Fan Materiality and Meaning: Bringing Traditional Knowledge to Material Fandom Sustainability

Abstract

This chapter explores how sustainable development frameworks and insight gained from Traditional Knowledge systems might provide pathways to greater sustainability for the material objects that fans buy, design, create, share and collect.

We discuss the importance of physical objects to fan practice and how these objects serve a critical purpose in terms of meaning-making for fans. We describe the many different types of physical objects that fans interact with and how both affective associations and physical affordances can be important parts of their meaning. We also discuss the complex, often hybrid economic systems that these sit within and how this can interact with fans’ desire to maintain values relating to sustainability.

The Quadruple Bottom Line is a modern design framework for considering sustainable development that foregrounds meaning and spiritual connection. We relate this both to fan practice and Traditional Knowledge systems, revealing many similarities between the two. We close by suggesting how sustainable design practice might have the potential to improve sustainability in object-oriented fandom.