Stories of Relative Privilege: Power and Social Change In Feminist Community Psychology

American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 28, No. 6, 2000

Stories of Relative Privilege: Power and SocialChange in Feminist Community Psychology1

Anne Mulvey2

University of Massachusetts

Marion TerenzioThe Sage Colleges

Jean HillNew Mexico Highlands University

Meg A. BondUniversity of Massachusetts

Ingrid HuygensWORKWISE

Heather R. HamertonUniversity of Waikato

Sharon CahillGlasgow Caledonian University

1This paper was developed using an innovative, highly interactive, and mutual editing processfollowing requests from some feminist community psychologists for a more supportive rela-tionship between editors and authors. After developing a narrative framework, the co-editorsidentified relevant material from among paper submissions and invited the authors to reframetheir work in narrative form for this article. Co-editors and storytellers interacted by e-mail, FAX, and phone over several months bridging three countries and more communities,responding to each others’ work, and creating this article in the process.

2To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology, Universityof Massachusetts, 870 Broadway St., No. 1, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854-3043. e-mail:Anne [email protected]. The address of each story contributor appears with her story.

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0091-0562/00/1200-0883$18.00/0 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation

884 Mulvey, Terenzio, Hill, Bond, Huygens, Hamerton, and Cahill

Stories about community work in New Zealand and Scotland are presentedto describe and reflect on issues central to feminist community psychology.Organizing a lesbian festival, Ingrid Huygens describes feminist processesused to equalize resources across Maori (indigenous) and Pakeha (white)groups. Heather Hamerton presents her experiences as a researcher usingcollective memory work to reflect on adolescent experiences related to gender,ethnicity, and class. Sharon Cahill chronicles dilemmas and insights fromfocus groups about anger with women living in public housing in Scotland.Each story chronicles experiences related to oppression and privilege, anddescribes the author’s emotions and reflections. Individually and collectively,the stories illustrate the potential offered by narrative methods and participa-tory processes for challenging inequalities and encouraging social justice.

KEY WORDS: feminist community psychology; narratives; power; privilege; social change.

We do this bridging by naming our selves and by telling our stories in our own words.—C. Moraga & G. Anzaldua (1981, p. 23), This Bridge Called My Back

The purpose of this special issue is to ‘‘bridge’’ and strengthen communityand feminist psychologies in terms of conceptual frameworks and relatedopportunities for building just and inclusive communities. Both feminismand community psychology value contextual analyses, challenge simplisticdichotomies, and recognize the importance of structural power and thedynamics of oppression and privilege (Fine, 1992; Lykes, Banuazizi, Liem, &Morris, 1996; Mulvey, 1988; Pheterson, 1996; Rieff, 1968; Ryan, 1981; Swift,Bond, & Serrano-Garcia, 2000). In this article, Sharon Cahill, HeatherHamerton, and Ingrid Huygens share stories about their community workin order (1) to explore dynamics, dilemmas, and learnings related to powerand social justice, and (2) to show benefits that narrative methods offerfor community research and action. Each narrator draws on feminist andcommunity perspectives in discussing aspects of personal identity (gender,race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age) and professional and politicalroles (e.g., researcher, activist). Before sharing their stories, the power ofnarratives to support or challenge social inequalities is discussed, and centralstory themes are introduced.

Who Tells What Stories? Whose Stories Are Heard?

Recent feminist and community literatures have shown the positivepotential of narrative in research and in community building (Marecek,Fine, & Kidder, 1997; Polkinghorne, 1988; Salzer, 1998; Thomas & Rappa-port, 1996). Stories provide an important vehicle for understanding andtransforming individual and political realities since they allow the expres-sion of important relationships that are difficult to recognize using tradi-

Stories of Relative Privilege 885

tional quantitative methods (Reinharz, 1992; Unger, 1996; Wilkinson, 1996).Stories allow shifts across time and context, while facilitating contextualized,multilayered understanding of personal identities, social relationships, andcultural landscapes. Good stories paint pictures with details that activelyengage listeners. The best stories weave together past and present, engageintellectually and emotionally, and connect personal, political, physical, andeven metaphysical realms.

Stories that are distributed widely generally support or at least do notchallenge inequitable economic, political, and cultural systems. In contrast,stories of nondominant, marginalized groups are often not distributedwidely or are available only in restricted forums (e.g., minority languagesources or lesbian newspapers). While stories have liberatory potential,they are social constructions that reflect the narrator’s location and pointof view. Thus, stories that become community narratives generally reflectvalues and experiences of dominant groups.

Feminist scholarship, and more recently, community psychology, haveinvoked the metaphor of voice to describe the importance of who speaks,what topics are talked about or studied, what methods are consideredappropriate and useful, and which individuals and groups define rules ofdiscourse (e.g., Davis, 1994; Fine, 1992; Rappaport, 1995; Reinharz, 1992;Riger, 1992, 1993). The metaphor of voice is an apt one to illustrate thispoint since voice relates to both storytelling and power distribution. Posi-tions of power and privilege have been associated with the right to speakand to be listened to. Not being allowed to speak and not being heard havebeen associated with powerlessness and oppression. Oppressed groups oftencome to know themselves collectively, to speak as a group, and to usecollective rather than individualistic metaphors (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1999;Lykes, 1994a, 1994b). The stories that we tell and those that we are inter-ested in listening to are likely to be related to our own positions of powerand of oppression.

As with other methods and mediums, the story is a tool that may beused toward multiple ends. The narrative process may bring order fromchaos, reveal hidden patterns and meaning, and move teller and listenerstoward clarity while fostering feelings of connectedness or ‘‘engaged’’knowledge (Fiol-Matta, 1996; Miller, 1976). These outcomes, of course,depend on what kind of story is being told, by and to whom. The use ofdescriptive narrative and critical reflection in considering research andaction from multiple vantage points has the potential to encourage a sophis-ticated understanding of intended and unintended consequences of commu-nity work. Talking about power and privilege in relation to our personalhistories and our contemporary identities may allow us to better understandwhether our work fosters supportive communities rooted in distributiveand social justice. This, in turn, may facilitate greater accountability and


equity among groups (Pheterson, 1990; Thomas & Rappaport, 1996). Thus,as others have noted, sharing stories about community work may be usedto support and further shared goals of feminism and community psychology(Salzer, 1998; Rappaport, 1995; Lykes, 1994b).

Three Stories About Power and Powerful Paradoxes

Elsewhere inthis special issue, themesare discussedprimarily in theoret-ical terms. In this paper, key themes are brought to life in multidimensionalways by using stories to explore subtle but powerful challenges associatedwith particular research and action processes. These stories also examineissues central to feminist community psychology that are not discussed indepth in other articles. Specifically, the stories here address the following:

1. Some of the consequences of our own past and present identitiesand roles for effectiveness in community work;

2. The relative ease of seeing our own individual or group oppressionand the difficulty of seeing our own privilege, coupled with theimportance of working with both to foster change;

3. The multiple obstacles to collaborating fully in community work,especially across differences associated with structural inequalityand oppression; and

4. The possibilities narrative methods and participatory processes offerfor challenging power inequities and encouraging economic andsocial justice.

In the stories below, Ingrid, Heather, and Sharon, respectively, chronicledilemmas and choice points in their work, and share insights and lessonslearned from their personalexperiences, professional involvement and socio-political commitments. Each of them considers tensions and paradoxes asso-ciated with being in roles, or having social identities, associated with powerand resources to shape community processes and ways of interpreting them.

Ingrid Huygens, a white (Pakeha) New Zealander, describes her expe-riences as participant-conceptualizer in an alcohol and drug action groupworking with indigenous women to organize a national lesbian festival. Shereflects on her group’s learning about sharing resources, cultural protocols,and decision-making power in the terms of the less powerful group.

Heather, also a Pakeha New Zealander, writes about her experiencesof doing research with a group of adult women theorizing memories oftheir teenage years. She reflects on the importance for white women tomake visible their own ethnicity, and the impact this has on research andother activities. This leads to an acknowledgment that white women inNew Zealand experience a complex interplay of privilege and oppression.


She also reflects on some of the tensions of attempting to conduct feministresearch in an egalitarian fashion.

Concerned about power and privilege as a working-class feminist,Sharon Cahill describes dilemmas and insights associated with doing re-search about anger with women living in public housing in Glasgow, Scot-land. Sharon chronicles the reflexive process she engaged in, and discussesan emerging recognition that she had not previously thought much abouther own privilege or power. It was only by working with women who sheeventually realized had less privilege than she did that she learned whatrelative privilege actually meant in a particular context. Sharon’s storyraises questions central to all of the stories: Are women’s voices being heard,or even politely listened to and, if they are, which women’s voices are they?

In quite different ways, each narrator (or her group) encourages partici-pation by individuals or groups with less access to power or resourcesin order to establish equity and to encourage progressive change. Thestorytellers’ own experiences of inequality associated with gender, class,sexual orientation, or immigrant status serve as valuable resources. Privilegeassociated with identities or social groups is recognized in relation to othersin relatively marginal positions.

Acknowledging positions of relative privilege, Ingrid, Heather, andSharon grapple with how to be more accountable as researchers, as activists,as professionals, and as members of dominant groups. They also discusshow their own identities were revealed, challenged, and transformedthrough these processes. We hope that these stories suggest ways thatfeminist community psychology encourages engaged, participatory, andreflexive processes that may enrich and change not only the communitiesin which we work, but also ourselves. Now, for the stories. We hear fromIngrid first, then from Heather, and lastly, from Sharon.

FEMINIST POWER SHARING: LESSONS FOR COMMUNITYPSYCHOLOGY

Ingrid Huygens3,4

This story describes my challenges and learning within the lesbianfeminist movement in Aotearoa (indigenous term for New Zealand) onsharing power with less powerful groups in my community. My learning3The author can be contacted at WORKWISE, 4 Westmere Crescent, Auckland 1002, NewZealand. e-mail: [email protected].

4My grateful thanks to Colleen Loomis, University of Maryland, for agreeing at the Sixth SCRABiennial conference to provide encouragement and comment—without her the first draft ofthis article would not have been written. Thanks also to Miriam Kauders and Fe Day, membersof Lesbian Alcohol and Drug Action, Auckland, for their support and feedback on later drafts.


was further informed through the relationships between Pakeha5 and Maori(indigenous)6 lesbians. I believe that the lessons my friends and I learnedthrough feminist ideology and lesbian community building predisposed usto respond to challenges by Maori women with efforts at procedural andstructural power sharing in our communities and organizations. My storyis about what happened when a group of Pakeha lesbians attempted topractice feminist principles of power sharing in our work with Maori women.Thus, it is equally the story of a group’s learning—and even a generation’slearning—and personal learning.

My personal background contributed to my awareness of the complexi-ties of power, cultural dominance, and personal survival during socialchange. I was among the first generation of children born to Dutch immi-grants in Aotearoa in the 1950s. As I was growing up, a pervasive British-derived monoculturalism was expressed as a general intolerance of ‘‘for-eigners’’ and ‘‘foreign languages.’’ Since my first language was Dutch, andyet I could ‘‘pass’’ as any other white New Zealander, I could silentlyobserve the dominant group’s blindness to their privilege and control.

Political action for and by women, and political action for and by Maori,came to the awareness of New Zealanders in the 1970s. My introduction toactivist work in feminism and antiracism came at about the same time.During this decade Maori people were asserting their rights in many forms.Maori women, in particular, were acting as critical voices in getting themessage across to mainstream New Zealanders. Also, from 1973 onward,feminist activism was stimulated by United Women’s Conventions.7 Whilethe public face of feminist activity was turned to exposing the oppressionof women by patriarchal structures and processes, there was a focus withinfeminist and lesbian groups on exploring power inequalities and oppressionin our own movement. The most potent insights for me came not fromhow to claim our rights and assert our power as a marginalized community(that was ‘‘business as usual’’ to an immigrant child), but from how torecognize the power of privilege and control within our community, andhow to share power within our networks from a position of dominance.

Lesbian Alcohol and Drug Action

Within this context, I helped to found Lesbian Alcohol and DrugAction (LADA), a lesbian health promotion group. We were committed5Pakeha is the term given to settlers of British and European heritage in Aotearoa/NewZealand.

6nga iwi Maori are the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa/New Zealand, now constituting approxi-mately 12% of the population, similar to the proportion of African Americans in theUnited States.

7Biennial national women’s conventions were organized by New Zealand feminists from 1973to 1979.


to making our lesbian community less dependent on alcohol, and a saferplace for those who were in recovery from alcohol or drug dependence.We considered how we were meeting the needs of Maori lesbians since wewere a predominantly Pakeha group. In general, Maori women kept theirdistance from white feminist organizations, and challenged them explicitlyabout their white supremacy and monocultural use of organizational powerand resources. Their critiques kept the focus on equalizing power on theterms of the less powerful group, rather than through more comfortablenotions such as ‘‘cultural diversity’’ or ‘‘biculturalism’’ devised by the domi-nant group.8

Working With Indigenous Lesbians—The National Lesbian Festival

At the time there existed in the lesbian community a group for Maoriand Pacific Island lesbians, called Wahine Mo Nga Wahine o te Moana Nuia Kiwa, meaning ‘‘women for the women of the Pacific.’’ We met formallywith them to discuss how we could support issues relating to alcohol anddrugs for Maori lesbians, and suggested that we could seek funding to havea Maori worker alongside our Pakeha project worker. They explained thatif they were to place a worker with us, it would be culturally dangerousfor that worker. Our approach to alcohol and drug issues was a Pakehaone, and we would be unable to support her in attempting a Maori approachto alcohol and drug issues. Alcohol had been a significant instrument ofcolonization in Aotearoa,9 and for Maori women to heal from alcohol anddrug issues would require a full healing from colonization. They offeredto be available to us as a group, and said that we could turn to them if wewanted to consult or collaborate on a particular issue. Finally, they sug-gested that they could monitor our efforts and give us feedback as towhether our work was meeting the needs of Maori women. Although wehad not considered it before, we could dimly appreciate the issue of culturaldanger—it was my first conscious experience of being in the ‘‘blind domi-nant group’’ and having to acknowledge that I did not know how it felt tobe Maori in Aotearoa.

The relationship we had with Wahine Mo Nga Wahine was testedduring the process of organizing a national lesbian festival, called ‘‘Celebrat-ing Ourselves,’’ for which we gained a significant amount of public money.LADA was the formal sponsor of the festival, with overall financial respon-sibility, and a festival steering committee was established to which all inter-ested community members were invited. Given our agreement, we askedWahine Mo Nga Wahine to share the decision making. They asked two of8See, e.g., Donna Awatere (1983).9See, e.g., ‘‘Our Grandmother’s inheritance’’ in Warren, Griffiths, and Huygens (1989).


their newer members to join the steering committee, and these womenwere among those in the early meetings who challenged the organizers toprovide space at the festival for Maori women, women of color, womenwith disability, and young women.

The festival format was coordinated and approved by the steeringcommittee. At the initiative of the Maori representatives and Wahine MoNga Wahine, arrangements were made for local tribal women to take thelead in a powhiri to welcome lesbians from around the country as theopening to the festival. A powhiri is a formal protocol of encounter betweenpeople who belong to an area and their visitors, wherein the visitors arecalled forward, the cosmos and meeting place are acknowledged, and theancestors of each group honored. It is structured as the occasion duringwhich the visitors may first safely enter the hosts’ homeground. For WahineMo Nga Wahine to conduct this ceremony was an assertion of their rightto do so; it was their place as indigenous women to act as formal hosts towomen from around the country arriving in their area. It also expressedour desire to affirm Maori culture as one of the cultures dominant atthe festival.

The powhiri was a powerful and moving experience. A key localspeaker evoked the Maori goddesses as we welcomed women who hadtraveled for days to be at this first national lesbian event. The festivalitself went extremely well—four days of workshops, forums, activities, andentertainment for 1300 women. But at the open forum on the second day,a Maori woman explained, rather ruefully, that we had made a mockeryof the powhiri by holding a dawn ceremony earlier on the first day for asmall group of women. This ceremony had been an expression of whitefeminist spirituality, and we had not given it much thought, our focus beingon the powhiri. We had certainly missed the significance of white culture‘‘getting in first,’’ and thereby, however unwittingly, undercutting the powerof the powhiri. On hearing the feedback, the reactions of the Pakeha womenon the steering committee varied from the robust (‘‘Oh well, we made amistake—our intentions were good’’) to the dismissive (‘‘They are beingpicky, and what is all the fuss about anyway?’’) to real distress that we hadmessed up such a highly charged and important occasion.

I felt abashed that for all our enthusiasm for the powhiri, we hadnot fully understood the significance of the ceremony. I certainly had notperceived the spiritual equivalence of the two events. Nevertheless, I feltproud of our deep involvement in the powhiri; the local Pakeha womenhad supported the Maori hosts with sincerity, the incoming visitors hadtreated the welcome with respect, and the encounter had contained all theawe for ancestry and the environment, acknowledgment of past grief andgrievances, love and hope for the future that the best Maori–Pakeha lesbian


event could have created at that time. So I felt certain of the integrity ofthe powhiri, and viewed our mistake primarily as important learning andexperience. We had been blind to the fact that our Western way of organiz-ing timetables meant that no one had looked at the overall picture from aspiritual point of view. Even if we had, we may not have noticed our culturalusurpation of the opening and we had not formally presented the timetableto the Maori group for approval. We were being sensitive to the fact thattheir group was busy and overcommitted, and we were satisfied that theone Maori woman attending the steering group at the time seemed to thinkthe timetable was fine. Indeed, if we had followed strict protocols of powersharing, we ought to have maintained a formal relationship with WahineMo Nga Wahine, and scheduled a final meeting to ensure that both ourgroups approved the festival in its entirety.

The Maori women saw the experience as evidence of the culturaldanger they had predicted, but also acknowledged that they had been busyand had not supported their representatives as fully as required. LADAorganized a follow-up meeting to discuss the issue, and proposed that halfof the remaining funding be given to Wahine Mo Nga Wahine in recognitionthat the festival had not met their needs, the other half to women of coloron the same basis. Resource sharing of this nature has been one responseused in Aotearoa to challenges of inequity. The women of color returnedtheir portion, saying that since they were not an organized community,they could not use the money. For the Maori lesbians, issues around powerand accountability for the festival money were a contributing factor toconflict in ensuing years. LADA and the festival certainly played a role inthese dynamics, since the festival honored the local tribal women in particu-lar, which probably helped them become, for a time, a new power groupwithin the Maori lesbians. Although local Maori always have a particularauthority in their region, Maori women from other regions challenged themover their accountability for the money, which split them apart as a group.

For the Pakeha women, our understanding of the implications of allthese events was slow, and it has taken many years, even decades, to fullygrasp what we learned and what we set in motion. In retrospect, we sawthat traditional processes of negotiation for indigenous groups may beperverted or frozen during colonization, and may be reawakened as powerand resources (however miniscule) are shared. Much intergroup conflict inpostcolonial situations around the world could be viewed this way.

Generally, the members of LADA have retained strong personal com-mitments to antiracist work. Relationships with the Maori women involvedremained respectful, and our efforts to share power may have contributedto a widespread acknowledgment by Maori that some Pakeha make sincereattempts to work collaboratively.


Learnings/Reflections

My learnings were threefold. First, I learned that the traditional methodof giving voice to less powerful groups, such as minority representationwithin existing decision-making structures, is inadequate. Relying on oneor two representatives at a single layer of a project is particularly weak. Evenwhere intentions are honorable, minority representatives are in danger ofisolation both from their constituency and within the dominant group.

Second, I learned that, as Maori women had warned, dominant groupculture can indeed be dangerous to less powerful groups at very subtle levels,and in ways invisible to those in the dominant group. When less powerfulgroups warn of cultural danger and cultural blindness, they need to be takenseriously by those attempting social change. The lesson in power sharing wasthat if you attempt to share power, you must do it wholeheartedly and withfull disclosure, and not hide (deliberately or inadvertently) issues from theother party. There were several ways that we might have become aware ofour cultural blindness: we could have held more meetings with our new part-ner, so that our cultural assumptions would have been revealed sooner orlater; or we could have presumed that in a new power relationship we wouldrequire education about the partner’s culture, and we could have taken theinitiative to undertake such training for ourselves.

Third, for power sharing to be successful, the dominant group needsto be willing to commit time, emotion, and resources at all levels of anorganization or project, and members need to be willing to make personalchanges in their views and behaviour (Mansbridge, 1973). In complementto this, the less powerful group needs to be willing to enter into a relationshipand to give their time and emotion to the process. While the dominantgroup could well be expected to educate itself about the historical andcultural reality of its partners, the less powerful partner nevertheless needsto offer feedback, monitoring, and a certain amount of commitment to therelationship. I also learned, however, that it may be problematic to expectequal time commitment from the less powerful group, since members aregenerally experiencing greater stresses and possess fewer resources thandominant group members. Upon reflection, if the slender resources of theMaori women discouraged meeting, our group should have made it easierto meet, e.g., by our group visiting them with our festival schedule and askingfor feedback. Thus, an alternative to the common response of blamingthe failure of a power-sharing relationship on the other group’s lack ofcommitment, is for the dominant group to become more creative aboutways for the partner to give feedback and provide monitoring. Many ofthese ways, e.g., visiting them for meetings, and paying for consultationand representation, require increased effort and resources by the dominant


group. Thus, to achieve equal contribution to the power-sharing relation-ship, an equal or greater share of the resources needs to be dedicated tothe aspirations and requirements of the less powerful group.

Overall, I learned that power-sharing needs to occur on terms negoti-ated and renegotiated with the less powerful group, and that even theprocesses selected for consultation influence the outcomes.

Implications for Community Psychology

There are significant implications for community psychologists in thestruggle of white lesbian feminists to acknowledge their own power andprivilege while at work on social change. The New Zealand experienceprovides a stimulus to the feminist agenda outlined in Mulvey (1988), andsets antiracist work alongside feminist work in such an agenda. The positionof community psychologists, as self-declared workers for social change, isequivalent in many environments to the activist position of feminist andantiracist workers aspiring toward social justice. Like white feminists, com-munity psychologists often occupy a relatively privileged position in socialchange work, if only through a tertiary qualification. If we want to stimulatesocial change we need to develop detailed methodologies around voluntarypower-sharing by dominant groups. The notion of noncoerced power-shar-ing flies in the face of much writing on radical and revolutionary socialchange. Nonetheless, our experience has shown that a group of peopledetermined to create a new order based on equality can and will worktoward reducing their power relative to another group without coercion.Indeed, further exploration of feminist experience around relinquishingpower and sharing power would be highly fruitful and useful to commu-nity psychology.

NAMING AND CLAIMING: PRIVILEGE AND OPPRESSION INFEMINIST RESEARCH WITH PAKEHA WOMEN

Heather R. Hamerton10,11

This is a story about my experiences as a researcher attempting toinvestigate Pakeha12 women’s memories of their adolescent years. As a10Psychology Department, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand.

e-mail: [email protected] to Taima Moeke-Pickering and Minoaka Kapuaahiwalani-Fitzsimmons for encourag-

ing me to explore issues of white privilege, and to Liz Proctor for her unfailing supportand challenge.

12White New Zealanders mostly of European descent.


parent of two teenage daughters, I became passionately interested in know-ing more about how girls develop during adolescence. My daughters werevery different from each other. One appeared to sail through her teenageyears with ease; the other met every challenge head on, and seemed tostruggle and falter at every turn. At the same time as my daughters wereteenagers, I was reading about the work of the Harvard Project on Women’sPsychology and Girls’ Development (Brown & Gilligan, 1992, 1993). Oneof the major findings of the Harvard study was that girls on the ‘‘edge’’ ofadolescence began to silence their voices and deny or ‘‘forget’’ what theyhad previously known. The researchers interpreted this silencing as a crisisof relationship that was thought to contribute to problems that womenencountered later in life (Pipher, 1996; Thompson, 1995). Watching mydaughters and reading about current North American studies led me toreflect on my own teenage years, which had been troublesome. I decidedto investigate further the experiences of Pakeha women of my generationnow in our forties. Had we as adolescents learned to silence our voices?If so, why and how had this silencing occurred? What were the implicationsof ‘‘silencing our voices’’ for the ways we now saw ourselves as adultwomen?

My broad research goal was to explore whether women of my owngeneration had been ‘‘silenced’’ as young girls, and if so, how this ‘‘silencing’’had occurred. I wanted to employ a research method consistent with myfeminist values. In looking for a suitable way to carry out the research, Ifound memory-work. Memory-work has been described by its creators asa specifically feminist method, designed by women for women, developedin an attempt to understand the ways in which we are active agents in oursocialization, acquiescing and unconsciously participating in the formationof our social relations (Haug, 1987). It is collective by design, collapsingnotions of researcher and researched since women who participate in gener-ating the written data, the memories, are also involved in analyzing andtheorizing this material13 (Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault, & Benton, 1992;Haug, 1987). Because of its focus on past memories, the memory-workprocess seemed well suited to answering my research questions.

Memories have long been theorized and studied for what they tell usabout the development of personality and the ways in which our pastexperiences influence our behavior in the present moment (Thorne &Klohnen, 1993). Since our memories are stories or narratives of events orexperiences from the past, it is not important that they be entirely accurate(Crawford et al., 1992). The ways in which we remember our past—that is,the ways in which we construct our memories, give us important information

13As researcher I participated with others in the writing of memories, and the group discussion.


about how we perceive and construct ourselves in the world in the present(Haug, 1987). Our memories are seen as intertwined in the ways in whichwe become selves and the part we play in that construction (Crawford etal., 1992; Haug, 1992). Events that are remembered are usually those thathave some subjective significance, and may be dilemmas that remain unre-solved in some way (Crawford et al., 1992; Haug, 1987). Theories of thesocial construction of the self assert that we continually construct ourselvesin each moment based on our reflections and reappraisals of our experiences(Davis, 1994; Haug, 1987; Lykes, 1994b; Somers & Gibson, 1994).

In my study of women’s teenage memories, the memory-work groupconsisted of five Pakeha women (myself included) who had attended thesame girls’ high school together in the 1960s. I chose to work with thisgroup because of our shared history and the similarity in age and ethnicity.We met once a month for about a year, and wrote individual memoriesbased on particular themes or cues14 that were agreed on by the group.Memories were written according to certain guidelines in an attempt tocapture some of our earliest experiences.15 Once we had all written ourmemories,16 we took turns reading them out loud to the group.

When all memories had been read, we discussed each one in turn,comparing elements in the memories, particularly those that did not seemimmediately obvious, looking for differences, identifying cliches and gener-alizations, and looking for things that were missing (Crawford et al., 1992).It was from our collective discussion of the written memory texts that newtheorizing of the material emerged.

The participants were all academically able Pakeha girls who had beenplaced together in the ‘‘top’’ class at school and, consequently, we receiveda fairly good education. During the 1950s and 1960s when we were growingup, our families were all comfortably well-off. It was an era of ‘‘full’’employment in New Zealand, which meant there were jobs for men, andmost women (our mothers included) were at home bringing up children(May, 1992). The overriding (Pakeha) cultural narrative of that time (ormyth as it turned out to be) was that New Zealand had the best racerelations in the world (Bell, 1996; Jones, 1992). As Pakeha girls, our personalrelationships with people from different backgrounds than our own (non-white) were apparently unproblematic. It was not until we girls becameadults that we reflected very much about our ethnic backgrounds and oursocial positioning in relation to people of other cultural and ethnic groups.

14This cue is sometimes called a ‘‘trigger’’ by other writers—a word I have tried to avoidbecause of its association with guns.

15For a fuller description of memory-work, refer to Crawford et al. (1992) and Haug (1987).16The writing of the memory may be completed by each participant before coming together

in the group or at the beginning of each session.


One of the themes that emerged in the group discussion was recognitionof our relative privilege. Participants attributed this privilege to our easyaccess to education and our middle-class status. This knowledge of howwe were advantaged was always combined in our discussions with a parallel,slowly dawning, recognition of the subtle yet powerful ways in which wehad simultaneously felt oppressed or subjugated, because we were girls.For example, our intellectual abilities themselves were not a straightforwardpositive asset, but fraught with injunctions and prescriptions of how weought to behave (not to show off, appear too clever, or think ourselvesbetter than anyone else). One of the written memories demonstrates howour intellect became something to be hidden or downplayed:

She walked along the waterfront as usual, past the gray sea wall—smooth concretewith a wide ledge giving an overhang. There was sand on the footpath side. Thespaces in the wall through which one reached the sand were wide. The boys satbeside one of the spaces. She didn’t know how many of them there were, and shedidn’t know all their names though she knew vaguely who some of them were. Shenever talked to them though sometimes they said things to her or whistled. Shewas uncomfortable passing them always. This time they seemed for the first timeto notice her, person, not just another female. They said something horrible aboutgirls who thought they were clever, how nobody wanted to know girls like that.She could never remember the exact words, only the tone. The sun was shining,she had passed School Cert,17 she should have been happy but she was desperatelyuncomfortable. She had done the wrong thing again.

So, the very heart of what we had seen as our ‘‘privilege’’ (our intellec-tual ability) was used by others around us to further subjugate and humiliateus. We realized as adults discussing this memory that it was no accidentthat the boys had perceived or treated us in this way—for they, too, werelearning about the acceptable roles and behavior of girls and women. Toexcel in examinations was not considered acceptable for a girl, especiallyif she had done better than the boys!

In exploring the complexities of privilege and subordination in ourlives as girls and women, it became clear to me that one of the obvioussources of the privilege we had possessed as girls was our ‘‘whiteness’’—asmembers of the ‘‘culture-defining group’’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Tyler,1992). Because we grew up as European New Zealanders and our ownculture and social systems were reflected back to us in every aspect of ourlives, our white identity was taken for granted and largely invisible. Wewere vaguely aware that we were white or European, but none of us hadever considered what that really meant.

The research group found it difficult to talk about our ethnicity—our‘‘whiteness.’’ Whenever I brought up the topic, the group seemed to havenothing to say about what being Pakeha had meant in our lives as teenagers.17School Certificate (also known as School Cert or School C) is a national examination in

New Zealand completed by all students at the end of the 5th form (10th grade) year.


The following is an example of how the discussion moved quickly awayfrom the topic:

Heather: I’d be interested to know, I mean, there’s nothing come up in any of ourdiscussions about the fact that we were Pakeha. What do you remember aboutthat, did we ever think about or talk . . . .Katherine: Well I don’t think we ever talked about it . . . .Elizabeth: I don’t think I really noticed what we were.

On this occasion, the group moved on to talk about children fromother ethnic backgrounds. In another conversation when I attempted toraise the topic again, the group again did not fully engage it:

Katherine: Well, we knew we were European, but I don’t see . . .Jay: We took it for granted, sort of . . . I mean . . . no-one ever talked tome . . . .Elizabeth: We were all New Zealanders, that’s what, I don’t think my parents everactually said . . .Grace: But that was, you know, there was nothing more to say really. . . .Katherine: I just assumed, you know . . . that, that everyone was just, that Maoripeople . . . we never actually knew any . . .Grace: . . . except for cultural things, singing and dancing . . . when the Queencame.

A third example reflects a different question—why it was that mostof us reported encountering few Maori people during our early years?

Heather: I’d like to come back and talk more about . . . you know I just noticedthat in all the sessions, we don’t talk at all about ethnicity. . . .Jay: Well it didn’t come up, you know, not when we were . . . [kids].Heather: Did we ever wonder why there weren’t more Maori in our classes? . . .and, I mean . . .Katherine: There was Marama . . . remember her? I saw her a few years ago, she’smarried to a lawyer I think . . .Grace: . . . they were there, but not in our class.Heather: Why not?Katherine: Umm.

On this occasion also, people moved on immediately to a different topic.On reflection, it seems to me that there may be two reasons for what

I perceived as a difficulty in talking about being Pakeha. First, we havehad little experience of thinking of Pakeha as having a culture at all (Paulin,1996). Because our culture was the dominant one and we were all immersedin it, it was invisible to us. Second, as a Pakeha I am not proud of manyof the things that my ancestors have done to the indigenous peoples ofAotearoa/New Zealand. I have never thought before of Pakeha as a groupwith any cohesion or an identity to be proud of. I believe that this shameabout our history is common to many Pakeha (Black, 1997).

Because participants found it very difficult to talk about or rememberincidents related to our own ethnicity, the group tended to veer away fromthe topic. The collective nature of the research process also meant that a


strong joint decision-making ethic was fostered in the group. However,when my goals as researcher were at odds with those of others in the group,the collective ethic resulted in tension between my needs (what I wantedto accomplish in the research) and the desire of the group to participatein an egalitarian fashion. As a researcher, I would have liked the group totalk more about what it meant to be Pakeha, and how people thought theirethnicity had been a factor in their adolescent experience. In particular, Iwas interested in discussing the privileges associated with being Pakeha.However, the group found it a difficult topic, probably because of ourgrowing up in an era where the discourse of the day was equality forall, amid a social policy climate that espoused assimilation of Maori intoEuropean culture (Thomas & Nikora, 1996). As a result, our discussion ofPakeha culture and ethnicity as a source of privilege is incomplete.

Looking back, I can see that there were a number of tensions operatingin the memory-work process: tension between my goals as researcher andthe goals of other participants,18 tension between my responsibility as afeminist researcher to honor the experiences and wishes of participantsand at the same time to ensure that my research goals were met; andadditionally, tensions in acknowledging the ways in which Pakeha girls andwomen are both privileged and oppressed. These tensions have proveddifficult, if not impossible, to reconcile.

So what have I learned out of all this? I guess I have learned both theimportance and the inherent difficulty of factoring ethnicity into researchwith Pakeha. I think that my rather unsuccessful experience of attemptingto get participants to talk about being Pakeha fairly late in the processdoes suggest that it would have been far better to build this as a topic intothe research from the beginning. For example, a more specific focus on thetopic may have elicited memories that would lead to group discussion. Inacknowledging and theorizing privilege, it was easier to see that privilegeas arising from our education and intellectual abilities than to recognizeand talk about the ways in which our Pakeha ethnicity gave us privilege.As adults we now considered it legitimate to acknowledge that we were‘‘clever,’’ but on the other hand it would be racist to consider that ethnicitywas a legitimate source of privilege! So, the privilege gained from beingPakeha in a Pakeha-dominated social system that at the same time disadvan-taged anyone who was not Pakeha is harder to acknowledge and a sourceof uneasiness.

In addition to a certain tension between ethnicity and privilege, thereis also tension between privilege and oppression that arises from our beingboth Pakeha and female. It is difficult, but I believe necessary, to explore

18These seemed to include a desire to ‘‘work through’’ unresolved memories.


further the ways in which privilege and oppression both contribute to thelives of Pakeha (or European or white) women. The apparent contradictionbetween realizing that we have been both privileged and oppressed at thesame time cannot be resolved, but I believe is indicative of the complexityof our lives.

I have also learned something about my access to power and privilegeas a Pakeha researcher and academic, and now believe speaking about ourown ethnicity is a major responsibility for Pakeha (or white) psychologists.I had fallen into the trap of assuming that it was not important to make(our own) ethnicity visible, and in doing so failed to acknowledge the whitemiddle-class colonial values on which psychology rests. I can no longerassume, of course, that ethnicity is irrelevant, or that all people can becompared against white middle-class values.

Through my research I have become aware of the power of languageto render whole groups of people (including ourselves) invisible. The taskof acknowledging our ethnicity and culture is a difficult one for Pakeha,because of the difficulty we have as members of a dominant culture inrecognizing our own culture, or furthermore, in claiming an identity whichhas a less than honorable past.

I have learned about the difficulty of conducting research consistent withfeminist principles, particularly with regard to minimizing the gap betweenresearcher and researched. One of the reasons my attempts to initiate discus-sion about being Pakeha were unsuccessful was that I didn’t ‘‘pull rank’’ asresearcher, but allowed the group to guide the direction of the discussion.My position as researcher and academic required me to conduct rigorousresearch that met the stated research goals, which at times meant directingthe group rather than following a more egalitarian decision-making process.

Having said that, I find memory-work useful as a research methodbecause it allows for complexity and because the process specifically re-quires participants to probe beneath the surface for those aspects missingin our stories and memories. The memory-work process explicitly embracesthe interweaving of multiple voices and stories, without the need to resolvethese differing strands into a single cohesive or noncontradictory account.

As a Pakeha researcher and academic, I continue to have privilegedstatus through my position of authority with respect to my students andfrom my positioning within a university setting, albeit as a junior staffmember. At the same time, I encounter oppressive and subjugating practicesdaily because I am a woman. I have no simple solution to this dilemma. Likemost Pakeha women, I continue to live and struggle with this ambiguity.Recognizing the pervasiveness of my own internalized racism perhaps willassist me in continuing to confront and make visible issues of ethnicity forPakeha psychologists.


REFLECTIONS OF POWER: DILEMMAS AND POSSIBLESOLUTIONS IN FEMINIST RESEARCH

Sharon Cahill19,20

In this brief narrative I want to interrogate a situation I encounteredduring my Ph.D. My research involved exploring women’s personal andsocial perceptions of anger. In this piece I will not be commenting on thecontent of the research data per se but on a reflexive/emotional dilemmathat I found myself in while engaging with the participants. The women Iwill be talking about lived in public housing schemes in inner city Glasgow,Scotland. However, before I talk about my dilemma I would like to givethe reader an abridged autobiographical history. I am in the fifth and finalyear of a psychology Ph.D. I am 34-years old and consider myself to be aworking-class academic. I trained as a nurse and continued in this professionfor nearly ten years prior to undertaking an undergraduate degree. I amthe only woman in my extended family to move into higher education. Myinterest in anger as a research topic comes from trying to develop anunderstanding of my own anger experiences and expression. The point Iam trying to make here is that as a feminist researcher this is the culturaland historical context in which I am developing my work on women’sanger experiences.

I chose focus groups as a research method to explore these women’sstories of anger. I wrote to already established women’s groups askingwhether they would be interested in participating in the research process.One of the reasons for using focus groups instead of one-to-one interviewswas that participants interact with each other in the group. Since argumentsand collusion are all features of focus groups as they are of everyday life,this research method offered a more ‘‘naturalistic’’ way of uncovering thewomen’s accounts of their anger experiences (Wilkinson, 1998). As partof the group, albeit the facilitator, I was aware that my influence wasdiffused by the fact of being in a group rather than being in a one-to-one situation. The discussions revolved around the group members’ lifeexperiences, which I (obviously) had no control over. Some of the storiesthe participants related, both in the public and private realms, were full ofviolence and aggression. Anger and aggression (one of anger’s behavioraloutcomes) were commonplace in most of these women’s experiences. What

19Threshold Programme II, Croydon Academic Team, Gate Lodge, South London & MaudsleyNHS Trust, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 3DX England. e-mail: [email protected].

20Thanks to Ali Guy and Maura Banim as always, Elaine Duncan for proofreading, and toJamie for his unconditional support.


I mean by this is that these women expressed their anger and aggressiontoward their partners, their children, other family members, neighbors, andfriends. However, these women were also frequently the target of angerand aggression from the same people. One story that made an immediateimpact was a woman who attempted to stab her abusive husband. Thewoman telephoned the police to remove her husband because, as she said,‘‘they wouldn’t be arresting me for assault, it would be murder.’’ That herpartner was ‘‘normally’’ the one abusing her was of no consequence. Shewas removed (not arrested) from her home, by the police, and asked torefrain from going back there, and to her children, until ‘‘things hadcalmed down.’’

Conversely, other stories that the women told related to the social andcultural norms that can prohibit women from expressing anger. In someof these stories, women were pathologized. The language used to describewomen expressing anger included phrases such as ‘‘mad-woman,’’ ‘‘crazywoman,’’ ‘‘off her box,’’ and ‘‘on another planet.’’ Feminist Jean BakerMiller (1991) argues that the male-dominant social structure that we livein maintains the notion of the angry woman as pathological, in that feminin-ity does not allow for women to be overtly angry. A woman can ‘‘seethe’’or be ‘‘bitchy,’’ and of course defend others (her children), but she cannotexpress her anger overtly for fear of being ‘‘unfeminine’’ or ‘‘unwomanly.’’As a consequence, the woman’s anger is delegitimized, therefore removingany responsibility from the target and from the woman. The anger, there-fore, can be viewed as irrational, involuntary, temporary, and out of thewoman’s control. In this way, the anger can be viewed as of little conse-quence and as affording few strategies as a way of changing the situation.

The issue of differences has been widely recognized and theorized infeminist research, most notably in the book edited by Wilkinson and Kit-zinger, Representing the Other (1996). In retrospect, at the beginning of myresearch I was enticed by the ‘‘seduction of sameness’’ (Hurd & McIntyre,1996). I did not consider myself to be the Other in terms of gender, ormore importantly in this situation, of class. I did have the awareness toknow that as the researcher I was in a more powerful position. I waspositioned to some extent as the ‘‘knower’’ intruding upon the lives of the‘‘to be known.’’ This semiawareness in part takes into account what Griffin(1995) emphasizes; that is, acknowledging accountability and the powerdifferential between the researcher and the researched. The neglected halfof my awareness was awoken with a jolt by engaging with a particulargroup of eleven women. All these women had children, were aged between35 and 76, and most of the women described their occupational status aseither unemployed or housewife; one woman was the housing scheme’scommunity worker.


I want to demonstrate my ‘‘awakening’’ by talking about the issueof researcher as voyeur. A dictionary definition of ‘‘voyeurism’’ is theobservation of people while undressing (or during sexual intercourse).Whilst facilitating this particular focus group, I felt like a voyeur, watchingthe women undress their lives before me. These women, it seemed to me,had no escape from the brutality of their everyday experience. There I wasthe feminist researcher who was aware of the power differential betweenthe researcher and researched. Patronizingly, in retrospect, positioning my-self as being able to ‘‘know’’ the ‘‘to be known’s’’ experience, I naivelybelieved that there would be spaces in both our lives where we wouldrecognize each others’ experience. For me, this did not happen. I sat therelistening to these women’s lives unfold before me and I recognized nothingof their experience. The violence and oppression that these women dealtwith in their day-to-day lives were foreign to me. I had not had a partnerwho had systematically beaten me until I retaliated with a knife. I had notexperienced emotional and physical abuse from (often the women’s own)children, neighbors, and/or family. I had experienced aggression, but it wasqualitatively different to these women’s experience. In other focus groupsI had facilitated, I was able to participate freely, adding my own story ifrelevant to the discussion. However, I felt unable to contribute any of mystories to this group’s discussion because (a) I was shocked and upset thatthese women had been treated in this way; and (b) I was embarrassed thatI had positioned myself as ‘‘knowing’’ what their experiences would belike—that is, similar to my own. Qualitative research to me, in those glaringmoments of consciousness-raising, was akin to voyeurism. By this I meanthat I felt as if I was ‘‘ogling’’ at these women’s lives. It was like takingphotographs of them naked without their permission.

The women were not pressured to talk; they told their stories as theyprobably did in that group every week. There were no silences, except tolet each other speak. At the end of the session, I asked how the womenhad felt participating in the group, talking about their lives. Everyoneagreed that it had been illuminating to say the least, and one womancommented that she felt easier in herself because she had heard otherwomen having similar experiences, ‘‘I’m not the only one.’’ Another womansaid that she had never spoken openly about her anger experiences, assum-ing ‘‘people would think I was mad.’’ I, on the other hand, had not expectedto feel sad or angry with myself, which were the emotions I was left with.I was happy that the group had been a success for the participants, but Inow needed to look to my own story.

As I left the focus group and took the bus back to the university, Icried all the way home. The dilemma I felt was that I had been betrayedand had betrayed, albeit by my own naivete. I had peeked in from my ‘‘cosy’’


academic life and been aghast at the differences in our life experiences. Ionce read an article by Linda Dunn (1991) whose premise was that qualita-tive research was bad for your health. Keynes and Van Maanan (1988) alsonoted that qualitative research may induce stress within researchers whenthey come face to face with the participants’ lived experience. Until thissituation arose, I had believed I could cope with any stresses that participat-ing in research could throw at me.

Reflexivity has been an issue that has concerned feminist researchersfor more than a decade (see, for example, Burman, 1991; Reay, 1996;Stanley & Wise, 1983; Wilkinson, 1998). I like Diane Reay’s explanation:‘‘reflexivity is about giving as full and honest an account of the researchprocess as possible, in particular explicating the position of the researcherin relation to the researched’’ (1996, p. 443). I also like Erica Burman’sdefinition of reflexivity as a self-conscious awareness of what counts asknowledge and the whole process of research being structured aroundissues of dominance, gender, sexuality, class, age, and race. Reay (1996)points out that it is also a process of making known the differences betweenthe researcher and the researched. By acknowledging these differences,the researcher is more able to comment on how the differences have affectedthe research process.

Happy(ish) Ending

Practically and politically, the outcome of my dilemma ended in theoffer of my services as a researcher to the women’s group. This may seemlike a piecemeal solution and to be honest it felt like one at the time. Yet,the woman’s group took up the offer and they asked me to do a literaturesearch for them on the effects of moving children from one school toanother. Their local school was threatened with closure and they wantedsome evidence to present to the local authority that moving schools might bedetrimental to their children’s mental health. Unfortunately, the literaturemade no impact on the decision to move the children from their school.Research can and should be about reciprocating, helping the communitywhere the researcher ‘‘does’’ the research. For me it was, and still is, aboutviewing the research process as a collaboration between groups of interestedparties, not about one group using the other for their own needs.

Academically and reflexively, the outcome of the dilemma enabledme to question my own position as a researcher, as a woman, and as aworking-class academic. Each of these parts of myself constitute the whole.I use the word ‘‘enabled’’ because I see research as an enabling process,not only for the researcher but also for the researched. Researchers can


and should learn from their mistakes and address their own power/lessnessin the face of differences. The researched can and should benefit from thisconsciousness raising of the researcher. In this way, the researched are nolonger just the researched. They are, instead, part of the progress andprocess of the research. My experience with these women changed the waythat I believe that I approach research. I attempt not to make any assump-tion of sameness or of difference. I try to open myself to the story that isbeing told to me, in such a way that I allow myself to say (both to myselfand where I feel it does not burden, to the participant) that I have not hadthat experience and that is okay for both of us. I did not share my feelingsof sadness with this particular group of women, I think mainly because Idid not want to burden them with my emotions. I also felt that to someextent I had misrepresented myself to myself and, therefore, to some extentto them too. On reflection, I believe they did not consider me to be thesame as they were; I think my difference was obvious. I was the researchwoman from the ‘‘Cale’’ (slang for Glasgow Caledonian University). Thegroup’s purpose was to explore these women’s experiences of anger; it wasnot a medium for me to reflect on my lack of insight into my privilege.

One of the themes that Judi Marshall (1986) operates within whenengaging in research is ‘‘research as personal process.’’ I would rewordthat phrase to ‘‘research as personal progress.’’ Marshall argues there is a‘‘feeling’’ that one can grow—academically, politically, and emotion-ally—by involving oneself in the research process. How could I grow frommy experience? From my perspective, feminist research is about empow-erment, not only in the terms of theorizing but also from a practical locale.

In writing about these women’s perceptions of anger, I acknowledgedtheir heterogeneity of experience. I attempted to represent their experiencefrom their position while looking at how I was representing myself asresearcher. My assumption of sameness in some ways highlighted for methe necessity to reflect on how I reposition myself as same or different indifferent contexts, as well as how the participants represent themselves tome. As Manjit Bola (1996) argues, we (as feminists) need to look at thedynamics of moving in and out of powerful positions. During that particularfocus group, I felt powerless—powerless in that I could not recognize theparticipants’ lives in my own life, powerless within the remit of my researchto ‘‘do’’ anything about what I had heard. The researcher is privileged inthat she is able to move in and out of positions associated with more andless power. The participants, however, often cannot. Yet, it also may bepatronizing to assume that participants cannot also move themselves inand out of more and less powerful positions. An example of this movementof power is a story from one woman who was quite able to express angeron behalf of her two sons who felt that their father showed little interest


in them. In this context, as a mother, she was powerful. Yet, she was unableto express her anger toward him for abandoning her with the responsibilityof two sons. The target of the anger was the same but her position hadmoved from mother to ex-wife (her words) where she had no power. Angerthat comes from a ‘‘powerless’’ person has no validity, and is not listened to.

Finally, I think what I have learned from this experience is not toassume sameness or difference in terms of class, gender, sexuality, age, orrace. Differences and sameness extend on a continuum and within culturaland historical contexts. I would agree with Hannah Frith (1996), who said,‘‘Differences are not all equal. Differences are structured along lines ofpower and powerlessness’’ (p. 181). In my particular situation I felt power-less and I believe some of the participants also at times felt powerless.Researcher privilege and, therefore, power, for me, is about having thetime and energy to be able to acknowledge and work through these issues.Acknowledgment and the working through of this dilemma has empoweredme to renegotiate and reconstitute what it means to me to be a woman,working class, and an academic.

CONCLUSION

The stories told here illustrate the roles that identities and relationalprocesses play in feminist community work. They describe intended andunintended consequences that come from incorporating consideration ofourselves, role relationships, and power in practice, research, and theory.Early in each story, the narrator relates her area of community work tochildhood experiences and cultural affinities. Ingrid is keenly aware ofthe ‘‘blindness’’ of dominant groups from her experiences as the child ofimmigrants, and Sharon—the first woman in her family to attend univer-sity—continues to identify with the working class. Heather, recalling herown ‘‘troublesome’’ adolescence, revisits the past with childhood friendsout of concern for her daughters as they enter adolescence. Each story alsodescribes and analyzes individual and group processes to probe interrelatedexperiences of oppression and privilege and their implications for doingprogressive community work.

Personal histories and experiences have been central to the develop-ment of feminist theories and practices. Originally reflecting experiencesof mostly middle-class white women, the contemporary women’s movementwas rooted in exposing ways that the personal is also political (e.g., Fine,1992; Mulvey, 1988; Rich, 1976). Incorporating individual and collectiveexperiences in ways that challenge race, culture, and class biases, women ofcolor have expanded and enriched understandings of the interconnections


between the political and personal (e.g., Fiol-Matta, 1996; hooks, 1984;Lorde, 1984; Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981). Both feminist and communitywriters recognize the power of structured inequalities and of internalizedoppression and privilege, and advocate contextualized, culturally situatedframeworks for understanding the implications of community interventions(Fine, 1992; hooks, 1984; Lykes, 1994b; Lykes et al., 1996; Pheterson, 1990;Prilleltensky, 1997; Rieff, 1968; Ryan, 1981). There is not much discussion,however, of how these interrelated aspects of change processes manifestthemselves in our work or of how our work might change if they weretaken into account. Whether affecting work in ways that would be expectedor through unexpected contradictions and paradoxes, probing linkagesamong our own and others’ identities, relationships, and roles offers richmaterial that has the potential to constructively guide multilayered socialchange processes.

In varied ways, each story illustrates that seeing one’s own personalor group experiences of oppression tends to be easier than seeing andchallenging one’s individual or collective privilege. Perhaps the clearestexample of this occurs in the project Heather describes. Memories of gen-der-related discouragement, teasing, and unfair double standards were com-mon and easily talked about, while recalling experiences of ethnic andclass privilege proved difficult. Sharon’s carefully planned feminist researchproject was based on assumptions of gender and class ‘‘sameness,’’ and onthe unquestioned assumption that the application of knowledge and lifeskills acquired from formal education would enable her to deal with anysituation that might arise over the course of the research. Sharon’s participa-tion as researcher led to awareness of her relative power (compared withwomen in the focus group), as well as her relative powerlessness (to changethe social-structural conditions in which the women lived). Although theLADA group Ingrid participated in had consciously grappled with individ-ual and group privilege, and worked to develop priorities and processes tofoster biculturalism, reduce structural inequalities, and share power, thegroup implemented a program that privileged the dominant group’s culturalexpression. In Ingrid’s story as in Sharon’s, realization of interrelated ‘‘cul-tural blindness’’ and ‘‘cultural danger’’—coupled with willingness to workagainst them—fostered deeper understanding of the multifaceted manifes-tations of privilege, and subsequently led to distinctly different interventionsdesigned to equalize power across both interpersonal and systemic levels.To adequately grapple with and challenge complexities like these, analysesmust be dynamic and multileveled. While professional skills and knowledgeare very valuable tools, community work—research, theory, and practice—also always involves political agendas and consequences (hooks, 1984;Lorde, 1984; Lykes et al., 1996; Rieff, 1968; Ryan, 1981).


Themes related to voice, silence, visibility, and blindness run throughall of the stories; they offer challenges to—and positive directions for—community research and action. The detailed descriptions and reflectiveanalyses in the stories presented here discourage simplistic interpretationsof commonly used metaphors like voice. Ingrid’s community of lesbianscomes to realize that an opening ritual reflects ‘‘cultural blindness.’’ In thiscase, colonial dominance and related blindness are symbolized not by whatwas said or seen, but by the timing and order of events (being first) thatundermined the Maori group’s welcoming ritual. Close personal relation-ships, a sense of community as lesbians, and shared commitment to usingfeminist processes supported renewed trust and facilitated continued com-mitment to working together. Ingrid also noted that her antiracism workwas related to her own experiences as an outsider and that it was mostlyMaori women who noticed and spoke about other groups who were missingfrom the planning process (e.g., younger lesbians). Thus, while it may beeasier to see and to speak about our own oppression than our own privilege,our experiences of oppression may also serve as assets or resources forbuilding just communities across differences by enhancing awareness andidentification with other groups who are being excluded or unfairly treated.

In Heather’s narrative about the stories and reflections of Pakehawomen in New Zealand, what was not remembered was as revealing asmemories were. Group members alternately give voice and are silent, seeand do not see. Complicating matters further, tension arose between twoprinciples that guided Heather’s research. On the one hand, the researchwas designed to allow participants to guide and redirect the conversation.On the other hand, the theoretical framework was based on the assumptionthat gender-related experiences were inseparable from race and class expe-riences, and that privilege should be acknowledged as well as oppression.Thus, the methodology was designed to encourage participants to talkabout their childhood experiences of gender as they saw them, while theconceptual-ideological framework required that the participants engage inconversation not only on their terms, but also on the researcher’s terms inrelation to predetermined criteria.

Sharon’s project was based on the assumption that speaking would dono harm and was designed to encourage participants’ to talk about anger asthey experienced it. Like Heather, however, Sharon developed reservationsabout her project in the process of doing it. Sharon’s awareness that theresearcher role might also be considered that of a ‘‘voyeur’’ came fromlistening to what the women had to say about their anger. Emotionallycharged and violent content was described as Sharon watched knowingthat she could and would leave. It was listening to authentic, fully engagedvoices that upset Sharon even as she noted that the speakers themselves


appreciated the opportunity to talk since their conversation uncoveredsilences and unexpectedly revealed shared experiences.

Collectively, these stories illustrate not only benefits of exploring pro-cesses associated with voice and visibility in community work, but also theneed to understand their particular meanings and potential inconsistenciesin relation to desired outcomes and in contextualized, culturally appropriateways. The relevance of concepts like voice to fostering progressive socialchange or to redistributing power depends on how they are understoodand applied within particular, dynamic contexts. Drawing on Filipino tradi-tions and proverbs, Patrocino Schweickart (1996) points out that whilespeaking and voice are certainly positive in many circumstances, beinglistened to and heard are also necessary experiences, as are silence andopportunities for quiet reflection. To be effective, theories, research meth-ods and social change processes must incorporate and explore contradic-tions and complexities, not reduce or exclude them.

Narrative methods have the potential to allow the exploration of falsedichotomies and to open up possibilities for working more effectively withidentities, oppression, and privilege to realize ideals shared by communitypsychology and feminisms. Traditional research reduces complex phenom-ena to simple patterns (Unger, 1996; Wilkinson, 1996) and usually reflectsthe standpoints of researchers and professionals who are members of domi-nant groups. Psychology and other social sciences have favored disen-gagement over engagement, fragmented knowledge over relational or ‘‘con-nected’’ knowing, and objective ‘‘truth’’ over subjective truths (Reinharz,1992; Stanley, 1997; Wilkinson, 1998). The stories here point to the impor-tance of including ourselves in our analyses, as well as the importance ofincluding more of ourselves in our work: our pasts; our emotions; ourrelational, cultural, and community affinities; and the political assumptionsand commitments that inform the work we choose and how we choose todo it.

In order to re-vision their work in transformative ways, the storytellersspeak here as members of relatively powerful groups in efforts to see andto speak about their personal, professional, and political roles in perpetuat-ing and in challenging inequitable processes. Their desire to voluntarilyshare power and to acknowledge paradoxes and dilemmas related to theirown power and powerlessness are unusual and noteworthy. Reflecting onthe liberatory potential of trust-building across status and role differences,Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot says, ‘‘I see it not only as an expression of circum-stance, history, temperament, and culture, rooted in rituals and habits, butalso arising from efforts to break with routine and imagine other ways ofgiving and receiving trust, and in so doing, creating relationships amongequals’’ (1999, p. 10). In similar terms, these stories describe individual and


collective struggles to recognize and transform relationships and resourcesin order to decrease gender, race, class, and cultural dominance. We mustnot forget, however, that dominant groups have choices about whether ornot to give up privilege, while oppressed groups do not share this luxury.

We hope that these stories will encourage more in-depth discussionof how we do our work, as well as the adoption of collaborative, holistic,and reflexive processes as we engage in it. Multiple voices and stories ofprivilege and oppression and enlarged, relational frameworks provide fertileground for personal, political, and professional transformation. All of theserepresent bridges between promising streams from feminist movementsand theories and community psychology research and action that may moveour work toward socially just and supportive communities for all of us.

REFERENCES

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Stories of Relative Privilege: Power and Social Change In Feminist Community Psychology

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