Periphery fandom: Contrasting fans’ productive experiences across the globe

Abstract

The article introduces the concept of periphery fandom, a concept that is new in the debate on consumer culture, to interrogate global fan community productive experiences from various geographical locations. Periphery fandom is defined as a sub-ordinated fan community experience, where members are deprived of access to their objects of fandom. Periphery fandom also refers to a fan productive experience that is detrimental to the fan community ethos. This notion of periphery fandom is underpinned by insights from fandom studies, brand community scholarship, and core and periphery theories. Using adult fans of LEGO as an example, this article demonstrates the character of periphery fandom. By contrasting the data gathered from 2014 to 2019 during UK, Japan, USA, and Brazil LEGO fan events, this study reveals how fans’ divergent productive practices and community experiences are influenced by their geographical location. Moreover, the fan productive experiences from the periphery further hinder their creative expressions and visibility, creating a more fragmented global brand fandom landscape. This study overall advances a contribution to the fandom debates by contrasting fan production and fan brand experiences.