Behind a Cockfighting
For Balinese cockfighting is not just a game, it is a social activity with complex system that an outsider will find it difficult to understand but for Balinese it is run in their blood. There is a complex social system in a cockfighting game. All Balinese values and codes of life is translated into this game. There are traditional ethical codes in a cockfighting game that a Balinese will obey unconsciously, maybe it is not appropriate to call it ethical code but rather a set of behavior that all Balinese will do in every cockfighting match without any outside pressure, it is their social instinct. Here are some examples of Balinese social instinct in cockfighting.
photo taken from flickr.com/photos/cafiso/
You virtually never bets against a cock owned by a member of your own family or kin group. Usually you will feel obliged to bet for it. If you certain in his mind that it will not win, he may just not bet at all, particularly if it is only a second cousin’s bird. But as a rule he will feel he must support it and, nearly always does. Thus the great majority of the people calling “five” or “speckled” so demonstratively are expressing their allegiance to their kinsman, not their evaluation of his bird, their understanding of probability theory, or even their hopes of unearned income.
photo taken from flickr.com/photos/whither/
This principle is extended logically. If your family or kin group is not involved you will support an allied family or kin group against an un-allied one in the same way, If an outsider cock is fighting any cock from your village you will tend to support the local one. If a cock from outside your cockfight circuit is fighting one inside it you will also tend to support the “home bird.”
photo taken from flickr.com/photos/whither/
You must bet on cocks of your own group aside from mere loyalty considerations, for if you do not people generally will say, “What! Is he too proud for the likes of us? Does he have to go to Java or Denpasar [the capital town] to bet, he is such an important man?” Thus there is a general pressure to bet not only to show that you are important locally, but that you are not so important that you look down on everyone else as unfit even to be rivals. Similarly, home team people must bet against outside cocks or the outsiders will accuse it - a serious charge - of just collecting entry fees and not really being interested in cockfighting as well as again being arrogant and insulting.
photo taken from flickr.com/photos/jtindall/
Cocks which come from any distance are almost always favorites, for the theory is the man would not have dared to bring it if it was not a good cock, the more so the further he has come. His followers are, of course, obliged to support him, and when the more grand-scale legal cockfights are held (on holidays and so on) the people of the village take what they regard to be the best cocks in the village, regardless of ownership, and go off to support them, although they will almost certainly have to give odds on them and to make large bets to show that they are not a cheapskate village. Actually, such “away games,” though infrequent, tend to mend the ruptures between village members that the constantly occurring “home games,” where village factions are opposed rather than united, exacerbate.
photo taken from flickr.com/photos/jtindall/
Balinese that involved in an institutionalized hostility relationship, called puik, in which they do not speak or otherwise have anything to do with each other (the causes of this formal breaking of relations are many: wife-capture, inheritance arguments, political differences) will bet very heavily, sometimes almost maniacally, against one another in what is a frank and direct attack on the very masculinity, the ultimate ground of his status, of the opponent.
The center bet (bet made by the owner of the cock) coalition is always made up by structural allies, kin group, - no “outside money” is involved. What is “outside” depends upon the context, of course, but given it, no outside money is mixed in with the main bet; if the owner of the cock cannot raise it, it is not made. The center bet is thus the most direct and open expression of social opposition, and prestige which is one of the reasons why both it and match making are surrounded by such an air of unease, furtiveness, embarrassment, and so on.
photo taken from mt8.ne.jp
The rule about borrowing money - that you may borrow for a bet but not in one – stems. There is no I owe you note passed to the enemy, from similar considerations: you are never at the economic mercy of your enemy that way. Gambling debts, which can get quite large on a rather short-term basis, are always to friends, never to enemies.
You do not even ask a relative or a friend whom he is betting on, because if you know how he is betting and he knows you know, and you go the other way, it will lead to strain. This rule is explicit and rigid; fairly elaborate, even rather artificial precautions are taken to avoid breaking it. At the very least you must pretend not to notice what he is doing, and he what you are doing.
There is a special word for betting against the family or kin group, which is also the word for “pardon me” (ampura). It is considered a bad thing to do, though if the center bet is small it is sometimes all right as long as you do not do it too often. But the larger the bet and the more frequently you do it, the more the “pardon me” tack will lead to social disruption. In fact, the institutionalized hostility relation, puik, is often formally initiated (though its causes always lie elsewhere) by such a “pardon me” bet in a deep fight, putting the symbolic fat in the fire.
In sticky, cross-loyalty situations, of which in this extraordinarily complex social system there are of course many, where a man is caught between two more or less equally balanced loyalties, he tends to wander off for a cup of coffee or something to avoid having to bet, a form of behavior reminiscent of that of American voters in similar situations.
So far as money is concerned, the explicitly expressed attitude toward it is that it is a secondary matter. It is not, as I have said, of no importance; Balinese are no happier to lose several weeks’ income than anyone else. But they mainly look on the monetary aspects of the cockfight as self-balancing, a matter of just moving money around, circulating it among a fairly well-defined group of serious cockfighters.
The really important wins and losses are seen mostly in other terms, and the general attitude toward wagering is not any hope of cleaning up, of making a killing (addict gamblers excepted), but that of the horseplayer’s prayer: “Oh, God, please let me break even.” In prestige terms, however, you do not want to break even, but, in a momentary, punctuate sort of way, win utterly. The talk (which goes on all the time) is about fights against such-and-such a cock of So-and-So which your cock demolished, not on how much you won, a fact people, even for large bets, rarely remember for any length of time, though they will remember the day they did in someone finest cock for years.
Materials for this writing are taken from the writing of Hildred Geertz on Cockfighting.
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