Résumé :
The purpose of the present study was to examine expertise in magic by
interviewing 16 prominent Finnish magicians who were identified earlier through a
social network analysis of 120 Finnish magicians. A semi-structured interview was
administered that addressed the participants’ histories; their relationship to magic, the
nature of their expertise, the networked development of expertise, their engagement
with magical expertise and their motivation for cultivating such expertise. The results
indicated that expertise in magic is cultivated, to a great extent, by informal networks
of expertise without formal training. The participants had become excited about
magic as children and started to pursue an expertise in the field from a relatively
early age (4 to 14 years). In accordance with other domains of expertise, it had taken
about 10 years of cultivating skills and competencies before becoming professional in
the field, with a few exceptions. Ego-centric network analyses revealed that there
were three or four magicians who had significantly shaped the Finnish field of magic
and affected most of the participants’ development and career. Most of the partic-
ipants were clustered, forming a core of Finnish magicians, and those magicians
working abroad and collaborating with international magicians were located at the
periphery of the Finnish network or formed an isolated network of clusters within it.

DOI  : 10.1007/s12186-013-9099-z