From an apparently apolitical object – a carnival in a small town in South of France - the communication intends to explore a) sociologically, to what extent social networks linked to this recreational activity are important for political local careers and b) methodologically how they can opportunely be used by social scientists in order to lead an ethnographical exploration of the local political world. The hypothesis that will be presented are based on a long-term qualitative research, which encounters some methodological dilemmas. Actually, which strategies and protocols the social scientists can implement when the social practices he/she observes are partly licit or buried ? In fact, the carnival networks are very closely linked with forms of local clientelism. How can also a “foreign” observer make his/her ethnographical observation when the social practices he/she wants to explore are socially closed for the indigene population (several mechanisms of social cooptation, interrelationship…) ? In order to understand how this local form of carnival (the fecos) has become a legitimating institution of the socialist local elites – and not this subversive practice which its promoters affirms it would still be – we have chosen to proceed by an extensive ethnographical observation : long-term immersion in the local context, direct observations, municipal archives, ordinary conversations with autochthonic people, formal and informal interviews of carnival leaders and outsiders, political majority and opposition elites, etc.
