At a different level, the framing of culture, and subsequently identities, as static is problematic because it does not take into account the broader social, structural and political realities that shape or determine intergroup relationships in different spaces and in everyday practices. The ways in which practices of exclusion based on race and other markers of identity play out within and between groups may be rendered invisible. There is limited attention given to the symbolic power and privileges afforded by our different social group memberships and how these may impact upon relationships and everyday interactions. Like other authors (e.g. Martin-Baro ยด, 1996;Parker, 2005;Riggs, 2004;Squire, 2000) we argue that critical engagement with symbolic power in research and practice across cultural and racial boundaries is central to transformative practice.
We have struggled with these issues and challenges in our own work and from our different social locations. I, Chris, am an immigrant to Australia who has had to negotiate discourses about race and belonging following emigration from South Africa. Here, in Australia I have been researching with immigrant and Indigenous peoples' responses to intergroup contact with a focus on explicating the resilient and resistant ways these groups respond to oppressive power relationships (e.g. Sonn & Fisher, 2003). My position as an immigrant outside the dominant white ethnic group and outside the non-dominant Indigenous communities has offered me a vantage point from which to explore the multiple and complex dynamics involved in negotiating race relations and the implications for identity. Based on this work it has become clearer that our taken for granted social and cultural identities and the power afforded by our different group memberships have significant implications for research and practice (Sonn, 2004). This has led to a concern to explicate how different ways of knowing can contribute to oppression and exclusion and the devaluing of different social and cultural realities.
I, Meredith, am a 4th generation white Australian. My research into race relations and racism led me away from researching the 'other' and their marginalization to investigating the dominance and privilege of the normative 'mainstream' group. In Australia this means focusing, in particular, on white Australians. The aim of this sort of research is to find ways in which dominance and privilege of white people in Australia has been constructed, and to problematise and tackle it as part of working towards attaining justice and equity. Racial dominance and privilege in Australia stem from an underlying ideology of white superiority and hegemony that disadvantages and marginalizes particular groups and maintain oppressive power relations between groups (Watts, 1994;Watts & Abdul-Adil, 1994). Rather than simply focusing on the 'victim' of these unfair power relations, interrogating whiteness as the source for continuing disadvantage and colonizing practices and discourses aims to decentre and displace the central position of dominance and privilege (Frankenberg, 2001;Nakayama & Krizek, 1999).
While there are many 'mainstream' practices that may essentialize and simplify other cultures, there is a growing interest highlighting the complexity of culture and intercultural relationships and to find useful and empowering ways of working with these complexities. Hook ( 2005) for example has argued that the work of postcolonial critics such as Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and Steve Biko, among others, may offer ways of reconstructing social psychological narratives and concepts as part of the process of developing new discourses of resistance. We concur with Hook (2005) that the writing of those who have been marginalized and oppressed hold exciting possibilities for developing a transformative psychology. In our view, Linda Tuhiwai Smith's (1999) proposal for decolonizing methodologies is an example of writing that can contribute to the development of a transformative psychology.