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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on my ethnography with pro-regime paramilitary organisation of the Basij, whose members are known for perpetuating state violence in Iran, I discuss a research situation where neutral ethnographic position is hardly an option.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on my ethnography with pro-regime paramilitary organisation of the Basij, whose members are known for perpetuating state violence in Iran, I discuss a research situation where neutral ethnographic position is hardly an option. First, by describing practicalities of doing fieldwork with the Basij in 2015-2016, I provide details on how my close engagement with militiamen of the Basij was often emotionally laced with negative feelings of compulsion and guilt, triggering a deep sense of anxiety about my political commitments and a sense of self-distrust bordering on treachery. Second, by laying out challenges and stakes related to dissemination and publication, I highlight how taking a neutral ethnographic position constantly raises suspicion about my complicity in advancing Iranian regime’s oppressive political agenda among the community of scholars. To constructively face such challenges, I argue that critical reflections on 'negative empathy' (Poewe 1996), and complicity in the production of anthropological knowledge serve as useful counters to many of the (rather romanticised) accounts in anthropological literature, which tend to be premised upon the possibilities for unproblematic forms of intimacy and trust being developed with informants. Moreover, through the notion of ‘ethnographic betrayal', I explain how to inhabit the discomfort of an ethnographic-political space, where the genre of ethnography is used to reveal ‘narrative of involvement’ (Anderson 2013) rather than accentuating the moral and professional certitude of an anthropologist.