Co-creation of Knowledge: Translating Subjectivities, Visualities and Authorised Knowledge

Who do we believe? Who do we trust? How does this affect the co-creation of tourism knowledge? Knowledge can be embodied, situated, authorised, and differently experienced during fieldwork with the co-creation of knowledge being rooted in a logic of inter-subjectivity. Understanding co-creation, however, starts with a critical engagement with the politics of ‘knowing’ and the social ordering of knowledge. Building on six-months of fieldwork conducted in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, this study explores the dialogical relationship between theory, researcher positionality and participants’ lifeworld. Co-creation of knowledge was facilitated through the use of visual methods and the reliance on translators. This allowed drawing a cultural map that was not primarily based on spoken communication. Rather, the mediation of knowledge itself provided key insights to local understandings, hierarchies and power differences. In analysing the interplay between these collaborative modes of knowledge creation, this study draws wider inferences about the theoretical framing of this process. Findings emphasise that we need to move beyond the sharing of authoritative voice in knowledge creation processes to challenge dominant perspectives of what constitutes authorised knowledge.