Michel Tondellier-Maître de conférences en sciences de l’éducation à l’Université des Antilles et de la Guyane.
Jean-Michel André-Auteur photographe, diplômé de l’Ecole de l’Image des Gobelins.
Abstract
In the French West Indies, the place where cocks fight are called “pitts”. The “pitt” refers to the arena where the animals will compete and also, more generally, to the space dedicated to this activity. The presence of women in the pitts is paradoxical. In this area mostly frequented by men, women are both ubiquitous and strangely absent from the environment of the fighting birds. In this extra-professional activity linked to the tradition, but “worked” by modernity (Tondellier, to be published), there is a spatial and symbolic control of the place of men and women. This photo essay is the result of the collaboration of a sociologist and a photographer who attended two cockfighting seasons (2011-2012) in different municipalities of Martinique (French West Indies). This essay focuses specifically on the place of women in a «traditional» activity. Traditional activity, leisure and/or opportunity to «make a little money», the cockfight do not less reproduce a differentiation and hierarchical gendered tasks.
Keywords
Martinique (French West Indies), Cockfigths, Gender, Gender tasks division, Tradition, Martinique,
Combat de coqs, Genre, Division des tâches, Tradition
