preview

Trophy Hunting : A Social Construction Perspective

Good Essays

Trophy hunting is a wildly controversial topic, especially in today’s social media driven world. Every time a new picture of a hunter and a dead lion or other animal is posted online the media goes crazy. Africa is known for it’s beautiful landscapes, and more importantly the exotic highly sought after animals that roam the land. Africa’s most prominent animals are known as the “big five” it consists of the most challenging and rewarding animals to hunt. The big five consists of: lions, elephants, white rhinoceros, leopards, and finally the buffalo. The big five are majestic and extremely dangerous creatures, therefore they are highly sought after by mainly wealthy white males from all over the world as trophy hunts. Locals to Africa see the animals as threats to their way of life, America see’s them as exotic creatures that need to be protected, and trophy hunters see them as a challenge and another check on the list. The two perspectives I am going to look at about this controversial topic is from a social construction perspective and a political economy perspective.

Trophy hunting has sparked an outrage in today’s society however, there is a long storied history from which glorifies the art of big game hunting. “In King Solomon’s Mines, novelist H. Rider Haggard captured the imagination of Victorian England with the tale of a fearless hunter who ventured to Africa.” (G. Gustin, 2015). Haggard’s novel popularized the “white hunter” a “colonial minded Englishmen who

Get Access