fox hunting as ritual

The continuing cultural importance of hunting in modern Western societies, especially to some elites, justifies increased attention from anthropologists. English fox hunting can be seen as a ritual of social class, one dramatizing themes and images about the gentry and aristocracy, and about rural society as a whole. The present analysis stresses the importance of examining the symbolic forms of modern society in a historical perspective, and it raises the possibility that some key symbols may be second‐best substitutes or approximations of an ideal. [hunting, ritual, symbolism, social class, England]