The ethics of researching the far right
Critical approaches and reflections
Edited by Antonia Vaughan, Joan Braune, Meghan Tinsley and Aurelien Mondon
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- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 424
- Price: £100.00
- Published Date: April 2024
- Series: Racism, Resistance and Social Change
Description
At a time when far, radical, and extreme-right politics are becoming increasingly mainstream globally - sometimes with deadly consequences - research in these fields is essential to understand the most effective ways to combat these dangerous ideologies. Yet engaging with texts and movements that do physical and verbal violence raises a number of urgent ethical issues. Until recently, this has remained understudied, as scholarship on the far right rarely delves explicitly and critically into the ethics of research.
This book seeks to remedy this significant gap in an otherwise extensive and growing literature. Originating from a workshop series in 2020, in which an international group of academics at various career stages shared the ethical challenges and best practices they had developed in their research, this edited collection draws together insights from these ongoing conversations, offering urgent critical reflections on key ethical issues.
Reviews
'The ethics of researching the Far Right is perhaps the first investigation into the moral responsibility we have in documenting the threat that fascism presents. This expertly edited volume is one of the most important interventions ever made into this field and should be required reading for anyone documenting the far-right.'
Shane Burley, author of Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism
'A timely and much needed collection. It highlights the ongoing necessity - as well as the huge complexity - of reflective and critical research on the contemporary far right, especially as it becomes increasingly normalised and mainstreamed. A fantastic resource for scholars and students conducting systematic research on the far right across a wide range of social science disciplines.'
Professor Michal Krzyzanowski, Uppsala University, Sweden
'At last! A straight-on discussion of ethical quagmires in studies of the far-right, and a guide to navigating issues of political impact, safety, terminology, and more. A must-read for scholars and students.'
Kathleen Blee, co-author of Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can Be Stopped (2024)
Contents
Introduction
Part I: What's in a name
1. What the far right is(n't) - Omran Shroufi
2. Race, racism, and the far right: critical reflections for the field - Kurt Sengul
3. When racism seems to be the hardest word: critical reflections from studying the Lega (Nord) - George Newth
4. When the far right experiences violence: our ethical duty to the othered - Ryan Switzer
5. Ecofascism, far-right ecologism and neo-Malthusianism - Miranda Jeanne Marie Iossifidis
Part II: Positionality, standpoint, and intersectionality
6. 'Far right studies' and the unbearable whiteness of being - Aurelien Mondon
7. Safety and silence: oral history, far right research and the paradox of the 'vocal minority' - Imo Kaufman
8. On the incompleteness of ethnography: embracing and navigating failure as a principle in research on the far right - Balsa Lubarda
9. Ethnographic empathy and research ethics as methodological whiteness - Catherine Tebaldi and Rae Jereza
10. Emotions in methodology: resisting violent ideological structures in the knowledge-production of extremisms - Elsa Bengtsson Meuller
11. Reflections on researching armed Nazis as an unarmed left-wing Jew: politics, privilege, and practical concerns - Aaron Winter
Part III: The haunting past: memory and far right studies
12. Heritage, archaeology, ancestry, and the far right - David Farrell-Banks and Lorna-Jane Richardson
13. Another way to do ethics: uses of the landscape in the far-right cultural milieu and the ethics of researching them - Andrew Fergus Wilson
14. Researching memory and heritage during a culture war - Meghan Tinsley, Ruth Ramsden-Karelse, Chloe Peacock, and Sadia Habib
15. Archiving the extreme: ethical challenges in sharing, researching, and teaching - Daniel Jones
16. Researching racism in racist times - Jean Beaman
Part IV: Care and safety
17. How do you respond when you feel under threat? A reflective exploration into my experience with the far right online - Alice Sibley
18. Community building as a response to care in studying the far right - Kayla Preston
19. Negotiating contradiction in success and safety: a consideration of environmental constraints on risk management - Antonia Vaughan
20. Spectre: covert research in digital far-right 'red zones' - Jackson Wood
21. Navigating a feminist ethics of care, ethnographic methods, and academic activism in researching men's rights and the far right: a researcher's struggles - Luc Cousineau
Part V: Complications of engaging far-right participants and formers
22. Ethics of listening: between criticism and empathy in oral history interviews and politically charged research contexts - Vanessa Tautter
23. Harms of the compassion narrative: ethical considerations regarding stories of disengagement from white supremacist movements - Joan Braune
24. Voices from the past: a psychosocial reflection on interacting with a far-right activist - Yutaka Yoshida
25. Interviewing the 'unlovable': on the challenges of conducting feminist research on far-right women - Katherine Williams
26. Examining far-right empowerment experiences using Youtube and Parler data: managing researcher safety and ethical and methodological requirements - Carina Hoerst and John Drury
Part VI: Activism and dissemination
27. Critically examining the role of the scholar in policymaking on the far right - Richard McNeil-Willson, Michael Vaughan, and Michael Zeller
28. Critical reflexivity and research on state responses to the far right - Anna A. Meier
29. An anti-racist scholar-activist ethic: working in service to racial justice - Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Laura Connelly, and Aurelien Mondon
30. The far right from the underside of history: decolonising far right studies - Isis Giraldo
31. How should journalists engage with the far right? - Gary Younge
32. Researching the far right: towards an ethics of talking 'about' - Katy Brown
Editors
Antonia Vaughan is a researcher in Politics at the University of Bath
Joan Braune is Lecturer in Philosophy at Gonzaga University
Meghan Tinsley is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester
Aurelien Mondon is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bath