A Twitch in Time Saves Nine: Birdwatching, Sport, and Civilizing Processes

Abstract

This study takes an activity, birdwatching, which would appear to fall into the category of leisure activity, and argues using Norbert Elias’s theory of civilizing processes that birdwatching incorporates many of the characteristics of “civilized” sport. The focus is not on birdwatching per se but upon specific types of birdwatching activity: birding and twitching. The suggestion that birding is symbolic hunting is examined, and it is argued that the link between a relatively benevolent and scientific interest in birds and the “real” sport of hunting is historically much closer than often recognized. It is further suggested that the post-war popularization of birdwatching in Britain led to its routinization and a decline in its excitement-generating properties. Competitive birding restored some of the activity’s sport-like excitement, but birding was itself routinized and supplemented by twitching, an even more sport-like activity.

Trust in Interspecies Sport

“…Academic contributions in this broad area of study have included research on animals in sport (Sheard, 1999;Gillespie, Leffler & Lerner, 2002;Gilbert & Gillett, 2012;), the impact of animals on human health (Garrity & Stallones, 1998;Wells, 2009), therapeutic uses of animals (Burgon, 2003;Kaiser, Smith, Heleski and Spence, 2006;Yorke, Adams & Coady, 2008;Dell, Chalmers, Bresette, Swain & Rankin, 2011), animal ethics and violence toward animals (Worden & Darden, 1992;Atkinson & Young, 2005), and human-animal relationships (Robins, Sanders & Cahill, 1991;Lagoni, Butler & Hetts, 1994;Brandt, 2004;Sanders, 2007;Jerolmack, 2008;Herzog, 2011). Two areas of research within the study of interspecies relationships are important to this paper-studies of equestrian sport and post-Mead studies of animals.…”

El turismo de observación de aves en Cuba

“…La lista sustituyó la tan criticada práctica de la colección de aves taxidermiadas y la hizo más aceptable social, ética y ambientalmente. Al mismo tiempo conseguir y acumular un registro de especies dotaba al observador de objetivos a perseguir a cierto plazo, una noción de éxito en dicha carrera (Moss, 2005) aunque en lo más profundo pudiera cuestionarse si este comportamiento algo obsesivo constituye una especie de caza simbólica (Sheard, 1999).…”

Understanding Place as ‘Home’ and ‘Away’ through Practices of Bird-watching

“…For example, Chambers (2007) incorporated Urry's (2002) concept of the 'tourist gaze' to appraise the practice of viewing birds through CCTV at three bird-watching centres in Scotland. Likewise, Dunaway's (2000), Sheard's (1999) and Watson's (2011) discussions of the bird-picturing practices of naturalists and bird-watchers alert us to how the way we look is always a selective and learnt practice, embedded in particular sets of ideas, technologies and audiences. These authors conclude that the practice of viewing birds mediated by the picturing practices of cameras serves to further enforce dualist understanding of nature as 'out there', separate from humans.…”