Current Courses

Ethnographies of the far right

Instructors: Dr. Konstanze N'Guessan
Shortname: FarRight
Course No.: 07.798.278
Course Type: Hauptseminar

Requirements / organisational issues

The seminar will be held in English. The seminar is designed for advanced B.A. students and M.A. students.

All other students interested in the topic of the far right are invited to join the seminar "Rechtspopulismus - Kulturwissenschaftliche Analysen" that is organized as hybrid cooperative seminar with the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at Goethe-University, Frankfurt.

Recommended reading list

For an introduction see:

Blee, Kathleen M. (2007): "Ethnographies of the Far Right," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36 (2): 119-128.

Contents

From Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Hindu ultra-nationalists in India and autochthony-fuelled xenophobia in West Africa, to the mainstreaming of far-right discourse, parties and movements in Europe: the far right in its diverse shapes seems not only to be well and alive, but even on the rise. The seminar tackles the phenomenon of a rising and increasingly mainstreaming far right from an anthropological perspective and through three complementary angles.

First, we will systematically disentangle the meandering and often-times confusing multiplicity of concepts to describe and define the far right and related terms such as radical right, extremism, ultra-nationalism, right-wing populism and so forth.

Next, we will zoom in on different socio-cultural contexts and shapes of far-right movements, ideologies and practices. Building on the conceptual work of the first part of the seminar we will analyze a wide range of ethnographic studies, thus adressing the phenomenon of the far right through a comparative approach.

Finally, we will ask why anthropology has for a long time largely neglected the study of the far right - with a few notable exceptions - and how this relates to anthropology's epistemic and normative underpinnings in a more general sense. These reflections will include the question of how to approach and study the far right and how to tackle ethical and methodlogical challenges.