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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how illusion plays a role in maintaining networks of asymmetrical cooperation. I draw on my ethnographic findings about cosplayer fantrepreneurship in neoliberal Japan to demonstrate how illusion is used in cooperation, and why cooperation persists after the collapse of illusion.

Paper long abstract

While cooperation is usually maintained through reciprocity and compliance, I argue that illusion can also play a significant role, specifically in cooperation involving power asymmetry. Illusion, which involves deception and concealment, usually serves as a strategy to maintain mutual trust while disguising unfairness and exploitation as genuine and reciprocal relationships. However, in some cases, illusion becomes the very key value that the deluded party seeks to pursue and protect, making illusion the core of a network of cooperation. In addition, even when the illusion is exposed, the disillusioned party would still seek negotiation and/or alternation of the forms of cooperation when interdependence is maintained to some extent. I draw on two case studies from my fieldwork on the commercialisation of cosplay in Japan to demonstrate the involvement of illusion in asymmetrical cooperation. The first case study examines the cooperation between celebrity cosplayers and the advertising industry. Despite the promise of transforming a hobby into a career, the façade of reciprocity conceals feelings of alienation and the exploitation of emotional labour imposed on cosplayers. Still, disillusioned celebrity cosplayers would choose a negotiated stance because of their interdependent relationship with the industry. The second case study examines the parasocial relationships between cosplayer fantrepreneurs and their fans. I analyse how illusions of intimacy and exclusivity are produced and sustained through consumerist practices by fans and neoliberal entrepreneurial logic adopted by cosplayers. I also shed light on how cosplayers and their fans cooperate to maintain illusions for their respective purposes.