Bourdieu the ethnographer: Grounding the habitus of the ‘far-right’ voter

Abstract

This article pushes the work of Bourdieu to more ethnographic directions within international social sciences, particularly studies of everyday (in)security. Thematically, it looks at how transformations in global politics towards increased xenophobia and the normalisation of ‘far-right’ politics can be examined through mobilising ‘Bourdieu the ethnographer’ (Blommaert, 2005). Using the example of Sweden, and an ethnography of everyday life around a refugee resettlement facility in 2013 and 2014, the article argues that Bourdieu the ethnographer provides important conceptual tools for understanding the way in which logics of (in)security shifted ever further into everyday life. This thus offers an interesting way to think about the normalisation of far-right and xenophobic politics more broadly. Through conducting this specific type of Bourdieu-inspired ethnography, the article empirically grounds the ‘habitus’ of the so-called ‘far-right’ voter. Taking seriously the temporal dimension of habitus, Bourdieu the ethnographer orients analysis towards transformation, evolution and flux, allowing ‘far-right’ to be conceived relationally. In the Swedish case, we are thus able to trace the shift from a ‘welcoming’ to an ‘exclusionary’ type of politics.