In this essay, we discuss dog fighting as a blood sport with a history embedded in the status-driven display of masculinity, power and violence. Based on published reports and interviews with those living and working in dog fighting neighborhoods, we show that the contemporary cultural knowledge of dog fighting is a discourse with multiple meanings: for those who pit dogs against each other, for the worried public, for those who are charged with law enforcement, and for the dogs themselves. We conclude with an argument that the discourse of dog fighting might best be approached from the perspective of green criminology with a focus on those who are most abused by the crime: the fighting dogs.
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