The literature on participatory health research describes various ways of overcoming obstacles to the co-production of knowledge by redressing power imbalances. In this article, we propose an approach to understanding and analyzing co-production which conceptualizes power, not as an obstacle but as an intrinsic, productive force in bringing “co-production” into being. In the approach, “co-production” is understood and analyzed as a tensional, complex, unstable entity that emerges in power-imbued negotiations of meanings throughout the research process. Focusing on a participatory project on Parkinson’s dance, our purpose is to illustrate how the approach can generate knowledge about the complexities of “co-production.” We also demonstrate how the approach can provide a foundation for a relational ethics that confronts the complexities head-on. In conclusion, we discuss the insights gained into the possibilities and challenges of co-production and the value of the approach as a foundation for relational ethics.
In this article, we propose a distinctive critical, reflexive approach to relational ethics in ‘collaborative, democratic and transformative’ research. Underpinning the approach is the view that the buzzwords of ‘collaboration’ and ‘co-creation/co-production’ may signify equitable, symmetrical power relations and, as a result, romanticise collaborative research as straightforward processes of inclusion. The approach integrates critical, reflexive analysis of the play of power in the ‘with’ in ‘research with, not on, people’ and the ‘co’ in ‘co-creating knowledge’ into the ongoing collaborative research process. As a main method for critical, reflexive analysis, the approach uses ‘thinking with’ autoethnography. In the article, we illustrate the approach by showing how we ‘think with’ autoethnographic texts to respond to discomfort and analyse the tensions in the co-constitution of knowledge and subjectivities in the preliminary phase of a collaborative, participatory research project on dance for people with Parkinson’s disease and their spouses.
Background: In participatory research approaches, co-researchers and university researchers aim to co-produce and disseminate knowledge across difference in order to contribute to social and practice change as well as research. The approaches often employ arts-based research methods to elicit experiential, embodied, affective, aesthetic ways of knowing. The use of arts-based research in co-production in participatory research is embedded in a contested discursive terrain. Here, it is embroiled in political struggles for legitimacy revolving around what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts.<br/>Aims and objectives: The aim is to present and illustrate the use of a theoretical framework for analysing the complexities of co-production in the nexus between arts and research – with a focus on the overarching tension between cultivating the collaborative, creative process and producing specific research results. The article maps out the contested discursive terrain of arts-based co-production, and illustrates the use of the theoretical framework in analysis of a participatory research project about dance for people with Parkinson’s disease and their spouses.<br/>Methods: The theoretical framework combines Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue, Foucault’s theory of power/knowledge and discourse, Wetherell’s theory of affect and emotion, and work in arts-based research on embodied, affective, aesthetic knowing.<br/>Results: The analysis shows how arts-based processes of co-production elicit embodied, emotional, aesthetic knowing and with what consequences for the research-based knowledge and other outputs generated.<br/>Discussion and conclusions: Trying to contribute to both research and practice entails navigating in a discursive terrain in which criteria for judging results, outputs and impact are often defined across conflicting discourses.<br/><br/>Key messages<br/>There is a dearth of detailed analyses of the potentials and challenges arising in arts-based co-production.<br/><br/>The article offers a theoretical framework for analysing the tension between cultivating collaborative, creative processes and generating specific results.<br/><br/>It explores how arts-based co-production elicits embodied, emotional, aesthetic knowing, and with what consequences for the results.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.