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Make the friendship bracelets : from parasocial attachment to horizontal reciprocity in Taylor Swift fandomEva Vrtačič, 2026, original scientific article
Abstract: This article analyses the exchange of friendship bracelets among Taylor Swift fans (Swifties) as a gift economy shaped by parasociality and platform capitalism. Because the celebrity is structurally inaccessible at scale, reciprocity cannot return as an interpersonal gift and is instead displaced laterally into fan-to-fan exchange, becoming horizontal reciprocity and a moral economy of belonging. Drawing on Mauss and Lévi-Strauss, and extending the analysis through Malinowski, Appadurai, Kopytoff, Weiner, Gell, and Miller, I show how mass-produced materials are singularised through labour and ex change. The Eras Tour operates as a tournament of value in which bracelets function as pop-cultural valuables whose circulation organises recognition and inclusion. Reciprocity here can be understood as temporally extended, networked circulation anchored around an absent centre.
Keywords: Taylor Swift fandom, swifties, friedship bracelets, parasociality, reciprocity, tournaments of value, inalienable possessions
Published in RUP: 21.08.2026; Views: 420; Downloads: 16
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