Cockfighting. Games and Analogies in Anthropology

The objective of this article is to present a review of Clifford Geertz’s proposal for the analysis of cockfighting. During my fieldwork in the Sierra Mazateca (Oaxaca, Mexico) I was able to witness cockfighting tournaments in the patron saint festivities. Through a comparative exercise between my o...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: García de Teresa, Marcos
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:México
Institución:UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO
Repositorio:Anales de Antropología
Idioma:español
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/85400
Acceso en línea:https://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/antropologia/article/view/85400
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Games
Animals
Gambling
Uncertainty
Metaphors
Mexico
Bali
Clifford Geertz
Juegos
Animales
Apuestas
Incertidumbre
Metáforas
Clifford Geerts
México
Descripción
Sumario:The objective of this article is to present a review of Clifford Geertz’s proposal for the analysis of cockfighting. During my fieldwork in the Sierra Mazateca (Oaxaca, Mexico) I was able to witness cockfighting tournaments in the patron saint festivities. Through a comparative exercise between my observations and Clifford Geertz’s descriptions, I will try to indicate some keys to discuss the conclusions of his famous essay. My argument is that Geertz’s text should be valued in the discipline, not only for its contributions to symbolic anthropology and its methodological proposal, but also for its contributions to the analysis of games. However, the analogy with the text does not seem appropriate to me either for the analysis of cockfights or for describing the objective of the anthropological discipline. Instead, I prefer the analogy with game –understood in a broad sense– as it allows us to resolve some of the objections that have been raised against interpretive anthropology.