Fan Cultures (Sussex Studies in Culture and Communication)

The author explores fandom as a culture from the lens of religion, cult enthusiasm, and psychology. He offers an alternative perspective to the works of other pop culture studies academics. I found his insights about pop culture fandom and religion to be particularly fascinating. This book will give you a lot to consider about how fandom engages pop culture and makes it part of their lives, as well as what can be learned by exploring fandom from disciplines outside the norms of cultural studies. What I also found insightful was hit detailed exploration of the hierarchy of fan culture, which was useful for understanding how fan communities work. If you are interested in pop culture studies or pop culture in general, this is a good book to read.

Some useful material here, but you really have to work to find it. Generally over-written and the author is seemingly obsessed with postmodern ways of thinking. Thus, for example, we are 'treated' to his gleeful, verbose critique of any dichotomy he comes across (such as fan vs. academic) and are left with very little for the effort. If you can steer clear or skip over these sections which do little but reflect the author's own theoretical assumptions, you will find interesting content dispersed throughout. For example, the section on autoethnography was surprisingly interesting. In summary, I do not recommend this if you are looking for either a concise introduction (this is rather more meandering) or something accessible to non-academics (this certainly isn't). Otherwise, it's worth a look.

First of all, I'm no expert. I'm just a student trying to learn more about fan cultures.The only reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 5 is that it's an excellent book about fan culture STUDIES, more than the fan culture in itself. There's a very good discussion about other academic works so if that's what you're looking for, this is the perfect book.Since I'm still not completely familiarized with all the other studies mentioned, this wasn't completely helpful to me. Maybe in the future, after I've read more.

Excellent condition

A thoughtful and probing analysis of previous work in fan studies coupled with Hills' own theorization of certain aspects of fan practice. The first four chapters consider certain shortcomings of previous theoretical work on fandom, filling in holes and nuancing concepts core to the field but too likely to be taken as first proposed. Hills brings a great deal of knowledge and insight to his evaluation and expansion of past work.One shortcoming of the book is its failure to work with cinema fandom to any significant degree. This is particularly problematic if one wishes to use Hills' definition of the 'cult fan' to work with the fan practices and cultures organized around movies.Nevertheless, this is an essential piece of work for anyone interested, and it provides a solid foundation for work that might expand into unexplored territory, like that mentioned above.It is not light reading by any stretch, though. Turn to Jenkins' TEXTUAL POACHERS and/or Fiske's UNDERSTANDING POPULAR CULTURE for an introduction, and be ready to reread Hills' book at least once anyway.

i am doing my dissertation about fandom.This book helps me a lot.It shows me the change of fandom (fan behaviors, fan identities) in this recent years.

perfect. nothing to complain about.