Taking the side of the survey

The ethnography of mobilizations often runs headlong into the problem of researchers’ identification as engaged actors, thereby hampering access to less mobilized individuals and thus limiting the ability to understand the role of ordinary relationships in conflicts. After a discussion of this obstacle, the article shows the value of affirming an investigative posture by using directive survey procedures (questionnaires and genealogical investigations) within the framework of an ethnographic approach. These procedures allow researchers neutralize their position, which is conducive to the study of relationships to political dissent, in all their ambivalence, by placing them within ordinary sociabilities which escape the logic of militant action.