How is knowledge co-produced in dialogue through the harnessing of “difference”? Investigating dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the “co” of co-production

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Abstract

This panel is about the “dialogic turn” in the production and communication of knowledge, a general societal tendency in which practices of co-creation are widespread across diverse fields of social practice as a means of generating knowledge, often with a view to practice change. Practices of co-creation in the dialogic turn include inquiry-based learning, inter-institutional and inter-professional collaboration in ‘person-centred’ social work and health care, “bottom-up” organisational change, collaborative research, public engagement with science, and citizen involvement in welfare services and urban planning. In the dialogic turn, communication is configured as dialogue in which multiple social actors co-produce knowledge collaboratively across multiple knowledge forms and knowledge interests. Participants in dialogue, it is claimed, are empowered as self-directed co-learners, co-researchers or co-producers of knowledge, as opposed to clients, informants, consumers, students or target groups. According to dialogic ideals, expert knowledge is democratized as multiple ways of knowing are recognized as legitimate. Crucially, difference is viewed as the transformative force in the co-construction of knowledge in dialogue. By harnessing difference as a transformative force, it is claimed, dialogue can generate knowledge across differences, including differences of organizational and professional position, theoretical perspective, gender, ethnicity, class and so on. But how exactly is knowledge co-produced in dialogue through the harnessing of “difference” in organisational contexts? The papers in this panel address this question by drawing on Bakhtinian dialogic communication theory and other theories in analysis of what is at stake in the “co” of co-production in a range of different fields of practice – co-creation in university educational practices, participatory development communication in an NGO, collaboration in an interdisciplinary social and health care team working with “person-centred care” in relation to older people with dementia, and the evaluation of participatory arts-based programmes with disadvantaged youth.
A basic assumption across the papers is that dialogue in practice is fraught with tensions emanating from the play of power in which certain knowledge forms and subjectivities dominate and others are marginalised or excluded. And those tensions are shaped by the complexities of working across different knowledge forms and expectations in relation to the process and outcome in particular socio-political conjunctures and organisational contexts, which are co-constituted through negotiations of meaning. Together, the papers present critical-reflexive analytical strategies for the study of, and empirical insights into, the “co” in the co-production of knowledge and identities in dialogue. Thus the aim is to contribute to research on the co-production of knowledge in organisations from an “organizational becoming” perspective.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Publikationsdato11 jun. 2016
StatusUdgivet - 11 jun. 2016
Begivenhed66th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association: Communicating With Power - Fukuoka Sea Hawk Hilton Hotel, Fukuoka, Japan
Varighed: 9 jun. 201613 jun. 2016
https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ica/ica16/ (Link til konference)

Konference

Konference66th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association
LokationFukuoka Sea Hawk Hilton Hotel
Land/OmrådeJapan
ByFukuoka
Periode09/06/201613/06/2016
Internetadresse

Emneord

  • dialogic communication
  • power relation
  • Co-creation
  • organisational dynamics
  • critical perspectives
  • qualitative methods

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