Basing this text upon his time in Bali during the 1950s, Geertz writes about the cultural phenomenon of cockfighting. To the locals, these fights represent an accumulation of status. Rival families, clans, and villages compete. They raise and care for their birds as an expression of self-worth and pride. Just as the word "cock" in English serves as a double entendre, it also carries a similar significance in Balinese. The roosters symbolize the manhood of their captors and fight as emissaries. This is the true significance of the fights.
Despite nearly all cockfighting being highly illegal in Indonesia at the time, save for a few yearly fights sanctioned by the government, illegal bouts were extremely common. Geertz was able to immerse himself in the local culture and to bond with the Balinese townspeople because he fled with them when an illegal fight was broken up by police, when he could have just shown his official papers and been safe. Because of his positioning himself as an insider, the locals naturally trusted him and explained their customs to him. Above all the traditions, however, Geertz found the cockfights the most fascinating.
In his essay, Geertz uses the fights to analyze the culture, representing their various values and fears through their recreation and competition. Two classes of cockfight exist in Bali. Deep fights run for high bets and usually occur between upper-class individuals. They are dramatic affairs which involve elaborate processes of subterfuge. There are also shallow fights which are for low bets and take place among the common people. Rather than being simply money-driven, these fights are held for the maintenance of status - with bets being made to show support for family and allies.
Geertz concludes his essay by affirming that Balinese cockfighting is both a representation and a generator of Balinese culture. It is not simply a sport or a past time, but instead an amalgamation of other aspects of local life that are then boiled down to a high-stakes, animalistic, exciting, and brutal encounter. Geertz argues that Balinese cockfighting is an art form and that one can interpret cockfighting as one would a text, due to the significance it has for both displaying and creating the intricacies of Balinese society.
