Title:      Investigate at extreme right : Between total
immersion and participant observations, the example of French
National Front (2006-2008)

Authors:    Djamel Mermat

Entrydate:  2008-07-18 05:04:29

Keywords:   France, Far right, electoral campaigns, Methodology,
Immersion, Participant observation, Political party. 

Abstract:   There is a particular situation involving the NF
that has been noticeably neglected to date in France: the
capture live of the motivations and actions of these new
partisans who rallied to the movement during the last three
years (Glenn, 2005: 35-43). We must also recognize that enabling
us to understand this party in "campaigning mode," there is
insufficient knowledge. Nonetheless, if we hope to remedy these
basic two weaknesses, what methods could researchers employ?
Consequently, what can political science methodology eventually
learn from an adjustment in the status of the researcher on the
ground and at the time of the inquiry? More precisely: what
advantages do participant observation employed almost daily
offer? What are the basic contributions of total immersion in
the "Frontist" environment?

Given these questions, we wanted, based on comparative
qualitative research, to explain what fund the validity of the
results obtained (Kent, 2001), through establishing a
cost-benefit analysis of the use of two different methods, of
two inherently quite distinct presentations. Indeed, the result
very rarely mentions the researcher's many ups and downs.
However, the successes and inevitable failures of the
ethnographic investigation condition the nature of the data
collected. Therefore, this is an attempt to address several
methodological deficiencies or silences, and to reverse certain
epistemological biases, through returning to concepts whose
substance needs clarification: "participant observation,"
"empathy," "total immersion," and "infiltration." All the
underpinnings of the research do, however, draw attention to the
manner in which the political analyst created his methodology and
analytical categories, as well as his own approach to the subject
under study. As a result, at first we will emphasize the
difference in scale between our two research fields, since it
led to our adoption of another approach to the subject (I).

Thus, we first chose as our research location the North Flanders
Federation from June 2006 to the start of November 2007, the
beginning of the presidential campaign, up to the presentation
of the assessment of the local councillors. Still, from the
month of June 2007, and without abandoning our initial site, we
progressively accorded increasing attention to the "new
partisans" supporting Marine Le Pen and Steeve Briois in the
14th constituency of Pas-de-Calais, in particular in the city of
Henin-Beaumont. In the first week of December 2007, this led us
to commence our exploration of the diversity of actors of the
General Headquarters of the "Henin-Beaumont pour Vous" list
campaign. Henin-Beaumont belongs to the Federation of Mayors of
Mid-Sized Cities. Well, to date, no study on the NF has been
interested in its "propaganda" strategy (Kalinowski, 2005) for a
mid-sized city and during an election campaign, even less for a
municipal. The idea was to slide, over a period of several weeks
from Flanders to Pas-de-Calais, from the status of participant
observer outside of the group, to that of active member at the
periphery of the central group, thus, integrated in the group
(Strauss, Corbin, and Soulet, 2004). This process offered the
researcher the opportunity to situate himself somewhere between
simply "taking part" and being "uncovered." Thus, the necessity
of reacting, at the spur of the moment, when confronted with the
unexpected (II), was the most challenging aspect. Moreover, it is
this absence, of a recent localized investigation through direct
observation over an extended period, of a political enterprise
still provoking concerns and anathemas that propelled us to
study what the FN electoral campaigns do to the researcher and
his analytical tools.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=807

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