. In such context-rich ethnographies, cultural knowledge plays a role in empirical description and analysis. It also has a methodological function, in that proximity with participants is established and managed through leveraging contextual knowledge sought in historical archives, political context, public culture, or spatial observations. This knowledge works in the background of field interactions and allows the ethnographer to present a “culturally intimate” (Herzfeld Reference Herzfeld1996) understanding of the phenomena observed. The information that context-rich ethnography seeks is a staple part of classic participant observation, emphasizing watching and observing: “In this standard form, the ethnographer is physically present but despite all the prescriptions to participate, would be just as happy not to do so” (Rabinow Reference Rabinow, Biehl, Good and Kleinman2007, 98). Simmons and Smith (Reference Simmons and Smith2017, 126), in fact, suggest that such contextual attention “need not … require the long-term immersion in field sites and participant-observation.”
Such contextual knowledge allowed Wedeen (Reference Wedeen1999) to assess the efficacy of rhetoric and symbols in eliciting Syrians’ obedience to the Assad regime. She combined information elicited from interviews with other contextual sources such as cartoons, literature, jokes, statues, children’s war stories, and interlocutors’ side comments (6). Her evident, yet implied, proximity with interlocutors allowed her to witness such comments, which could only arise through a loosening of the research structure. More so than with ethnographic interviews, this approach draws on “conversations” that may be recorded or not (Welsch and Vivanco Reference Welsch and Vivanco2015, 65) and that may arise through accidental encounters (Fujii Reference Fujii2015). Furthering this approach, Simmons suggests a “comparative ethnography” method that combines comparative rigor with ethnographic observation (Fu and Simmons Reference Fu and Simmons2021; Simmons and Smith Reference Simmons and Smith2019). In Mexico and Bolivia, Simmons (Reference Simmons2016, 29) went “back and forth among neighborhoods—and across time,” paying particular attention to prayer rituals that accompany irrigation practices and preparations for corn celebrations (37, 129), which provided her granular insights about cultural phenomena through an emphasis on observation.
Such observations suggest close connections with those who allow the ethnographer access and discuss their finer meanings with them. But such emotional bonds are not a point of focus in the presentation of the research, even though they may well exist in the field. Fu’s work, in which a level of “native” status (Abu-Lughod Reference Abu-Lughod, Soraya and El-Solh1988; Narayan Reference Narayan1993) offered valuable linguistic and cultural insights, highlights the strength of emotions arising from proximity to participants: “The neck-deep immersion of oneself into the culture of one’s ‘subjects’ … was hard… exhilarating. I came back with a fistful of field notes and a ‘stomach full of words,’ as the migrant women would often say” (Fu Reference Fu2017, xi). Yet this strong emotional, empathetic proximity need not necessarily become incorporated into the analysis, despite its evident methodological significance.
Participatory Ethnography
Although all approaches involve some degree of participation, the two approaches just described involve lower degrees than this and the next approach. Participatory ethnography arises from field practices that are explicitly participatory and in which participation goes both ways: the ethnographer participates in daily activities in the field, and participants have a role in shaping the research. Proximity to research participants is thus decidedly more visible than in either ethnographic interviews or context-rich ethnography. The ethnographer seeks to learn through immersion in the lives of research participants and ideally reciprocates the knowledge received from them. For example, in her work with sex work activists in San Francisco, Majic (Reference Majic2014, 146–48) paid special attention to reciprocation and was asked to help with daily tasks as varied as dishwashing and writing grant proposals.
The level of participation required in this approach can vary in breadth and structure. In sociology and anthropology, it may take the form of collaborative research, producing performances (Bejarano et al. Reference Bejarano, Juárez, García and Goldstein2019) or films (Lea and Povinelli Reference Lea and Povinelli2018), exploring personal archives (De la Cadena Reference De la Cadena2015), or, more militantly, joining activism and advocacy efforts (Apoifis Reference Apoifis2017; Valenzuela-Fuentes Reference Valenzuela-Fuentes2019). It can unfold as participatory action research (PAR), photovoice projects (Otálora-Gallego Reference Otálora-Gallego2025; Sutton-Brown Reference Sutton-Brown2014), or focus group discussions (Moncada Reference Moncada2021) that complement other ethnographic methods (Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon Reference Kemmis, McTaggart and Nixon2013; McIntyre Reference McIntyre2007). It is still rarely used in political science, however, and is often made evident in discussions of research ethics and “giving back” and practiced as an approach that complements others. Even though they do not require them, participatory methods can have highly structured aspects—a delimited group of research participants, defined sets of activities, a timeframe, agreed results, some training in research-relevant practices, and transparent pre-agreed research protocols—that give the research an objectivist form. In this framework, addressing concerns about positionality and reflexivity becomes a question of transparency that strengthens the reliability of the data gathered, rather than a step toward analytic depth, as would be the case for more interpretivist approaches. The management of emotional dynamics is enfolded in this effort.
Wood’s mapmaking with local communities in El Salvador exemplifies how participatory ethnography can complement other ethnographic practices while allowing emotional dynamics to be managed within an objectivist frame. Wood’s (Reference Wood2003, 45) research subjects drew “butcher paper maps of their localities showing property boundaries and land use before and after the civil war” to elucidate changes in property rights. Similarly, Moncada (Reference Moncada2020) used participatory drawing exercises to allow Colombian street vendors a safe environment to articulate their victimization by criminal protection rackets. For Wood (Reference Wood, Goodwin and Jasper2015, 149), “an account of sustained collaboration requires a consideration of the emotional dimensions of participation as well.” In her work in conflict zones, Wood (Reference Wood2006, 384) enumerates “emotionally draining” negotiations in the course of field research between “engag[ing] participants empathetically while retaining one’s scholarly purpose”; “experienc[ing] additional and intense emotions … including fear, anger, outrage, grief, and pity, often through observing, suffering, or fearing the effects of violence.” Likewise, Moncada (Reference Moncada2021, 210) describes managing moments when participants cried while sharing traumatic experiences and links this to the collaborative aspects of the research, “illustrat[ing] how some of the data used in this project was itself coproduced.” Although the recognition and negotiation of emotional proximity may proceed along similar parameters as for ethnographic interviews, the “empathetic engagement” required here is of greater intensity, as are the dilemmas arising from such proximity against critical distance. As Moncada puts it “sitting across from individuals that had been both the victims and then the perpetrators of different acts of violence, I found that my empathy was also linked to unease with the actions that some victims undertook as part of their resistance and how they justified them” (212).
Experiential Ethnography
Experiential ethnography aims at cultural immersion in its totality, foregrounding experience as a primary way of collecting information. Methodologically, immersion in this approach places the ethnographer in specific positions that affect the kind of data collected. This approach is also deeply concerned with the implications of that positioning.
The reflexive impetus in experiential ethnography, by comparison to other approaches, is more deeply introspective, dwelling on the totality of experience that makes up the research encounter. Experiential ethnography addresses the material and nonmaterial aspects of immersion, including spatial arrangements and the sensorial and affective dynamics that make up the environments in which people interact (Muehlebach Reference Muehlebach2012; Navaro Reference Navaro2017; Stewart Reference Stewart2020). The differences between this approach and others inhere in its experiential quest. Researchers seek a role as close as possible to research participants, often carving out a particular position for themselves that slots into preexisting roles that may mean negotiating a partly covert role within the community, which in turn raises ethical questions of transparency (Marzano Reference Marzano and Macleod2018; Scheper-Hughes Reference Scheper-Hughes2004).
In his ethnography of a slaughterhouse in the United States, Pachirat (Reference Pachirat2018, 62) explains how his “conscious decision to enter the fieldsite as an entry-level worker rather than as a guest of management” largely accounted for the deep degree of immersion and emotional proximity he achieved. He dwells on how he and his coworkers laughed and cried together, became surprised or sombre, and showed anger or fear on the factory floor and during their breaks. This emotional proximity was enhanced by the sensorial and material apparatuses of the slaughterhouse and, with hindsight, worked to make visible to the researcher the invisibility of death on which the meat industry is predicated. Emotional proximity thus determines, to a considerable extent, the analytic frame to which the “data” arising from immersive participant observation are subjected. At the same time, the detailed presentation that Pachirat provided also enabled other researchers to reinterpret the information via alternative analytic frames (English and Zacka Reference English and Zacka2022). Therefore, such immersion requires that researchers not only partake of practices on equal terms as their research participants but also participate in their emotional worlds to a greater extent than in other approaches. This immersive ethnography enables deep and granular insights at the most micro, even visceral, level that are otherwise not accessible.
Ethnographic Approaches to the Far Right
Using these different approaches to political ethnography not only allows different possibilities in field research practice but also entails challenges. Keeping these challenges in mind can help political ethnographers leverage the different approaches to respond to specific field situations. To illustrate this, we turn to the ethnography of the far right, a field that remains still largely unprobed in political science.
The two-dimensional typology of ethnographic varieties yields compelling insights for the study of the far right, highlighting the challenges ethnographers face when seeking to study it. These challenges concern the degree to which immersion is possible or desirable and the extent to which researchers’ political commitments and emotions play a role in participant observation. Other ethnographic fields, as described earlier, may involve difficult topics like war and violence or hard-to-reach groups in practical or ethical terms, such as combatants, victims, informal street vendors, or refugees. But they do not usually involve politically objectionable research participants—people whom the researcher “genuinely does not enjoy spending time with” like “extremist ideologues” (Schatz Reference Schatz2009b, 8). When researchers focus on such participants, however, the parameters of proximity outlined here are brought starkly into relief, allowing them to see broader questions around participant observation much more clearly. They shake, as Schatz (Reference Schatz2009b, 7) might put it, the very “core of ethnography, … [which relies on] an ability to sympathize.”
In research on the far right, researchers do not just lack sympathy for research participants, in the sense of being politically neutral or agnostic, but also tend to be and usually declare that they are politically distant. In the ethnographies we came across, this political positionality seems to override other forms that might have been at play like race, class, and gender. Rather being held back by their (nonwhite) background, their academic status, or their gender, researchers keep the far right at arm’s length because of their political positionality. In this sense, it is the political, and relatedly their emotional positionality, rather than other positionalities, that steers their ethnographic methodology. The focus on the far right, then, helps us see how differences in epistemological approaches are not, in fact, the primary fault line affecting the way ethnography is conducted: the difference lies rather in how, given the political distance between researchers and participants, emotional commitments are methodologically handled. Using specific examples of far-right ethnographies not only in political science but also in sociology and anthropology, we contend that important lessons can be extracted for political ethnographers choosing, or not, to come closer than at arm’s length from their participants.
Ethnographic Interviews
Ethnographic interviews have been a particularly useful approach to the study of the far right because they offer tools for approaching interlocutors and enquiring about their life-worlds without necessitating a sharing of these worlds. Ethnographers of the far right almost always account for their political distance from research participants (Blee Reference Blee, Thompson and Parks2015; Busher Reference Busher2015; Cammelli Reference Cammelli2021; Deodhar Reference Deodhar2022; Evans Reference Evans2006; Goodale Reference Goodale2020; Holmes Reference Holmes1999; Kalb Reference Kalb2009; Pasieka Reference Pasieka2022; Pilkington Reference Pilkington2016; Shoshan Reference Shoshan2016), and the interview format allows this distance to be signaled with considerable clarity (Ellinas Reference Ellinas2023). Located at this distance pole of the axis, ethnographic interviews nevertheless “provide opportunities for observational research” as they did for Ellinas (Reference Ellinas2023, 667) when he attended Golden Dawn events in Greece.
As a sustained analysis of the ethnographic interview methodology among the far right, sociologist Kathleen Blee’s (Reference Blee2002, 7) work with “women from a variety of racist and anti-Semitic groups” in the United States is perhaps the most emblematic. Blee makes no secret of the political distance she explicitly keeps from her research participants: “I revealed my critical stance but made it clear that I had no intent to portray them as crazy and did not plan to turn them over to law enforcement or mental health agencies” (11, emphasis added). She clarified that she “did not share the racial convictions of these groups” (11) and explicitly told interviewees that her ideological views “were quite opposed to theirs”: this is the stance of a “distant but not neutral observer” (Blee Reference Blee1998, 385; emphasis in original). For Blee, the ethnographic interview approach clarifies to the participant the distance between the researcher and themselves, whereas, as noted earlier, the life narrative interview enables participants to provide the story in their own terms, thus perhaps mitigating power differentials that this distance accentuates between the researcher holding the moral high ground and the participant discussing views that could be judged as “crazy.” Busher (Reference Busher2015) also uses life narratives to elucidate the trajectories into activism of English Defence League (EDL) members and to expand his research into more immersive participation in EDL protests, even as he maintains a clear ideological distance from his interlocutors. This distance, it is clear in both situations, is driven mainly by the political gap between researcher and participants.
Blee’s Reference Blee2002 account of her long conversations with racist women is cognizant of emotional elements in the research environment: the attempted emotional manipulation by her research participants (14) or the “horrifying” (1) sights of guns and swastikas. Blee keeps a distance from these emotional elements and describes them as an overseer of this environment. “Instead of thinking about my life history interviews as largely embedded in dynamics of empathy or rapport, these interviews might be better understood as structured also by relations and strategies based on fear” (Blee Reference Blee1998, 388). In other words, keeping research participants at arm’s length in this approach to ethnography means (1) managing emotions by reflecting on them, both those of the researcher and of participants; (2) changing the register of those emotions from positive to negative, perhaps in a counterintuitive ethnographic stance; and (3) acknowledging the political gaps that separate researcher and participants in clear and loud declarations. Yet, it should be noted that even though these strategies might appear straightforward, they are not always so. In Blee’s (Reference Blee2019, 745) later reflections on the totality of her experiences with the racist groups she studied, there are hints of the more complex negotiation around the management of emotional distance that she engaged in.
In these negotiations, Blee’s positionality in terms of profession, age, gender, and race is evident in the reflection on encounters with different participants, but it is the political positionality that seems to take precedence. Some participants denounced her as an “academic race traitor,” whereas others saw her in “maternalist” terms and still others asked her to facilitate their escape (Blee Reference Blee2019, 745–48). Yet, in every situation, her political positionality trumped other intersectional aspects of the relationship and shaped the way she handled emotional distance and proximity to the participants. Similarly, in Busher’s (Geelhoed et al. Reference Geelhoed, Busher, Massé and De Pelecijn2024, 9) case, his positionality as a male academic seemed to play a role in his description of numerous and rich field encounters, but it is his convictions that entailed risks to his personal safety: some activists “believed him to be a left-wing infiltrator and had discussed stabbing him.” Deodhar (Reference Deodhar2022, 547, 558), who attended a local party conference of the Alternative for Germany as a female researcher from the United Kingdom of “immigrant, non-White background” and was officially invited to the proceedings, was encouraged to stay by members who vouched for her, even as other local visitors were ushered out of the meeting. This indicates how the disjunctures between political and emotional proximity entail the negotiation of multiple and sometimes surprising moral, ethical, and security dilemmas.
Context-rich Ethnography
The context-rich ethnography approach allows researchers to weave contextual data into their analyses in ways that complement the data secured through verbal interaction with far-right participants. In the case of Bellè and Faury (Reference Bellè and Faury2024), the interviews they conducted were enfolded within a grounded theory framework and analyzed alongside their ethnographic notes. In their “comparative ethnography” approach (Simmons Reference Simmons2016), these notes, which paid attention to context, behavior, and observations of events and “local political and party life” over 21 months, were used to enhance the analytic depth and highlight the significance of context (Bellè and Faury Reference Bellè and Faury2024, 2). The immersion that this context-rich approach entailed, which went beyond their interviews, allowed them to unveil “the social desirability bias of interviewing PRR [Populist Radical Right] militants, exposing the ‘dark side’ of their political actions… [which functioned] as a crucial corrective to existing studies that might overlook such subtle radicalism by relying solely on public statements and interviews” (13).
Douglas Holmes’s (Reference Holmes1999, 4) work on the European far right centers on “140 interviews that [he] conducted with a broad spectrum of political leaders, technocrats, community organizers, and street fighters.” In comparison with Blee’s approach, these interviews are more akin to ethnographic practices of “studying up” (Ostrander Reference Ostrander1993; see Gusterson Reference Gusterson1997; Nair Reference Nair2021; Ortner Reference Ortner2010; Shore and Wright Reference Shore and Wright1997) in which the study of contextual material—in the form of policy papers, the study of space, and historical background on the localities—provides the ethnographic backdrop for undertaking and analyzing interview-based research. Holmes frames his interviews within cultural analysis through detailed presentation of the environments in which they take place (homes, offices, and cities) and descriptions of the interlocutors from their biographical details to demeanor, posture, clothing, and mannerisms. The interviews are also integrated into a cultural analysis of urban space alongside readings of founding treaties, documents, policy literature (in the case of the European Parliament), and the history of the area; analysis of its regional economy; and observations of the environment (in the case of London). This contextual research is given much more space and emphasis through detailed description and lengthy analysis than in the ethnographic interviews approach.
This allows Holmes a more observational than participatory role. The political distance that separates him from his interlocutors is present throughout the book, as in Blee’s case, and was made evident in the various interactions he had. Remaining closer to the observational pole of research practice by seeking to diminish distance through contextual understanding, rather than by managing political differences and emotional dynamics, seems to have enhanced the analytic clarity of his insights. As the research progressed, he revised his approach to his interlocutors, calling them “integralists” instead of “racists” or “fascists”—terms that they themselves, at least overtly, rejected. This conceptual shift of focus to “integralism” allowed him to understand that “what is devastating about [Jean-Marie Le Pen’s pronouncements]… is not their ‘racist’ character per se but the fact that Le Pen has created a discursive field—resistant to critical scrutiny—within which ‘racism’ is increasingly difficult to define, confront, or oppose” (Holmes Reference Holmes1999, 73). He was able to position himself far enough from his interlocutors to be able to critically evaluate the implications of their discourse, but close enough to be able to hear the more innocuous language in which this discourse was articulated. To arrive at this midpoint position, he used contextual interpretation to bracket off the higher levels of political and emotional proximity that other forms of ethnography might require.
This approach aligns with more recent work; for example, Goodale (Reference Goodale2020, 346) was able to situate himself within a wider, contextually embedded, nine-year-long “national ethnography” project, a study based on “non-engaged” anthropology of the right-wing antigovernment movement in Bolivia. Placing insights from this “reluctant research” (349) alongside those of broader ethnographic findings, he engaged in a “reverse reflexivity.” “Rather than identifying how unacknowledged negative biases or my own privileged subject position were shaping my ethnographic research, I had to turn the reflexive gesture around to identify what I believed to be progressive or emancipatory biases” (360)—again, a nod to his political positionality. Linked with this political distance was the initial “strange feeling of dread, bordering on betrayal” he had on his first meeting with the key right-wing ideologue, which appears to have dissipated across sustained encounters that “dispelled many of [his] illusions of anthropological heroism” (349). These initially loaded emotional encounters were offset by critical analysis of the nuances that emerged in the ideological discourse of the right.
Participatory Ethnography
In approaches closer to the participation end of the methodological axis, proximity raises ethical questions that ultimately affect the collection and treatment of data (Mwangi Reference Mwangi and Johnstone2019; Weems Reference Weems2006; Widlok Reference Widlok2004). This has significant implications for research on the far right. Ways of “giving back” and “doing good” for the communities studied (Childress Reference Childress2006; Hammett, Jackson, and Vickers Reference Hammett, Jackson and Vickers2019; Tubaro Reference Tubaro2021), aligning research with activism (Apoifis Reference Apoifis2017; Gillan and Pickerill Reference Gillan and Pickerill2012), and seeking collaborative avenues to data gathering and presentation (Borrett, Sampson, and Cavoukian Reference Borrett, Sampson and Cavoukian2017; Castleden, Morgan, and Neimanis Reference Castleden, Morgan and Neimanis2010) all pose insurmountable challenges for research with the far right. Studies that have attempted them, nevertheless, provide invaluable insights for future research.
There are as yet no studies that have attempted to explicitly “do good” for the far-right communities involved. The closest such approaches involved academics collaborating in the design of interventions targeting the exit of individuals from such groups and their rehabilitation (DeMichele et al. Reference DeMichele, McCann, Blee and Simi2022; Windisch et al. Reference Windisch, Simi, Blee, DeMichele, Scrivens, Perry and Gruenewald2022) or attempting reconciliation meetings between Roma and non-Roma residents in Hungary (Feischmidt and Szombati Reference Feischmidt and Szombati2017, 314). Anthropologists have noted this absence, arguing it reveals “a tension the discipline needs to reflect on … [between] de-colonizing the discipline, [by] … modifying our relationship with our interlocutors in the field and rendering that relationship increasingly collaborative, increasingly horizontal… [and the fact that this is] either difficult or impossible to implement with certain research agendas, such as these” (Middleton and Shoshan Reference Middleton and Shoshan2019, e148).
The debates surrounding the degree of participation possible in studies of the far right harken back to anthropology’s ethical commitments and can go a long way in explaining the dearth of such studies, making their total absence in political science perhaps more curious. Cammelli’s work with Casa Pound Italia (CPI) is instructive of how reciprocity becomes complicated by the lack of political proximity between researcher and research participants. Initially, Cammelli (Reference Cammelli2021, §18, 21) struggled with emotions of fear and distrust of her research participants: “I felt my spine shiver and getting moist with the same fusion of spirit and body experienced by a boxer stepping onto the ring.” But she overcame these emotions during the course of her initial round of meetings after realizing that she “might even be able to ‘like’ some of the activists [she] was studying.” Up to that point, her management of these emotions was similar to Blee’s in that she sought relations of honesty in which the lack of political proximity was stated explicitly (§19). Yet after these first successful steps in making contact, she found that in the next phase of the research her participants would have demanded participation, which they understood as becoming involved in the write-up and presentation of the research. Activists wanted access to and coauthorship of her fieldnotes (§25–26). Faced with the dilemma of gaining more access by compromising the political distance of her ethnography, she chose to abandon it. Thus, the initial successful management of political and emotional proximity, which was based on separating between the two, ultimately failed when the question of collaboration arose.
Taking a different approach, Teitelbaum (Reference Teitelbaum2019) defends his collaboration practices in his research on far-right Nordic groups. These included reciprocal interviews with a far-right journalist, editing work for a far-right novelist, and writing public commentary in defense of a musician accused of being linked to Norwegian mass killer Breivik (419–20). Gaining emotional proximity accounted for these decisions to increasing degrees. The first collaboration was utilitarian, geared toward expanding access and “quality of interviews,” the second request came “out of the friendly nature of our interactions,” and the third arose out of a sense of injustice against his “closest informant” that “the claim that she would feel indifference toward the mass murder of children [was] offensive and unfounded” (420–21). This increasing emotional proximity also catalyzed the growing political proximity that informed his public statements “criticizing the coverage of [the musician] Saga and encouraging readers not to dismiss offhand the capacity for empathy even among their ideological opposites … highlight[ing] the growth of political violence directed toward nationalists in Sweden and its unfortunate and shocking acceptance by mainstream political leaders” (421). Teitelbaum is clear about the emotional parameters of these decisions and their inextricable connection to the exchanges that participatory ethnography entails: “I feel obliged to my informants because of our ongoing reciprocal exchanges of service as well as friendship. Inaccurate or misleading characterizations of them now anger me. I have formed emotional attachments to these people” (421; emphasis added). Making the case for an “immoral ethnography” Teitelbaum highlights the complication of keeping political distance from research participants while remaining emotionally attached: “So long as we prefer dialogic and intersubjective models of understanding to those of observation and monologue, we are led to embrace a research practice laced with political and moral compromise” (415). Yet, his arguments have been criticized for taking an unreflexive view of the research encounter, idealizing friendship in ways that hinder analysis, and ultimately depoliticizing important aspects of his informants’ identities as political actors (Cammelli Reference Cammelli2021; Scheper-Hughes Reference Scheper-Hughes2019).
Both Teitelbaum’s take on collaboration and the criticism he received arguably point to the pitfalls that an increasingly introverted anthropological debate on ethics, which centers around the politics and emotions of field research, may harbor in becoming comfortable with partiality. Both Cammelli’s example of refusing the suggested collaboration and Teitelbaum’s of accepting collaborative requests show that the epistemological precepts of anthropology make it difficult to undertake this type of more participatory and reciprocity-geared research without reconfiguring the intuitive understandings about the ethics and practice of proximity in ethnographic research. As Shoshan asks, “What other ethical commitments we need to attend to that might sometimes take priority?” (Middleton and Shoshan Reference Middleton and Shoshan2019, e148). Addressing the issue from the perspective of a militant ethnography, Apoifis (Reference Apoifis2017, 14–15) argues that a “militant ethnography on a racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist or neo-fascist collective is possible, as long as researchers mirror the knowledge-production mechanisms within these spaces, and the authors acknowledge their political sympathies to their chosen project… Insights into these spaces may be welcomed contributions to knowledge and enrich our understanding of the complexities of these, albeit malevolent collectives.” These inevitably open questions could be seen as an invitation for crafting a political ethnography that approaches political and emotional proximity in different ways and perhaps helps ethnographers out of the deadlock that this approach seems to be facing.
Experiential Ethnography
Experiential ethnography offers avenues that appear more promising than participatory ethnography in research with the far right. Shoshan’s Reference Shoshan2016 study of far-right youth in Berlin exemplifies how far an immersive study can go. His access was enabled by his involvement in a social welfare organization helping such youth escape poverty and rehabilitating them into mainstream German society. This connection provided a credible and specific role for him within the group he studied and from which boundaries could be pushed: there were ample instances in which his social activities with the youth extended beyond what the social workers did. The ethnographer’s researcher role, in other words, was complementary to his role as an assistant/observer of the social workers. This specific role vis-à-vis the group remained safely outside the bounds of the far-right community itself: it did not seek an insider identity in the way Pachirat (Reference Pachirat2011) had done in the meat factory.
Like in other ethnographies of Polish, Italian, and British far-right groups (Bellè Reference Bellè2016; Busher Reference Busher2015; Faust Reference Faust2021; Pasieka Reference Pasieka2019; Pilkington Reference Pilkington2016), Shoshan’s research identity was disclosed, as was his intention to produce research on the group. However, parts of his personal identity remained hidden, rendering his research at least partly covert: on the “demand” of the social workers who collaborated with him, he adopted a variation of his name (Nate instead of Nitzan) to deliberately hide his Jewish heritage from interlocutors “for fear of the reactions that [his] true one might provoke among some of [the social workers’] more violent clients” (Shoshan Reference Shoshan2016, xi; Shoshan Reference Shoshan2021). This was similar, if in an inverted way, to Pachirat’s covert role in the factory where his personal identity was disclosed but his research identity was largely concealed. In contrast to Pachirat, the ethical dilemma Shoshan (Reference Shoshan2016, xii) articulates was less about the conduct than the product of his work and the emotional attachments in which it was immersed: “My work demanded cultivating relationships of confidence with people from whom I was not only concealing my real name and origins but whom I would subsequently represent in ways they would likely find unfair at best, disparaging at worst.” There are indications in Shoshan’s study that these relationships were close: he describes visits to home environments, on one occasion the day after a party (120–21); at another time, he lent support to an interlocutor in a rehabilitation program by attending the meeting with a state agent as an observer and supporter (176–80). In both examples, there is a clear negotiation of levels of proximity, in which participants obviously acknowledged that the researcher did not belong to the group but are at the same time comfortable sharing information that they would not easily disclose to other outsiders, not even to the social workers who enabled Shoshan’s entry. Therefore, methodologically, Shoshan’s ethnography is much further along the immersive end than other studies surveyed earlier.
This survey of ethnographic research on the far right shows the distinct challenges associated with such studies and the limits drawn because of the understandable hesitation of researchers to establish political and emotional bonds with their research participants. The study of the far right seems to restrict the levels for participation that researchers can strive for, regardless of their epistemological bent. On the participatory end of the methodological dimension therefore, we see that full immersion has thus far been impossible, and participatory ethnography has been almost foreclosed. This finding has implications for more general applications of political ethnography, which we discuss next.
Discussion and Conclusions
By analyzing the variety of approaches to political ethnography, we have shown how it is increasingly enabling politics research. Efforts to reflect on various approaches have primarily focused on the epistemological contours of ethnographic research and less on the distinct methodological applications it entails. This article contributes to the understanding of ethnographic research by helping untangle these two dimensions and developing a typology of different types of ethnographies. It has explicated how different degrees of objectivist and interpretivist perspectives guide some of the most important recent works in ethnographic research. More importantly, it has shed more light on a less developed methodological distinction between more observational and participatory forms of ethnographic research. This distinction goes well beyond the physical proximity established with the communities of participants and incorporates political and emotional proximity as well. The major contribution of our reflections is the examination of how ethnographers, when politically distant, are developing ways of handling emotional proximity.
Using the ethnography of the far right, we sought to disaggregate political and emotional elements of proximity. Such proximity has thus far been theorized as ethnographic or emotional “sensibility” (Schatz Reference Schatz and Schatz2009a; see Pearlman Reference Pearlman2023) or, in the case of the far right, “sympathy” that is distinct from “empathy” (Gingrich and Banks Reference Gingrich and Banks2006, 209). Ethnographies of the far right show that, whether applied in more positivist or more interpretivist directions, participation becomes particularly difficult or, indeed, undesirable. This means that the ways in which political ethnographers approach their research participants is not necessarily geared toward the gold standard of participation.
In terms of political proximity, one factor that differentiates political ethnographers of the far right from those working in other fields is that the political antithesis that exists between researcher and participant needs to be clearly signaled primarily to audiences and often to a high degree to research participants too. The modes in which this is done may differ: it may be an indispensable part of our ethnographic interviews protocol, or signaled in context-rich questions that challenge what our interviewees are stating, or folded into our introductions to communities as we enter as curious researchers. In all cases, however, this political difference is a common and rather straightforward difference to manage and one that is in line with DA-RT’s emphasis on openness.
What is more complicated and less explicit across the various ethnographic approaches is the emotional component. On this, ethnographers differ significantly: for some, emotional distance may align with the political distance that separates them from participants, and for others, the “care” entailed in ethnographic sensibility may be at odds with political antitheses. In some cases, emotions become a topic of hard reflective work over many years, which elicit rethinking of how intersubjective relations may play out during the ethnographic interview encounter in ways that are more or less conscious and therefore better or less well planned and curated. In others, it may be less explicit and folded into the contextual analysis that supplements information gained via interactions with politicians and activists.
Participants differ significantly as well: distinct dilemmas might be generated when dealing with variably situated actors, such as obscure violent extremists (Blee Reference Blee2002; Faust and Pfeifer Reference Faust and Pfeifer2021) or highly visible legislators (Ellinas Reference Ellinas2023; Holmes Reference Holmes1999). What remains constant across these variable situations is that the political positionality of the ethnographer, which is invariably one of distance toward research participants, is the main generator of concerns over the navigation of emotional proximity, regardless of context. We thus claim that the issues analyzed here hold whether or not participants are from the far right, not only because of the expectations that academia places on the positionality of the researchers (Geelhoed et al. Reference Geelhoed, Busher, Massé and De Pelecijn2024) but also, more importantly, because of the need to address the challenges associated with emotional proximity.
In dealing with these challenges, observational modes of research allow political and emotional proximity to research participants to remain low, whereas more participation-focused approaches do not take political distance as necessarily incompatible with emotional proximity: as Pasieka (Reference Pasieka2019) puts it, we may well “like” those we disagree with. By drawing a separation between the political and emotional dimensions of proximity, ethnographers are able to maintain relationships with their participants that involve friendship, affection, and even care. This allows, for example, one ethnographer to write opinion pieces in support of a discredited artist and another to help a youth in an exit program manage a secret meeting with a state agent. Yet this emotional proximity comes with difficult negotiations over field practices, ethical and moral positionings, and presentation choices. These negotiations are, in fact, central to ethnographic practice, and it is this centrality that far-right ethnography spotlights better than other difficult topics. These are negotiations over what is considered “moral” and “immoral” anthropology (Teitelbaum Reference Teitelbaum2019), over how to pluralize decolonial ethnographic practice (Middleton and Shoshan Reference Middleton and Shoshan2019), how to horizontalize relationships with research participants and their communities within social justice frames, and ultimately how to remain close while holding back or, equally, when to abandon the research (Cammelli Reference Cammelli2021). No matter how they are ultimately resolved, what these negotiations make abundantly evident is that emotional proximity is shot through and mediated by political proximity. This is the very conundrum of ethnography, whether formulated in anthropological holistic terms of self-confident participant observation or in political science’s looser versions of “ethnographic sensibility.” In this sense, the lessons drawn from this extreme case of far-right ethnography can be valuable in other cases where more observational and less immersive modes may be methodologically preferred, such as in other ethnographic contexts of “dark ethnography”—for example, with religious extremists (Faust and Pfeifer Reference Faust and Pfeifer2021)—or indeed in contexts that harbor possibilities of harm to the researcher (Berry et al. Reference Berry, Argüelles, Cordis, Ihmoud and Estrada2017), including sexual violence (Harries Reference Harries2022; Kloß Reference Kloß2017; Schneider Reference Schneider2020). Although the case of the far right illustrates well the emotional conundrums that political positionality marked by distance generates, we argue that the “infidelity” of emotional distance (instead of proximity) is in fact not exceptional but integral to the practice of ethnography.
As stated at the outset, in generating these Weberian ideal types of ethnographic research, we have purposefully downplayed the overlap between these ethnographic epistemologies and methodologies. For example, Blee’s life history narratives are used alongside documentary and other material to contextualize them. Shoshan’s (Reference Shoshan2016, 6–7) dive into the everyday lives of his participants follows a rich contextual analysis of the German legal code—on the display of Nazi symbols—and of institutional impediments to extremism, such as the denotation of an organization as “right-wing extremist.” Busher’s (Reference Busher2015) interviews both extend and are enriched by his participation in multiple far-right events and demonstrations. These interviews have a clearly experiential component that involves often visceral descriptions; they are, at the same time, contextualized within documentary and media analysis, and he has written of moments where the levels of his participation posed moral and ethical dilemmas (Geelhoed et al. Reference Geelhoed, Busher, Massé and De Pelecijn2024). Pilkington’s Reference Pilkington2016 study of the same movement also uses a wide variety of approaches that are systematized as interviews and event observations but are equally suggestive of rich immersive experiences and dilemmas about the degree of collaboration. In the gray zones between the different categories, ethnographers have also developed tactics for squaring seemingly incompatible approaches; for example, Faust (Reference Faust2021, 184–85) attended to “the bodily dimension… as an epistemological tool” that uses “bodily co-presence” to square her emotional distance as an antifascist outsider with sensorial immersion as a guest of honor in an evocative neofascist memorial event. The ideal-type categories we identified have the added value of combining approaches and delineate the ways in which dilemmas comprising the puzzle of participant observation can be resolved, both within but also across different epistemological, methodological, and, ultimately, disciplinary approaches.
In the end, politics research based on ethnography depends to a degree on emotional investment (Pearlman Reference Pearlman2023) and the ability to appreciate the affective environment. This is a direction that anthropological research has long explored (Das Reference Das2006; Hage Reference Hage2015; Lutz and Abu-Lughod Reference Lutz and Abu-Lughod1990; Lutz and White Reference Lutz and White1986; Stewart Reference Stewart2020) but on which even some of the most elaborate discussions on qualitative political science methods, with their emphasis on transparency and openness within the DA-RT approach, remain silent. And although the discussion of ethnographic input often tends to be about whether ethnography can solve the dilemma between positivism and interpretivism, often a more pressing dilemma is about the political and emotional bonds established between the researchers and the participants. Viewing varieties of ethnography through the lens of the far right allows us to see that these varieties are essentially about these bonds—and in so doing, we hope that it expands our flexibility in initiating, managing, and perhaps also ending these relations not only during fieldwork but also before we enter the field and after we have left it. It is an exciting, compelling, and urgently needed field for political science to explore.
Acknowledgments
Research for this article unfolded over the years through our ongoing collaboration in three projects on migration activism supported by the British Academy (SRG2021∖211341), the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation (EXCELLENCE/0421/0201), and the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom (ES/W012324/1). We are thankful for feedback from presentations at the universities of Durham and Cyprus. We also wish to thank the editors for their support and three anonymous reviewers for incisive comments that helped improve the article.
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