Michelle Fine: Through the Fractured Lens, Co-Creation, Power, and the Politics of Knowledge

Michelle Fine’s work, particularly her approach to participatory action research (PAR) and critical co-creation, offers a sharp lens into the mechanics of power, knowledge, and voice. She sits at the intersection of social justice, critical psychology, and participatory research, challenging the ways in which dominant institutions define reality.

Fine doesn’t just theorise about meaning, belonging, and power dynamics, she actively works to reposition knowledge creation as a collaborative, insurgent act. Her approach is rooted in the idea that those who are traditionally excluded from shaping knowledge should be at the centre of it. Not as passive subjects. Not as "stakeholders" in a process run by external experts. But as active architects of meaning, constructing knowledge that reflects their lived realities rather than having it imposed on them.

What she exposes is not just a failure of inclusion, but a system built on epistemic exclusion, one that decides who gets to speak, who gets to be heard, and, more crucially, whose words are taken seriously. Knowledge, in this sense, is never neutral. It is created, contested, controlled, and, in many cases, weaponised. The stories that shape policy, research, and public narratives are often crafted by those with the privilege to define reality from a distance, while those who live inside the reality being studied are dismissed as biased, anecdotal, or "too close" to the issue to be credible.

Viewed through The Fractured Lens Fine’s work forces us to ask: What happens when we shift from knowledge as something extracted to knowledge as something co-created? What changes when we move from research on communities to research with them? And what does that reveal about the power structures embedded in the very act of studying the world?

Fine’s approach is more than an alternative research method; it’s a challenge to how meaning itself is produced and policed. And when we apply The Fractured Lens, we see just how deep that challenge runs.

Unknowing: Who Gets to Define Knowledge?

Michelle Fine’s work disrupts traditional notions of expertise by exposing the ways in which knowledge production is monopolised by institutions that exclude those most affected by systemic issues. Universities, research bodies, and policymakers often claim objectivity, but Fine pulls back the curtain on how these institutions define who gets to be a knower, what counts as valid knowledge, and whose perspectives are dismissed as anecdotal, emotional, or unscientific.

This is a direct challenge to the assumption that expertise is something earned within elite institutions, that to be a legitimate "knower," one must be a trained academic, a professional, or someone who has navigated the gatekeeping structures that dictate credibility. Fine argues that this framing of expertise is not just exclusionary, it is a political act. It is a method of silencing of ensuring that people on the receiving end of systemic oppression do not get to define their own reality, let alone change it.

Fine’s approach to co-creation, when viewed through The Fractured Lens, is an exercise in unknowing. It is not just about adding marginalised voices to an existing body of knowledge, but actively challenging the structures that determine what knowledge is in the first place. It asks:

What knowledge has been treated as universal, and whose perspectives have been erased in the process?

Who benefits from the assumption that knowledge must be "objective" and who is harmed by it?

What happens when those who have been studied, categorised, and theorised about start producing knowledge on their own terms?

Fine doesn’t just critique the existing structures, she unravels the idea that research is about finding definitive answers at all. Her work embraces uncertainty, dialogue, and the necessity of unlearning dominant narratives. Instead of positioning herself as an external expert extracting data from a community, she engages in mutual sensemaking, where knowledge is something built together, in real time, through conversation and reflection.

This is where The Fractured Lens and Fine’s work align so powerfully. Unknowing is not passive ignorance, it is an active practice of breaking apart rigid, imposed truths to make space for something more expansive. Fine’s approach reveals that what we often call knowledge is not just incomplete, but deeply shaped by power. And when power decides what is knowable, it also decides what is unthinkable.

Fine’s work reminds us that knowing is always political, but so is unknowing. The act of stepping away from certainty, of questioning whose knowledge we’ve internalised, is a necessary part of making real change. Co-creation, in this sense, is not just a methodology, it is an act of epistemic resistance.

Meaning: Whose Reality Is Legitimised?

Michelle Fine’s work exposes a fundamental truth that sits at the core of The Fractured Lens: meaning is not universal, objective, or neutral. It is created, contested, and, in many cases, forced upon people.

A key part of Fine’s participatory action research is that it doesn’t simply document problems or extract data, it co-constructs meaning alongside the communities most impacted. This is a radical departure from traditional research, which often assumes that meaning is something to be discovered, as if the world exists in fixed, objective truths just waiting to be uncovered by those with the right methods.

Fine makes visible what is often invisible: the hidden power behind meaning-making itself. Institutions, policies, and dominant cultural narratives do not simply describe the world, they define it. They tell us what is real, what is true, what is valid. And in doing so, they determine whose experiences count, whose struggles are recognised, and whose voices are ignored.

This power over meaning is most clearly seen in the way marginalised communities are framed. Fine’s work with young people in the criminal justice system, for example, highlights how institutions impose meaning onto them, meaning that is often far removed from their actual lived experiences.

"At-risk youth." "Delinquents." "Future criminals." These are not neutral labels; they are pre-constructed narratives that shape how these young people are treated, policed, and studied.

The same dynamic applies to undocumented students, people in poverty, or any group that has had meaning imposed on them from the outside, a process that not only dictates how society sees them but also how they come to see themselves.

Fine’s work refuses to accept these imposed meanings as inevitable. Instead, she works alongside communities to reclaim meaning-making as an act of resistance.

Viewed through The Fractured Lens, this reveals something important:

Meaning is always shaped by power. It is not just an intellectual exercise, it has material consequences. The way a group is framed dictates how they are policed, funded, researched, and ultimately controlled.

The ability to define meaning is an exercise of power. Those who set the terms of debate shape the possible futures that emerge from it.

To change meaning is to change what is possible. Fine’s participatory approach doesn’t just offer critique; it offers an alternative. By co-creating meaning with communities, she disrupts the mechanisms that allow dominant groups to define the world on their behalf.

Fine’s work reveals that meaning is not something we passively receive, it is something we must actively reclaim. If unknowing is about questioning what we’ve been told, then meaning is about rebuilding from the ground up.

And once we see that meaning is not fixed, we realise that neither is the world we’ve been told is inevitable.

Belonging: Who Is Allowed to Participate in Knowledge Creation?

Belonging is not just about inclusion, it’s about who gets to shape the world.

Michelle Fine’s work dismantles the illusion that research is an open, neutral space where all perspectives are welcome. Instead, she reveals how knowledge creation has been historically designed as an exclusionary process, with only certain people granted the authority to produce knowledge that is taken seriously.

Traditional research often treats marginalised communities as objects of study rather than active participants in knowledge production. Policymakers, academics, and institutions decide what questions to ask, what counts as evidence, and what conclusions are valid, all without those most affected having a meaningful say. This isn’t an accident. It is an embedded, structural feature of how power operates.

Fine refuses to accept this. She doesn’t just study communities from a distance, she engages in co-creation, ensuring that the people traditionally framed as research subjects are repositioned as active producers of knowledge.

Viewed through The Fractured Lens, Fine’s work highlights how belonging is socially constructed and constantly negotiated, not just at an interpersonal level, but within the very structures that define legitimacy and participation.

Belonging is not just about being included, it’s about having authorship. Traditional research might "include voices," but that doesn’t mean those voices are defining the conversation. Fine’s work insists that belonging means having the power to create knowledge, not just contribute to someone else’s findings.

Knowledge production is a gatekeeping mechanism. Institutions decide who gets to produce "valid" knowledge, often favouring detached, so-called objective perspectives over lived experience. Fine’s participatory approach breaks down these walls, ensuring that communities are not only included but positioned as architects of the research itself.

To belong in the process of knowledge creation is an act of agency. It is not just about recognition, it is about reclaiming control over the narratives that shape policy, funding, and public perception. Fine’s work challenges the deeply embedded belief that knowledge is only legitimate when produced by outsiders looking in. Instead, she insists that those living within a reality have the greatest insight into it.

Fine’s approach makes it clear that belonging in knowledge production is not just an intellectual exercise, it is an act of justice. It is about who has the right to define reality, who gets to be heard, and whose perspectives shape the future.

This is where The Fractured Lens and Fine’s work align so powerfully. Belonging is not a feeling, it is a structure. And as long as the structure of knowledge production excludes the very people it claims to study, we are not talking about inclusion. We are talking about control.

Fine’s work challenges us to ask:

Who is left out of the process of meaning-making?

Whose knowledge has been systematically devalued?

What happens when belonging is reclaimed, and knowledge is created on the terms of those who have historically been excluded?

The act of co-creating knowledge is an act of reclaiming power. Fine’s work shows us that belonging is not something granted by institutions, it is something communities must take back for themselves.

Dynamics of Power & Change; Who Controls the Narrative?

Power is not just about laws, policies, or institutions, it is about who gets to define reality. It is about who shapes the narratives that tell us what is possible, what is true, and who we are allowed to become.

Michelle Fine’s work makes it clear that knowledge production is one of the most powerful tools of control. It is not neutral, and it is not an innocent pursuit of truth. Knowledge is a contested space, a site of political struggle where certain voices are elevated while others are systematically erased.

Fine sees co-creation not as a neutral act, but as a radical act of redistribution. Her work exposes how dominant institutions, whether they be education systems, prisons, governments, or research bodies, shape, limit, and control the narratives that define people’s lives. This control isn’t always explicit; it often operates through the slow, subtle reinforcement of dominant perspectives, framing them as objective and inevitable.

Viewed through The Fractured Lens, Fine’s work reveals how dynamics of power and change shape knowledge, meaning, and belonging in deeply structural ways:

Power & Control Dynamics; Who Gets to Speak, Who Gets to Be Heard

Systems of power don’t just dictate policies, they control what counts as knowledge. When marginalised communities are studied but not included in meaning-making, their realities are filtered through external perspectives that flatten, distort, or erase their truths. Fine’s work shows that controlling knowledge is a way of controlling people.

Think about how research is often used to justify oppressive policies:

Intelligence tests and “scientific racism” were used to validate segregation.

Studies on “criminal tendencies” have long framed poverty as a moral failing rather than a systemic issue.

Mental health diagnoses have been weaponised against marginalised groups to pathologise resistance and cultural differences.

Fine’s participatory action research interrupts this process by refusing to accept top-down knowledge as the only valid form of truth. By shifting the production of knowledge back into the hands of communities, she challenges the very structure of meaning-making itself.

Time & Evolution; Reclaiming Knowledge, Rewriting the Narrative

Power does not remain static. It is constantly shifting, evolving, and being recontested. Fine’s work shows that narratives imposed from the top can be disrupted over time. The stories that once seemed unchangeable, the idea that prisons exist to rehabilitate, that poverty is an individual failing, that intelligence is biologically determined are being rewritten by those who refuse to accept the realities handed to them.

Co-creation is part of this rewriting. Fine’s research isn’t just about documenting problems, it is about creating alternative futures. When communities reclaim the ability to define themselves, they reshape what is politically and socially possible.

Power is never just about the present moment. It is about the long arc of meaning-making over time.

Unique Context; Every Struggle Has Its Own Complexities

One of the biggest mistakes institutions make is treating marginalised communities as a single category, as if all oppression looks the same, all struggles follow the same trajectory, and all solutions can be standardised and scaled.

Fine rejects this. She understands that every participatory research process is shaped by the specific histories, struggles, and cultures of the community involved. There is no universal blueprint for co-creation because power does not operate in a singular way.

The power dynamics within an Indigenous community reclaiming knowledge are different from those within an urban youth movement resisting criminalisation.

The ways power operates in policy research differ from the ways it operates in grassroots organising.

The fight for educational justice is not identical to the fight for economic justice, though both are deeply interconnected.

The Fractured Lens recognises that power, knowledge, and resistance are always situated within specific, unique contexts. Fine’s work is a model for how co-creation must be deeply responsive to those realities rather than imposed as a rigid framework.

Final Thoughts: Power, Knowledge, and the Fight for Meaning

Michelle Fine’s work reminds us that knowledge is never just about truth, it is about power. Institutions control narratives, not because they are the best at telling the truth, but because they have the authority to decide what counts as truth in the first place.

Through The Fractured Lens, Fine’s work reveals that challenging these narratives is not just about adding new voices, it is about changing the entire structure of knowledge production.

Co-creation is not just about representation, it is about power redistribution. It is about reclaiming meaning, challenging imposed realities, and recognising that the ability to define knowledge is the ability to shape the future.

Fine’s work forces us to ask:

Who controls the narrative, and how did they get that power?

What happens when those who have been defined by others start defining themselves?

How do we move from merely describing injustice to actively dismantling the structures that maintain it?

Knowledge is a battleground. And Fine’s work reminds us that power does not concede control of meaning without a fight.

Beyond Right and Wrong: The Fractured Lens as an Exploration of Unknowing

One of the easiest mistakes to make when engaging with The Fractured Lens is assuming that it’s about proving a point, about dismantling one version of knowledge in favour of another, about being "right" in opposition to what is "wrong." But this completely misreads the intent.

The Fractured Lens is not about arriving at fixed conclusions, it’s about leaning into unknowing. It’s about recognising that knowledge is not a settled, universal thing, but an ongoing, relational process that is contested, evolving, and always shaped by the dynamics of power and meaning.

To engage with Fine’s work and with participatory research more broadly, through The Fractured Lens is not to argue that traditional research is worthless, or that expertise has no value. Instead, it’s about recognising that what we consider expertise, legitimacy, and rigour has been constructed within particular power structures, and that these structures determine who gets to define reality in the first place.

This means The Fractured Lens does not assume participatory action research (PAR) or its more politically engaged form, critical participatory action research (CPAR), is the "right" approach to knowledge production in contrast to traditional methods. Rather, it asks:

What happens when we stop treating research as a process of discovering fixed truths and instead embrace it as an ongoing negotiation of meaning?

What shifts when we stop assuming that knowledge must be extracted from communities and instead consider that knowledge is always co-created, whether we acknowledge it or not?

How does research change when we no longer treat objectivity as the absence of bias, but instead as an awareness of the perspectives that have been silenced in the process of meaning-making?

This is where Fine’s work is so powerful. PAR and CPAR are not just methods, they are refusals.

A refusal to accept that knowledge must be produced by detached experts to be valid.

A refusal to separate research from the social conditions in which it takes place.

A refusal to let dominant institutions impose meaning on those who live inside the realities being studied.

Traditional research assumes that knowledge is best produced from a distance. The Fractured Lens doesn’t reject this outright, it simply questions the assumption that detachment is inherently superior to engagement.

CPAR, in particular, makes this explicit. Where traditional research might claim to "give voice" to marginalised communities, CPAR recognises that these communities have always had voices, the issue is that dominant knowledge structures have refused to listen. Fine’s work is an intervention into that refusal.

It forces us to ask:

Who has been positioned as a passive subject of research, and why?

Who has been systematically excluded from shaping the very knowledge that defines their lives?

What power dynamics are at play in how research is conducted, published, and legitimised?

These are not questions with definitive answers. They are provocations, invitations to explore, to challenge, to unknow.

This is why The Fractured Lens resists the idea of being "right." It is not an argument for one method over another. It is a practice of ongoing inquiry, one that embraces the discomfort of uncertainty and the necessity of questioning even our most deeply held assumptions.

In this way, Fine’s work and The Fractured Lens intersect in a crucial way: they are both about disrupting certainty.

So, the real question is not whether participatory research is better than traditional research. It is what assumptions about knowledge we are reproducing when we fail to question the structures that define it.

And once we begin to unknow, we realise that the only certainty is that knowledge is never neutral, it is always shaped by power, meaning, and the struggle over who gets to define reality.

And that is where the real work begins.

Acknowledging María Elena Torre and the Broader Landscape of CPAR

While this piece has focused on Michelle Fine, it’s important to acknowledge that Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) is not the work of any one individual. Fine’s contributions are deeply embedded in a broader lineage of scholars and activists who have challenged traditional research methods, and among them, María Elena Torre stands as a crucial figure.

Torre’s work has been instrumental in shaping CPAR, particularly in pushing the idea that research is not just about generating knowledge, it is about resistance, healing, and structural change. She has built on Fine’s foundational ideas, emphasising the relational and ethical dimensions of co-creation, ensuring that knowledge is not just co-produced but used as a tool to disrupt and transform oppressive systems.

We have focused on Fine’s contributions here, not to diminish Torre’s influence, but because of the way Fine frames co-creation as power with rather than power over, an idea that has always stuck with me. This articulation of power as something fundamentally shared, rather than wielded, is what makes participatory research more than just an alternative methodology, it makes it a challenge to the very structures that dictate who gets to produce knowledge in the first place.

Fine’s work remains a powerful entry point into understanding how knowledge is weaponised and how it can be reclaimed. But Torre’s contributions and the broader landscape of CPAR, decolonial methodologies, and radical participatory research, deserve equal recognition in shaping the fight over meaning, belonging, and power.

No knowledge is produced alone. And no challenge to power happens in isolation.