Introduction: Critical issues in tourism co-creation

Abstract

‘Co-creation’ is a relatively new label for a range of collaborative practices, many of which have been discussed at length in tourism scholarship. Co-creation can also be transformative, producing new hybrid actors – human and non-human. As a result, discussions of co-creation prompt people to reorder their very human perspective on the world and to try to understand from the perspective of Nature, for example. With their own influence and agency, the best-known example of this new hybrid actor is the Great Pacific Gyre, a complex actor in its own right, produced through complex physical, economic, chemical, environmental and human interactions. Phi and Dredge unpack the historical roots and characteristics of co-creation from seven threads of scholarship, which provide a broader umbrella to expand the understanding of co-creation in tourism. Among these threads, co-creation from a post-human perspective is explored further by Bertella, Fumagalli and Williams-Grey in their research on wildlife tourism.