Paper short abstract:

Feminist anthropology has a long and rich methodological tradition of self-reflexivity and awareness of power relations in the field. Drawing from these approaches can enrich the study of populism in Europe on both methodological and empirical levels.

Paper long abstract:

The political and social presence of the populist and Far Right is relatively new to Europe but has been an established reality in many other parts of the world including Eastern Europe, Asia and Middle East. Anthropologists have also been studying groups that can be situated along the right-wing, authoritarian/anti-democratic and religiously conservative spectrum. In this paper, I reflect on the anthropologist's positionality in the study of European right-wing, populist movements from this wider comparative perspective while particularly drawing from insights from feminist anthropology and methodology. My aim is twofold. First, I argue that feminist anthropology's long and rich tradition of foregrounding self-reflexivity and focus on creating egalitarian ethnographic sensibilities provide important insights for this goal. Drawing from Faye Ginsburg's classical work on anti-abortion and pro-life activism in the US (1998) and Nancy Scheper-Hughes' work on mothers abandoning their offspring while living in extreme poverty in Brazil (1993), I explore some of the meanings of working with 'the repugnant other'. A second argument moves from the methodological to a more empirical level. Existing scholarship on right-wing, religiously conservative populism in the global South has shown great attention to gender and sexuality related topics, as these often occupy central stage sparking protest and public debate. Common emerging themes are morality, family values and 'familism'. On this basis, I argue that examining European populism through the lenses of cross-cultural transnational themes, particularly related to gender and sexuality, while considering interconnected global temporalities may be a fruitful approach.