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Collaborating with the Radical Right: Scholar-Informant Solidarity and The Current Anthropology Volume 60, Number 3, June 2019 000 FORUM ON PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY Collaborating with the Radical Right Scholar-Informant Solidarity and the Case for an Immoral Anthropology by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum This article investigates the moral content and epistemological utility of scholar-informant solidarity in ethnography. It supports efforts to highlight the potential for immoral outcomes when ethnographers prioritize the interests of those they study during the conception, execution, and dissemination of their work. However, this article advocates reinforcing the imperative of scholar-informant solidarity, recognizing the practice as morally compromised but epistemologically indispensable. I illustrate these claims by referencing my experiences as an ethnographer of white nationalist groups in the Nordic countries. In three case studies, I show how solidarity—and with it collaboration, reciprocity, and advocacy—led to troubling contributions to political causes while offering ethnographic knowledge unlikely to be gained through other forms of research. The article argues further that, while the moral and epistemic consequences of solidarity are exposed in the study of oppressive and violent groups, the potential for power asymmetries and political conflict among scholars and informants is ubiquitous. Therefore, the article addresses the need to embrace solidarity and the immorality that comes with it to ethnographers at large. Magnus Söderman is the host of a white identity podcast called ings; attended their concerts; laughed, drank, dined, and lived Svegot and a former spokesperson for the militant Nordic with them. My aim has been to cultivate close long-term re- Resistance Movement. “Saga” is the stage name of a woman lationships with nationalists fed by honesty, personal exchange, often regarded as the foremost white power singer in the and trust. Friendships were both preconditions and by-products world. Daniel Friberg is—together with Richard Spencer— of such contact, as were instances of collaboration, reciprocity, CEO of AltRight.com and a founder of the online ultracon- even advocacy. servative reference page Metapedia. John Morgan cofounded All of that may seem unremarkable. Anthropologists have the antiliberal, antimodernist publishing house Arktos and often treated scholar-informant solidarity and its elaboration is a writer for the white nationalist blog Counter Currents. as an ideal—as our bedrock “political stance” (Heyman 2010: Erik Almqvist is a former member of Parliament for the anti- 289), the “ethical and moral commitment [that] transcends all immigrant Sweden Democrats party, forced to resign after else” (Lassiter 2005:91), and the content of our social capital video surfaced of his shouting racial slurs in public and threat- (Kulick 2006). In doing so, they extend a charge to prioritize ening a man with an iron bar. the interests of research participants that is all but mandated No two of these individuals think alike, and some identify throughout the human sciences by institutional review (IRB) each other as their foremost adversaries. But all fight liber- regimes. But the moral virtue of collaboration, reciprocity, and alism, multiculturalism, and immigration to protect the os- advocacy fades in the study of oppressive or privileged pop- tensible purity of majority white populations throughout the ulations. In such cases, showing solidarity with those we study West. They go by many names: outsiders describe them as may make us accomplices to acts of symbolic or real violence. right-wing extremists, organized racists, or neofascists, and This is the primary reason anthropologists have been weak- they tend to call themselves nationalists. I call them friends. I ening their once-uncompromising imperative to prioritize the have been conducting ethnographic fieldwork among radical interests of research participants. As seen in recent changes to nationalists in the Nordic countries and beyond since 2010. the AAA (American Anthropological Association) Statement I have observed their public demonstrations and private meet- on Ethics,1 the field is striving to make space for researchers who want to work in open opposition to those they study, Benjamin Teitelbaum is Assistant Professor in the College of Music suggesting in the process that scholar-informant solidarity at the University of Colorado, Boulder (Imig Music Building, 301 is an inessential element of our practice. And such changes UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA [benjamin.teitelbaum@colorado .edu]). This paper was submitted 15 IX 17, accepted 7 IV 18, and electronically published 1 V 19. 1. I discuss these changes at greater length below. q 2019 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2019/6003-00XX$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/703199 This content downloaded from 128.138.065.144 on May 01, 2019 10:26:05 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 000 Current Anthropology Volume 60, Number 3, June 2019 would make sense, were study of the unjust genuinely excep- sider discourse through covert infiltration and deception (e.g., tional and were embrace of collaboration, reciprocity, or ad- Wåg 2010)—a solution that may offer a scholar data but that vocacy only a matter of promoting social good. undermines possibilities for long-term collaboration and ex- In this article, I defend scholar-informant solidarity in eth- change. nography as morally volatile and epistemologically indispen- Say what one will about virtue and social good, but why sable. Seldom can we campaign against the people we study would we trust the knowledge produced under these circum- while collaborating and engaging with them personally, yet it stances, especially when decades of criticism and reflection on is through exchange and partnership that we gain our signa- anthropology’s methods compel us to think otherwise? Ques- ture claims to knowledge. Research eschewing these practices tions like that prompted my interest. But I refer to my case cannot be equated with ethnography as it has come to be study and subfield because it exposes what I believe are issues understood and valued; it is instead a ghost of ethnography’s of wider relevance, for while the moral and epistemological past, one subject to aged criticisms of scholars’ capacity to rep- conflicts in my experience are raw, they are not uncommon. resent and interpret the lives of others and one that perilously The staid impression of anthropologists as scholars of the dis- treats itself as a foundation for informed activism. I offer a de- enfranchised and oppressed—those with whom solidarity ap- fense of scholar-informant solidarity while sharing in emerging pears morally and politically unproblematic (Asad 1973; Ow- assessments of its moral content. It should be championed, not ton and Allen-Collinson 2014; Wolf and Jorgensen 1970)—is because of its promise to promote good but despite its potential a mischaracterization. Studying up is no longer the novelty to do bad and spur conflicts for all involved. This affirmation of that once motivated Nader’s (1972) appeal. And even research our need to prioritize commitment to the people we study also that on the surface conforms to the relationships of the Mali- amounts to a critique of moralism in our field. However, I do nowskian archetype often masks dynamisms of agency and not seek to refetishize objectivity or dispassion for the impli- sympathy at the interpersonal level, something suggested by cations of our work or necessarily to once again highlight the the preponderance of women in cultural anthropology doc- ways relationships formed in ethnography fail to embody egal- toral programs (Philips 2010), as well as by the growing pres- itarian ideals. Instead, I claim that ethnography’storturedhu- ence and mobilization of non-Western ethnographers (Ri- man drama is both its inescapable liability and its foundational beiro 2014; Ribeiro and Escobar 2006). Anthropologists are resource. So long as we prefer dialogic and intersubjective thus likely to find themselves studying individuals of relative models of understanding to those of observation and mono- structural privilege whose personal or political profiles clash logue, we are led to embrace a research practice laced with with their own. Examples and advice as to how one might political and moral compromise. navigate these situations abound. Politically compromising I will make this case referring to my experiences as an eth- research can simply be avoided (e.g., Stoczkowski 2008), the nographer. The partnerships and interpersonal sympathies I powerful can be denied our transparency and honesty (Pillay formed with Nordic radical nationalists during fieldwork re- 1994), we can forge solidarity with informants during field- sulted in predictably unsettling outcomes, most notably schol- work only to break it while writing (Castañeda 2006:139), or arship and commentary that could have aided my informants’ we can limit our inquiries so as to pursue an anthropology of, cause. Yet the affectionate reciprocal relationships that under- rather than for, morality (Fassin 2008; Zigon 2010). Such pin my actions also exposed me to key information. To reject approaches not only confine appreciably the range of peoples them would have been to reject urgent insight into movements we can study and the questions we can investigate but also that many discuss but few understand.2 My approach is hardly imply further that political
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