NATURALIZING SPORTS

Abstract

This article investigates the paradoxical coexistence in late modernity of both heightened sentiments towards animals and the natural world, and the growing attraction of hunting and angling sports. The significance of this question can be gauged by the increase in parliamentary and electoral debates over the desirability of hunting and angling, by violent social conflict between hunters and anglers and their opponents and by debates over how best to `consume' natural environments. To date, the principal literatures have insisted that the terms of this debate be ethical and political, with no attempt to understand the drive and passion behind these sports. The ethical and moral standing of the hunter/angler is often prejudged while their motives are taken to derive from a need to exercise violence and cruelty. The recent literature dealing with the burgeoning of interest in nature and the environment frequently omits to mention those traditional pursuits that are shrouded in shame and conflict. It is argued here that enthusiasm for these sports is historically complex and relates to deeply embedded discourses on anti-modernism, neo-Darwinism, ecologism and masculinity. Far from being the preserve of traditional, rural groups in society, the new proponents of hunting and angling are drawn from sections of the urban middle class for whom such discourses have particular appeal.