fox hunting ban in Britain - End of an era?

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam (Institut fur Anglistik/Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: Whether at local, regional or national level, sport ist, after war, probably the principal means of collective identification in modern life. Max Horkheimer suggested that `as modern civilization [is] threatened on all sides...sport has become a kind of world in itself [that] we should stake our hopes on`. The kind of sport which, for centuries, a small but influential part of Britons has been staking their hopes on, is fox-hunting. Like all forms of hunting, fox hunting is a blood sport, i.e. the killing of wild animals as a form of sport. As such it is controversial. Animal welfare activists claim fox hunting to be an elitist and barbaric sport that should be banned; pro-hunters argue that it is an effective and humane method of controlling the fox population. Yet after all hunting is a part of British history and tradition - an intrinsic part of living in the countryside. The paper focuses on the history of fox-hunting in Britain, the ongoing controversity since 1940 and the Pros and Cons to this centuries-old British sport. In the last chapter, reactions and effects to the 2004 ban on fox hunting are named: Does the ban really mark the end of this traditional British sport?