The exploring difference workshop: group relations methodology to deepen anti-racist education in Toronto, Canada

Though the Tavistock group relations paradigm is now more than seventy years old, its unique conceptualisation of unconscious group processes remains nonetheless essential for understanding and affecting this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous time. An adapted Tavistock group relations event called the Exploring Difference Workshop (EDW) takes place in the context of: 1) increasing attention to endemic racism within Canadian society; and 2) increasingly obvious limitations of dominant modes of anti-racism training framed within discourses of equity and multiculturalism. This article discusses new contributions group relations methodology can provide through the EDW to engage with the intractable and painful aspects of talking about racism in "the here and now". The article offers an analysis of key themes emerging from the workshops and the consultations supporting participants' learning about "difference" and self–other relationships. It proposes that the EDW enables deeper understanding of, and dialogue about, the (un)conscious processes affecting racism and anti-racism education, and offers a means for enhancing collaboration across difference in these times.

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Europe’s perennial ‘outsiders’: A processual approach to Roma stigmatization and ghettoization

Current Sociology ◽

10.1177/0011392115594213 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 65 (5) ◽

pp. 680-699 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Ryan Powell ◽

John Lever

Keyword(s):

Group Processes ◽

Theoretical Work ◽

Theoretical Concept ◽

Social Processes ◽

Group Relations ◽

Roma Population ◽

Cross Border ◽

Norbert Elias ◽

Asymmetric Power

This article draws on the theoretical work of Norbert Elias and Loïc Wacquant in seeking to understand the stigmatized and marginalized position of the Roma population within Europe. The article argues that the persistent persecution of Roma, reflected in social policy, cannot be understood without reference to long-term social processes which shape the nature of the asymmetric power relations between Roma and non-Roma. Elias’s theory of established–outsider relations is applied at the intra-state European level in arguing that Roma constitute a cross-border ‘outsider’ group; with their intense stigmatization explained and perpetuated by a common set of collective fantasies which are maintained through complex group processes of disidentification, and which result in Roma being seen as of lesser human worth. Wacquant’s theoretical concept of the ‘ghetto’ is then drawn upon to show how the manifestations of stigmatization for the stigmatized are at once psychological, social and spatial. The article suggests that the synthesis of the two theorists’ concepts allows for an approach that can expose the way in which power is exercised within and through group relations. Such an approach emphasizes the centrality of the interdependence between Roma and non-Roma, and the fluctuating power balance that characterizes that relationship across time and space. The article concludes that, while existing research focused on policy and outcomes is useful in understanding the negative contemporary experiences of Roma populations, they need to be understood in the context of wider social processes and historical continuities in seeking to elucidate how these processes shape policies and contribute to social and spatial marginalization.

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