‘Who Said This?’ Negotiating the Ethics and Politics of Co-authorship in Community Text-Making

Abstract

Over the past decade, while working as an independent research-writer, I sought to embrace the inspirations and challenges of critical methodologies in various community assignments. I developed an approach to community text-making that situates community storytellers as co-researchers and primary authors of their texts. I used this approach to co-author many community narratives—books and case stories—with community elders, leaders and others working for social change and social justice. In 2015, during the community assignment that is the topic of this chapter, I began to rethink the ethics and politics at play in co-authorship. How should I attribute authorship for the prose, poetry and wisdom I crafted from stories generated in narrative inquiry co-research conversations? What do the words with and and represent when included in a list of co-authors? How should I represent my own authorial work? In this chapter, I tell the story of making a beautiful book that I co-authored with six community leaders working in a predominantly Māori and Pasifika community in urban New Zealand. I offer critical insights on different forms of authorial attribution and consider how relationships (between the co-authors and with this community of place) were enriched and challenged as the emerging book became the centre of a developing collaborative conversation.