Chaseworld: Foxhunting and Storytelling in New Jersey's Pine Barrens

by Mary Hufford

In the United States, there are two major styles of foxhunting. Both styles are centered around the same animal event--a pack of hounds in gregarious pursuit of a fox--but there the resemblance ends. English-style foxhunters, mounted on horseback--riding to hounds--in a spectacular display of social hierarchy and equestrian skill, provide the familiar image. Less well known is the Anglo-American practice of working-class foxhunters who, "listening to hounds" around campfires and pickup trucks throughout the fields, woods, and mountains of the eastern United States, determine from canine voices what is transpiring in this venerable contest between wild and domestic canids. Chaseworld is a study of the foxhunters who listen to hounds in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. Mary Hufford examines the activities that occur before, during, and after foxchases and analyzes the stories that hunters tell about chases. Through these activities and narratives, she contends, Pine Barrens foxhunters have collaboratively constructed an alternate reality--the Chaseworld. Hufford discusses the chase itself as a performance unfolding through an established sequence of events, and ordered according to clearly understood rules and conventions. Orchestrating and interpreting the chase, foxhunters conjure the Chaseworld, a realm wherein nature and society are uniquely reconstituted. Apart from foxchases, narrative performances provide another way of conjuring and inhabiting the Chaseworld. Drawing upon theories from folklore, phenomenological sociology, and symbolic anthropology, Hufford explores the interrelations of the Chaseworld and everyday life, and suggests possible meanings and functions of the Chaseworld in the lives of its creators. Her fresh and sensitive study will be of interest to students and scholars of folklore, anthropology, and American studies.

Genres: Folklore

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1992

Reviews

[Chris Antonsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent ethnographic treatment of narrative in terms of concepts of space and group identity. Not an easy read but a rewarding one.