From angry monologues to engaged dialogue?: On self-reflexivity, critical discursive psychology and studying polarised conflict.

This chapter presents an approach to conducting research on polarised conflict we call engaged dialogue, focused on critical self-reflexivity and the researcher’s position in relation to those studied. Developing insights from our own research experiences of dialogical interactions with radical nationalist actors and others in conflicts surrounding nationalism and multiculturalism in a Finnish context, we argue for a sustained, self-reflective dialogical engagement on the part of researchers with the people studied. Without a dialogical approach, research risks reifying popular, mediatised representations and self-presentations of parties in conflict, thus reproducing or intensifying the deadlocks of polarised conflict, rather than unlocking them.