Shifting Formations, Formative Infrastructures: Nationalisms and Racisms in Media Circulation (original) (raw)
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This commentary provides critical reflections on a number of challenges related to research methodology and ethics when studying organized racism in online environments. Based on ongoing fieldwork of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) in Sweden, I ask three critical questions about researching the neo-Nazi organization and organized racism more generally: (1) How do we produce valid knowledge of these ‘closed’ groups in their ‘open’ online spaces? What are the limitations of our research on hidden social life when we only have access to what they want us to know? (2) Why and for whom are we producing research on these groups? Or, put another way, what ethical considerations and problems related to intent and research agendas arise in studies of neo-Nazism and other forms of organized racism? (3) What is the emotional labour involved in studying these groups for the researcher and how might it be used in a productive manner?
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Described as one of the most intellectually formidable cultural and social theorists of our time, Paul Gilroy has reshaped debates on racism, nationalism and multiculturalism. In April 2018, Prof. Paul Gilroy returned to Norway for the first time in over a decade for a series of public and academic events in Oslo and Bergen. Gilroy appeared at events held at the Houses of Literature in Oslo and Bergen, and the Universities of Oslo and Bergen, which took place between the 17th and 20th of April 2018 and marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of Gilroy’s seminal work for which he is arguably best known, his 1993 classic The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness [Harvard University Press]. This article is a transcript of a conversation held at the House of Literature in Oslo on the 17th of April 2018 between Professor Paul Gilroy (King's College London, UK) and Associate Researcher Sindre Bangstad (KIFO, Norway). It has been annotated for clarifications and contextualization in an effort to bring this conversation in line with Professor Gilroy’s work, legacy and thoughts on the current historical moment, in light of his own intellectual labour. As such this interview illuminates some of the ways in which Paul Gilroy offers a diagnosis of the contemporary political climate while also accounting for this moment in relationship to his own work throughout the years on the interconnectedness of race, racism, and nationalism.
Discursive Constructions of White Nordic Masculinities in Right-wing Populist Media
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Using superordinate intersectionality as a theoretical framework, this article explores notions of men and masculinities within right wing populism. It is attentive to how the right-wing populist media in Finland and Sweden construct white Nordic masculinities through discursive interactions across several axes of difference: gender (masculinities); sexuality (heterosexuality); social class (elites); and race (whitenesses). Employing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as methodological approach, we show how the discursive constructions of white Nordic masculinities are context contingent, rendering them subject to constant reinterpretation and repositioning, at times privileging some axes of social structuring over others. By drawing out the subtle similarities and discrete differences embedded in the discursive constructions of right-wing populist media, our approach gives a more fine-grained understanding of the nuance to men and masculinities in the study of right wing populism. B...