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dissemination. Obviously the research environment itself

does not exist in a vacuum. Culture, among other things,

provides a set of rules and values that guide the way the world

is interpreted and experienced. The conundrum of interpret-

ing difference across a cultural divide is one example of the

challenges and opportunities that researchers and research

participants may encounter. Ethical and cultural considera-

tions, the quality of relationships, the political environment,

status management, decision-making, research motivation

and engagement, are some of the issues that are particularly

salient to research that is transformative in intent. Indigenous

researchers and non-indigenous allied researchers, perhaps

more than others, bear a special responsibility to attend to

these issues and to write them into their work rather than to

write them out.

Recognizing and dealing with difference both within and

outside of particular communities is important. There is a need

to interrogate and even complicate simple insider/outsider

research dichotomies. Cross-cultural research relationships

are often the most contentious when research is enacted at

the margins. While fraught with difficulty, cross-cultural

research relationship borne out of an understanding of power,

struggle and resistance can foster a deeper understanding for

all research partners and participants and ultimately lead to

outcomes that promote greater levels of social cohesion and

fuller societal participation.

In New Zealand this has meant that M

ori researchers,

alongside non-M

ori allied researchers, have been well placed

to critically engage and respond to issues that pertain to both

the reproduction of privilege and the reproduction of disad-

vantage, particularly as they relate to M

ori in New Zealand.

Work in the areas of inequalities in health and educational

outcomes has benefited from both M

ori-led research and

research that has a cross-cultural dimension. Cross-cultural

research may realize greater insights on the research problem,

but it also allows for an appreciation of the challenges that

arise out of cross-cultural research relationships and an analy-

sis of who the real beneficiaries of any research project are.

It is recognized that there is often an extractive quality to

research. Careers have been made on the lives of those who

have been classed as research subjects and yet too often have

not been beneficiaries of the research process. Lisa Aronson

Fontes, renowned for her work on family violence in cross-

cultural settings, asserts that the work of researchers is used

to validate or challenge theories that affect perceptions and

policy related to people from diverse cultural groups. She

underscores the fact that conducting research and dissemi-

nating findings are political acts. A critical, reflective research

framework demands an ongoing examination of research

practice and proposed research outcomes. Alongside the

research questions there is also a need to ask how social justice

outcomes are progressed within the research encounter.

For cross-cultural research to deliver increased under-

standing that will promote greater levels of social cohesion,

researchers must work to ensure that concepts of interest to

a research team truly exist in the participant’s culture. They

must also be able to demonstrate that researchers within a

team have a joint understanding on how concepts are being

used. In a bid to render concepts intelligible to plural audi-

ences there is a risk of over-simplifying them to the point

that they are divorced from any cultural nuance. Care must

be taken to ensure that the use of terms must be strongly

Image: Ng

Pae o te M

ramatanga

Visitors from various tribes and cultures internationally are welcomed to engage in cross-cultural research at Ng

Pae o te M

ramatanga’s International

Indigenous Research Conference 2014

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iffer