Re-enactment and its information practices; tensions between the individual and the collective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the practices used by Australian re-enactors to achieve authenticity, a communally agreed measure of acceptability in the creation of an impression, the dress, behaviours and accoutrements of the period, through the concepts of serious leisure and information practices. Design/methodology/approach – Re-enactment is a practical, information-based performative activity. In this paper, the research styles and decision-making processes developed and employed by its enthusiasts to create authentic impressions are examined through an ethnographic case study. Findings – The re-enactors are identified as “makers and tinkerers”, in Stebbins’s categorisation of serious leisure. Research, documentation and the sharing of information, knowledge and skills are common practices among re-enactors and acknowledged as integral to the processes of creating an impression to a collectively agreed standard of authenticity. Re-enactors’ “making” includes not only the creation o...

[1]  Vanessa Agnew,et al.  History's affective turn: Historical reenactment and its work in the present , 2007 .

[2]  R. Stebbins.  Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious Leisure , 1992 .

[3]  Mitchell D. Strauss.  A Framework for Assessing Military Dress Authenticity in Civil War Reenacting , 2001 .

[4]  S. Gapps.  Performing the past : a cultural history of historical reenactments , 2002 .

[5]  Jenna Hartel,et al.  Information activities and resources in an episode of gourmet cooking , 2006, Inf. Res..

[6]  Richard Handler,et al.  Dyssimulation: Reflexivity, Narrative, and the Quest for Authenticity in “Living History” , 1988 .

[7]  Umberto Eco,et al.  Travels in hyperreality : essays , 1987 .

[8]  Jarkko Kari,et al.  Information and higher things in life: Addressing the pleasurable and the profound in information science , 2007, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[9]  Mitchell D. Strauss.  Identity Construction Among Confederate Civil War Reenactors: A Study of Dress, Stage Props, and Discourse , 2003 .

[10]  Robert A. Stebbins,et al.  Leisure and Its Relationship to Library and: Information Science: Bridging the Gap , 2009, Libr. Trends.

[11]  K. Tuominen,et al.  Information Literacy as a Sociotechnical Practice1 , 2005, The Library Quarterly.

[12]  Reijo Savolainen.  Information Behavior and Information Practice: Reviewing the “Umbrella Concepts” of Information‐Seeking Studies1 , 2007, The Library Quarterly.

[13]  Pattern Categorization of Male U.S. Civil War Reenactor Images , 2002 .

[14]  Elisabeth Davies.  The script as mediating artifact in professional theater production , 2008 .

[15]  Pamela J. McKenzie.  A model of information practices in accounts of everyday-life information seeking , 2003, J. Documentation.

[16]  Eric Paulos,et al.  Rise of the expert amateur: DIY projects, communities, and cultures , 2010, NordiCHI.

[17]  S. Decker.  Being Period: An Examination of Bridging Discourse in a Historical Reenactment Group , 2010 .

[18]  Mette Skov,et al.  Hobby-related information-seeking behaviour of highly dedicated online museum visitors , 2013, Inf. Res..

[19]  Tony Horwitz,et al.  Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War , 1998 .

[20]  A. Lloyd.  Learning to Put Out the Red Stuff: Becoming Information Literate through Discursive Practice1 , 2007, The Library Quarterly.

[21]  Elena Prigoda,et al.  Purls of wisdom: A collectivist study of human information behaviour in a public library knitting group , 2007, J. Documentation.

[22]  Michael K. Buckland,et al.  Information as thing , 1991, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci..

[23]  Jenna Hartel,et al.  Managing documents at home for serious leisure: a case study of the hobby of gourmet cooking , 2010, J. Documentation.

[24]  Annemaree Lloyd,et al.  Framing information literacy as information practice: site ontology and practice theory , 2010, J. Documentation.

[25]  Michael R. Olsson,et al.  The play's the thing: Theater professionals make sense of Shakespeare , 2010 .

[26]  David Bawden,et al.  No such thing as society? On the individuality of information behavior , 2013, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[27]  Charlotte P. Lee,et al.  The role of information in a community of hobbyist collectors , 2009, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[28]  Lyn Robinson,et al.  The individual and the collective: Factors affecting knowledge sharing in Saudi Arabian companies , 2015, J. Documentation.