Introduction

Community, Collaboration and Co-creation in Times of Crisis

We live in a time of multiple, intersecting crises that are shaping new ways of engaging with and experiencing tourism. These crises include growing inequalities, threats to democracies, social fragmentation, the rise of populism and nationalism, forced displacement, climate change, global oligarchies, the increasing power of technocracy, wars, and pandemics. These changes and challenges not only refine the meaning of communities but also influence how collaborative and participatory patterns emerge and evolve among tourism stakeholders.

In traditional anthropology and sociology, the concept of communities has often been framed in unproblematic terms (Jørgensen, 2024). However, recent global geo-political, ecological and economic shifts have contributed to a more critical examination of this concept. Communities are typically defined as groups that share a common geographical or physical space (Urry, 2001) but also belong to the same social group. In discussing the local turn in tourism, Higgins-Desbiolles and Bigby (2022, p.2) define local communities as “more than just a certain group of people associated with a place. Instead, we are more broadly inclusive of the local community, the local ecology (living air, land and waterscapes and more-than-human beings) and all generations pertaining to that place (including future ones)”.

The concept is further problematised in relation to growing divisions, polarised identities and ideologies, global misinformation (via the web, for example) and human/non-human exploitation. In acknowledging the contradictions, ‘fractures and disenchantments’ of our time (Braidotti, 2019, p.36), Rosi Braidotti calls for closer scrutiny on the meaning and entanglements of ‘we’ (p.37). This invites a critical reconsideration of how our shared condition shapes understandings of who ‘we’ are and to what extent, we can argue, we are in this together.

The possibilities and potentials of our collective praxis and aspirations to navigate, through transformation and resistance, fractures and ‘irreconcilable power differences’ (Braidotti, 2019, p.43), allow us to consider the heterogeneity and diversity of relational subjects (both human and non-human) and approaches. Accordingly, Braidotti (2019, p.157) argues that “we-are-in-this-together-but-we-are-not-one-of-the-same” (italics in the original). This highlights that our heterogeneity is defined by social categories such as class, race, sexual orientation, able-bodiedness but also by power, norms, values, privileges, rights, entitlements (Braidotti, 2019). The multiplicity of relational, heterogeneous subjects forms communities that must act together to reclaim power, agency and freedom.

Within the leisure context of tourism and events, we focus on the affirmative possibilities that community participation can forge through collaboration, driven by the shared aspiration of empowerment, fairness and inclusion. However, this is not without challenges, as communities’ involvement, participation and co-production are often hindered by the “structural injustices under which tourism operates” (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020, p.616). Localising (Freya Higgins-Desbiolles and Bigby, 2022) and socialising tourism (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020) may open possibilities for greater justice and well-being for local communities and, more broadly, for all tourism stakeholders.