Cosplay in Australia: (re)creation and creativity: assemblage and negotiation in a material and performative practice

Cosplay, or ‘costume–play’, is a practice centred upon the assembly and performance of costumes based on pre–existing character designs. This craft and performance practice has its origins in cross–cultural exchange between Japan the United States, and is currently enacted by practitioners in many countries, including Australia. Features of localised cosplay practice appear to challenge and contradict models of practice frequently adopted by anthropologists and sociologists. While traditional models tend to emphasise the role of social structures in the reproduction of practices and characterise practices as developing slowly over time, the practice of cosplay in Australia appears to be highly fragmented, individualised and dynamic. Despite this evanescence, fragmentation, individualisation and variation cosplay exists as a recognisable practice and has produced communities of practitioners who identify as ‘cosplayers’. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork within Australian communities of practice, I explore the (re)creation of dynamic, heterogeneous and ephemeral cosplay practice. Utilising an assemblage of perspectives from anthropologies of material culture and performance, two disciplines which have emerged out of post–structuralist interest in practice and process, I characterise the practice of cosplay in Australia as a series of assembly, negotiation and distribution processes. Through an ethnographic exploration of how ‘practices–as–performances’ recreate ‘practices–as–entities’ Reckwitz (2002); Schatzki et al. (2000), I argue that anthropological material culture and performance approaches to practice can expand and challenge traditional generalist models of practice, and provide a more comprehensive understanding of practices that are diverse, ephemeral and more loosely structured.Thesis(Ph.D.)-- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 201