One of the questions that the papers here as a whole invite is what is or what should be the point of a critical social psychology of racism? What questions should such an approach propose? What this special issue contributes to the study of racism is a focus on disruption, resistance and transformative practices. While social psychology has often preferred approaches that account for the expression of racism (whether this is located in individual minds, social institutions or cultural practices) and/or the psychological consequences of racism (on attitudes, stereotypes, representations, identities and self-esteem), 1 we have chosen empirical projects and theoretical discussions that focus on the moments in which racist and racialising practices are made visible, unsettled and so disrupted. This invites analysis into the opportunities for transgressing racialised networks of power, the social psychological dynamics of resistance and so the possibilities for challenging racism and social change. Hence what is valuable about these papers is that they begin a discussion of how we may find ways to contest and so undermine racism-and what subject positions there are available in different social contexts for this endeavour. 2 This special issue as a whole makes a very significant argument: that a critical social psychology of racism (and 'whiteness' 3 ) needs to consider the social and psychological possibilities and conditions for disrupting racialising practices and claims to privilege, belonging and knowing. This argument is worked out in the papers through a series of implicit questions:
-How should we understand racism: both in day-to-day and institutionalised environments?
Contract/grant sponser: LSE Department of Sociology and LSE Teaching and Learning Centre. 1 As Leach (2002) has pointed out, much classical social psychology views racist activity as 'a function of weak personality, biased perception or ethnocentric categorization . . . .[ultimately locating] prejudice in the individuated person rather than in societal practices and institutions' (p. 440).
2 This is not to propose that the dynamics of racism and strategies of disruption are in any way complete, uniform or universal across culture and history. We regret that the range of contexts discussed in the special issue is not broader in terms of illustrating how 'race', racism and resistance are always produced in specific cultural and historical locations. Three of the five papers here interrogate the associated colonial contexts of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia. These were chosen as they speak to the issues that we see as crucial in the analysis of racism: 'whiteness', subjectivity, embodiment and resistance.
3 Just as is now common practice with the term 'race', we have chosen to disrupt and de-essentialise readings of 'whiteness' using parentheses.