Periodic Reporting for period 1 - F-WORD (The world behind a word. An anthropological exploration of fascist practices and meanings among European youth.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-05-01 al 2025-10-31
How and why does the “f-word” of fascism continue to constitute a compelling and urgent issue in contemporary Europe? F-WORD addresses this question through comparative ethnographic research among a pluralities of European urban sites as contexts for exploring how fascist practices and meanings are diffused and appropriated by youth. Using fascism as a heuristic device, this project also unfolds diachronically, seeking to explore how European history and memory politics are practiced in the daily lives of young people, and how they are signified and experienced, ultimately connecting to mythic representations of the past to inform a future-oriented fascist utopia.
This will be achieved through a comparative ethnography in five European countries (Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Poland), moving from urban contexts to follow relations and life trajectories of young people (18-30) with the objective of mapping where youth encounter political discourses in non-political spaces. Extended ethnographic fieldwork (10 months) will be carried out by experienced post-docs supervised by the PI. Furthermore, the comparative design of the project aims to uncover the shared logic of fascism, not abstractly but as embedded ideological process.
F-WORD proposes a new paradigm in the anthropological exploration of contemporary fascism, framed by the methodology of feminist ethnography, which will interrogate how specific methodological choices are involved in the process of knowledge-production and their epistemological consequences.
The ground-breaking nature of this project is twofold: one, it unveils the world behind fascism, and thus the diffusion and various appropriations of fascist practices and meanings among European youth; two, it employs feminist ethnography as a paradigm which itself opens up new and unexplored directions of research.
This will be achieved through a comparative ethnography in five European countries (Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Poland), moving from urban contexts to follow relations and life trajectories of young people (18-30) with the objective of mapping where youth encounter political discourses in non-political spaces. Extended ethnographic fieldwork (10 months) will be carried out by experienced post-docs supervised by the PI. Furthermore, the comparative design of the project aims to uncover the shared logic of fascism, not abstractly but as embedded ideological process.
F-WORD proposes a new paradigm in the anthropological exploration of contemporary fascism, framed by the methodology of feminist ethnography, which will interrogate how specific methodological choices are involved in the process of knowledge-production and their epistemological consequences.
The ground-breaking nature of this project is twofold: one, it unveils the world behind fascism, and thus the diffusion and various appropriations of fascist practices and meanings among European youth; two, it employs feminist ethnography as a paradigm which itself opens up new and unexplored directions of research.
The main activities performed in these first 24 months of the Project were:
- The recruitment and selection of the most suitable candidates to work in the Project team;
- The formation of the team through the construction of a common scientific language and bibliography; team building through weekly meetings and common discussions on the main scholarship;
- The creation of the project’s communication and public platforms (website, internal tools, newsletter);
- The identification of the case studies for each team member and definition of each research project;
- Exploratory trips to each fieldwork context to identify specificities and define objectives, as well as address logistical issues preparatory to the fieldwork;
- The organisation of the project kickoff conference;
- Training on feminist ethnography methodology;
- Work on the ethical aspects of the research fieldworks;
- In-depth study of the case studies and related literature, preparatory to departure for the ethnographic fieldworks.
- Departure for individual fieldwork, currently in progress.
In terms of content, one of the most debated issues concerned the use of the concept and term fascism in the description and analysis of the phenomena under examination. The extensive debate in the literature does not exhaust the many complexities that emerge in everyday life, where the f-word appears constantly and widely in the press, political statements, graffiti, etc. Far from being a category anchored in its history, fascism seems to be a term capable of deeply mobilising people in the present, both those involved in political and public debate and young people and/or adults without public political positions in their daily lives. It is therefore a subject of study whose social life deserves to be investigated, as it is capable of revealing, on the one hand, the mobilising power that historical narrative assumes in our present, and on the other, the central role that the f-word is playing in structuring regimes of meaning for people and thus determining forms of political positioning, regardless of its real meaning in history.
- The recruitment and selection of the most suitable candidates to work in the Project team;
- The formation of the team through the construction of a common scientific language and bibliography; team building through weekly meetings and common discussions on the main scholarship;
- The creation of the project’s communication and public platforms (website, internal tools, newsletter);
- The identification of the case studies for each team member and definition of each research project;
- Exploratory trips to each fieldwork context to identify specificities and define objectives, as well as address logistical issues preparatory to the fieldwork;
- The organisation of the project kickoff conference;
- Training on feminist ethnography methodology;
- Work on the ethical aspects of the research fieldworks;
- In-depth study of the case studies and related literature, preparatory to departure for the ethnographic fieldworks.
- Departure for individual fieldwork, currently in progress.
In terms of content, one of the most debated issues concerned the use of the concept and term fascism in the description and analysis of the phenomena under examination. The extensive debate in the literature does not exhaust the many complexities that emerge in everyday life, where the f-word appears constantly and widely in the press, political statements, graffiti, etc. Far from being a category anchored in its history, fascism seems to be a term capable of deeply mobilising people in the present, both those involved in political and public debate and young people and/or adults without public political positions in their daily lives. It is therefore a subject of study whose social life deserves to be investigated, as it is capable of revealing, on the one hand, the mobilising power that historical narrative assumes in our present, and on the other, the central role that the f-word is playing in structuring regimes of meaning for people and thus determining forms of political positioning, regardless of its real meaning in history.
During fieldworks being carried out by team’ members, the complexity of the use of the term fascism and a diversity of reactions to its use, during conversations with people of various interests in the research, is repeatedly emerging. If one of the objectives of the F-WORD project is to study the dissemination of practices, symbols and meanings linked to the world behind that word, the mere evocation of it sometimes provokes reactions that can be of closure, identification, opposition, and sometimes flatten on a dichotomous good/evil, us/them dichotomy the complexity of worlds that the F-WORD project would like to examine instead. These are, however, challenges that are central to the theoretical development of many of the questions posed by the project.
The continuous exchange between team members on the data emerging from their ethnographic fields, and the synthesis work that will be carried out at the end of their fieldwork, will allow us to identify and analyse the differences and continuities emerging between the case studies. The comparison will also allow us to uncover the shared logic of fascism, not abstractly but as an embedded ideological process.
The continuous exchange between team members on the data emerging from their ethnographic fields, and the synthesis work that will be carried out at the end of their fieldwork, will allow us to identify and analyse the differences and continuities emerging between the case studies. The comparison will also allow us to uncover the shared logic of fascism, not abstractly but as an embedded ideological process.