A Tale of Two Cities: Symbolic Capital and Larp Community Formation in Canada and Sweden

This study examines how larp (live action role-playing) communities in Edmonton, Canada, and Stockholm, Sweden, deploy symbolic capital to structure their social spaces, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus and capital. Drawing on presentation documents from eight larps, four in each city, the analysis argues that symbols of legitimacy both foster community cohesion and exert a homogenizing pressure on what participants and organizers regard as acceptable play. The research relies on Mill's Most Different System Design alongside hermeneutic textual analysis, treating symbolic capital as taking objectified, embodied, and habitus-based forms that are tied to power and the reproduction of group norms.

The two communities emphasize markedly different attributes. Stockholm larps consistently foreground dramatic themes, social realist drama, and authenticity, with organizers often functioning as directors who define a central narrative. Edmonton larps concentrate on game mechanics, with thick rulebooks serving as the central artefact of each event, and display some attention to costuming and setting authenticity. In Edmonton, mechanics operate as an authoritative marker of quality and fairness, yet they also reflect a top-down, mistrustful organizational structure. In Stockholm, mechanics carry far less weight, and dramatic narrative and authenticity dominate the signals of legitimacy.

The author attributes these divergences to distinct community habitus, possibly shaped by the educational and artistic backgrounds of gatekeepers, with Nordic organizers often described as "art geeks" and North American participants as more quantitatively oriented. These differing forms of symbolic capital carry distinct implications for inclusion, player autonomy, and which participants are advantaged in play. The study closes by acknowledging its limits: because it relied solely on written presentations, it leaves open questions about actual player behaviour, ostracism, and the cross-Atlantic transmission of larp practices, which the author proposes to address through historical and ethnographic methods.