The Enculturation of Liminality in Zine-Making: Acts of Associative Commonality That Enable Participation in a Media-Making Communitas

Abstract

Participation in zine-making is enacted through a series of inter-linked making practices and intentions, constructed within both personal and interpersonal frames, and shared with others in different ways. Zines are catalysts for network formation within a cultural or sub-cultural community, with zine-makers sharing experiences, resources, and creativity to inform and associate with the community. Drawing on the constructivist grounded theory analysis of thirty-four semi-structured email interviews with zine-makers, this study sought to theorize a transdisciplinary understanding of the potential role zine-making communities play in the decision by an individual to participate in zine-making and how that participation was defined, enacted, and enculturated through zine-making. Using a constructivist grounded analysis, a model of participation was developed that defined and explored the bounded boundaryless of the zine-making communitas. In these spaces, members of the communitas deliberately transitioned into or through liminality and found affiliation and communion through engaging in and sharing the processes involved in zine-making (such as construction, distribution, and writing). Within this semi-fragile zine-making community, smaller sub-spaces were formed through engagement or affiliation with different interpretations and enactions of these processes, manifest in the production of different zine typologies and the creation and engagement with readership or circulation networks.