Elisa Bellè, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (November 2020-December 2022)

Yes of course, it’s a pleasure to meet you! I graduated in Sociology, with a special Double degree program: I spent the first two years at the University of Trento, and the following two years in Dresden, Germany, at the Technische Universität. That was a highly formative experience, because at a very early stage of my academic education I discovered a different way to approach sociology, learning to compare and combine perspectives. 
Then I came back to Italy, after 2 years and a half spent abroad. And that was another decisive moment for my academic pathway, as I started to work on my Master’s thesis. I decided to focus on gender and political participation, starting to deal with gender and politics, a theme that is still part of my research agenda. I analysed the political careers of men and women in 4 Italian political parties (2 centre-left and 2 centre-right), using narrative interviews, combined with a perspective on the parties as gendered organizations.

After that, I worked for 2 years, but the interest in research and Sociology found its way back again. As a result, I decided to try the admission at the Doctoral school of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento. For three years I had the privilege to work with a very dynamic research unit, specialized in the study of organizations, gender, masculinities issues. For my PhD thesis I decided to continue using the gender&organization approach in an interdisciplinary manner, to study political participation. Plus, I decided to accept a second challenge, a methodological one: I wanted to discover the ethnographic method, putting it at the service of politics. I studied the internal life of an Italian political party named Lega Nord (Northern League), which at that time was a federalist/regionalist rightwing force, born at the beginning of the 80’s from the ashes of the old Italian party system. I conducted an ethnographic fieldwork in 2 local party branches: one in a small town of Veneto (North East of Italy) and the other in the large urban context of Lombardia (North West). First of all, my attempt was to re-focus on political parties as territorial organizations (and especially the Lega). Second, I wanted to analyze the party from an internal perspective, as the emergent result of the daily work of militants and local leaders. The basic concept was to be there ? as Clifford Geertz says ? and discover the socio-political world of the party using an immersive technique. Plus, I wanted to compare two extremely different territories: on the one hand, a small town far from the organizational centers of the party, and on the other a very big city, well connected to the internal national leadership of the party.

The final goal was to study the overlap between organizational and territorial aspects in producing different forms of participation and different communities of partisans, although in the same party.

Of course! The first idea of my Marie Curie project was developed in Paris, at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE), when I was there as a visiting fellow in February 2018. 
I have to say, discovering the intense life of the CEE was inspiring for me. I started to participate in the general seminars, the seminars on methods etc. In that period, I began to process some basic ideas: the goal was to go more in-depth in the study of the so-called “populist radical right” (PRR).

I had a couple of very preliminary intuitions, which I proposed to Professor Haegel. She suggested to discuss about that with Professor Nonna Mayer, one of the CEE’s experts on PRR. So, I met Professor Mayer at the CEE, and I have to say that encounter was a turning point. She was incredibly helpful in the elaboration of the structure of the project, in precising the analytical structure, the research goals, the theoretical framework. She was also very encouraging throughout all the long process of submitting the proposal, which as we know is challenging and highly competitive (particularly considering that the ethnographic approach is not exactly mainstream). As a consequence, I had to finalize a strong proposal, both in terms of solidity, scientific impact, and innovation of the structure. 
I tried the Marie Curie call a first time, unsuccessfully, and then I tried again a second time. After the first refusal, the support of Professor Mayer, the Conseil d’Unité and the MAPS office were really important in keeping my energy alive and trying the second time, that was successful.

Now briefly about the project: it is called ERRANT, standing for Ethnography of Radical Right Activism across Nations and Territories. The structure of the research is comparative and focuses on two leading actors of PRR family: the Italian Lega and the French Rassemblement National. The main goals are three, corresponding in my opinion to three research gaps in the study of PRR that is urgent to fill:

• The first one is grassroot activism. The PRR has been studied so far much more from the electoral perspective, and less from the perspective of activists. Therefore, I want to shed light on the internal life of these two parties, and on the men and women that engage. Why and how they decide to join the parties? Which are the main pathways of activism (social background, ethnicity, gender, class and cultural capital differences, etc.)? What happens once they have entered? How is constructed a sense of collective belonging?
• The second goal is, again and especially now, the territory. Political parties are prevalently approached as national actors, stressing the role of their national leaders (particularly PRR formations). However, these forces are very often extremely effective in constructing a strong territorial rootedness. Thus, the basic idea is to go there, where Lega and RN are already mainstream, institutionalized forces, to explore the genetic territories and the social production of their consent.
• The third goal is the most experimental. It was carefully analyzed with Pr. Mayer. The main idea is the following: PPR are polarizing and dividing societies across Europe. Our aim therefore is to investigate how these frontlines of conflict work across territories, and exactly where these parties are culturally hegemonic. The strongest lines of polarization seem to be ethnicity and sexuality. In my opinion it has become urgent to examine the making-of of this conflicts, focusing both on party activists and their most direct social opponents in local civil societies. What is going on in our society when PRR parties and progressive civil society confront and conflict on gender/sexuality and ethnicity? How is constructed, represented, enacted this conflict? And can we, as publicly engaged researcher, try to build bridges across internal frontiers of fear?

My first curiosity was for parties, gender amd grassroot activism in general. Since I was very interested in masculinity as a central element in producing political identity, I found that Lega Nord was the most interesting political force, because it is historically characterized by a sexual imaginary of virilism, which has always played a crucial role in in constructing a collective identity and a sovereignist imaginary. So, I choose the Lega.

The fieldwork was an incredible occasion to discover a different social world, in terms of political values, beliefs, ways of representing social reality, etc. Of course, it was challenging, but at the same time I was deeply transformed by this experience, both as human being and as a researcher.

And I still believe that investigating such a challenging social milieu could be an innovative contribution to political sociology and collective knowledge. As a matter of fact, the study of right-wing activism is very rare: political ethnographies have been so far much more focused on left-wing movements, because qualitative research requires the construction of a human relationship with the social actors under analysis, and sometimes the distance can be hard to manage. Thus, we don’t have enough ethnographic material on PRR, and I am convinced that it is time to do it: we are already late!

The starting point was the visiting fellowship, back in 2018. When I discovered the life of the CEE, I was so fascinated witch such an energizing atmosphere, full of stimulating topics to discuss, to read, full of encounters and cutting-edge researches. In addition, the solid research tradition on PRR, as well as that on partisan cultures, played an important role in my decision.

Besides, a third crucial point was the methodological openness of the CEE. In fact, often political science and sociology consider qualitative methods, and especially ethnography, as minor, anectodical, not fully “scientific”. On the contrary, at the CEE I immediately felt that quantitative, qualitative, voters, grassroots perspectives were equally treated as scientifically important, which made me feel welcome and stimulated. 
Moreover, the CEE is engaging in a crucial scientific question: the centre/periphery divides that are splitting the social structure of Europe, opposing central metropolitan areas and regional areas that feel deprived and marginalized. In this regard, I believe I can bring a fresh empirical contribution to an already advanced debate, by focusing on the complex world of the province.

Well, thank you Elisa! If I had one last question, it would be: why France? Why comparing Italy to France? 
Firstly, because I have always been particularly curios about French politics and culture, for personal reasons. Yet, in terms of scientific comparison, RN and Lega were a perfect match,: both are undergoing a big transformation, the RN with the so called “dédiabolisation”, and the Lega with its recent turn from regionalism to nationalism. Moreover, they are elaborating opposite strategies of institutionalization. RN is trying to give a renewed image of moderatism, whereas Lega reached its major consent radicalizing its message. Thus, there is an extremely interesting tension between radicalization and deradicalization that I think can be useful not only for comparing the two parties, but also for the analysis of the European PRR family.

One last reflection about our current situation under this terrible pandemic time. It has indeed become more of a concern accessing the field, discovering new scientific environments, given the constraint of having to work remotely. 
I have to say that starting a new scientific journey in this moment is not easy, but I’m trying to face the difficulties. I think that the current health crisis will have an influence on my fieldwork, when I will be in these two cities. I have always been interested in the use of public space made by PRR and I believe that observing, analyzing, reasoning about political participation and public space in this specific time of social distancing will be challenging but interesting.

Of course, it seems quite challenging to be doing social research while there is supposed to be no social life!
Yes, it will be complicated, but I think that we have also to stay open to the unexpected. In sociological terms we have the opportunity to observe something that was unthinkable just few months ago. We only have to put at work our scientific imagination, in order to do some kind of “bricolage” of our tools, readapting them to the new situation.