Paper short abstract:

Ethnographic research with neofascist activists raises specific methodological issues concerning the possibility of accessing the field and the researcher's personal safety. I draw on my ethnographic fieldwork with a neofascist movement active in contemporary Italy to analyse some of these features.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution to the panel will give some insight on the methodological and ethical issues of "taking the risk" while doing ethnography with far-right and neo-fascist movements and parties. I show on one hand the ethnographic tool needed to obtain knowledge: the emotion of fear. On the other hand, ethnographic insights provided evidence of the prominent place violence plays in this neo-fascist movement, a multi-faced violence - combining both a socio-political and a gender violence - bearing a whole set of dangers and risks, especially for a woman. This leads me to highlight some delicate issues concerning researchers' personal safety as well as the political and ethical responsibility of the social sciences in legitimizing right wing and neo-fascist movements in contemporary Europe. Based on my experiences and difficulties conducting fieldwork in Rome with a neo-fascist movement, this paper seeks to shed ethnographic light on the dangers and risks involved in this kind of political ethnography both during the fieldwork and during the "afterlife of ethnography", namely when the anthropologist accepts to diffuse the content of the research outside the "ivory tower" of academia. What happen when the ethnography "never ends", and the "indigenous" come to show their presence in the afterlife? This contribution to the panel will focus on the ethical and political issues involved in this kind of research, from an in depth ethnographic approach.