The Drag Pit: the Decline and Fall of Cockfighting

• In Event: Revisiting Deviance: Perspectives From Pimps, Cockfighters and Bikers

Abstract

Cockfighting is an ancient pastime that enjoyed wide popularity in early modern Europe, Asia, and colonial and the modernizing United States, particularly in southern and western regions, well into the twentieth century. It was (and is) seen as a character-building activity and a wholesome form of folk recreation in some quarters. The rooster was seen by cockfighters as a totem of “gameness,” a living symbol of the idealized and celebrated masculinity of previous eras into the early 1900s. Thus the pastime gave rise to a subculture of aficionados that is characterized by what current social scientists would call “anachronistic” norms or values. These values, while functional in rural 19th century frontier society, and other rural milieus and being out of step with contemporary idealized gender appropriate male roles and with modern sensitivity to animal rights and chamber of commerce boosterism has therefore become anathema. Criminologists and most social scientists have typically given short-shrift to the weltanschauung of cockfighters and other unsympathetic “pariah groups,“ and criminalization and stigmatization of this group has occurred almost unopposed.

Author

• Francis Frederick Hawley, Western Carolina University