Notes

Despite their desire to avoid busts and their belief that cock-
fighting should be legal, most fighters expressed little or no nega-
tive affect toward police. Seth told me, “The vice are cool here,”
which Abraham followed up: “If you respect them, they’ll respect
you back.” These sentiments were common. Fighters explained
that showing respect for the police meant following the informal
rules and the House rules: for example, not making the cops wait
too long; not resisting arrest; not bringing drugs to the fights.

The fighters attributed two main motives to the police: (1)
controlling hack fights as part of a larger goal: protecting the island
from greater evils (drugs, violence); (2) a lack of interest or sense of
futility in cracking down on a “sport” that was both harmless and
512 Legal Consciousness in the Hawaiian Cockfight
inevitable. They did not view these motives as mutually exclusive

When these fighters told me about their arrests, it became clear
that the punishments weren’t the part they found most troubling;
the worst consequence was being branded “criminals

People orient to law and develop
understandings of order and disorder in various settings based
partly on the beliefs they think others hold. In the cockfighters’ case,
this includes their understanding and communication of House
rules, their interpretations of law enforcement officials’ actions,
and their collective construction of the parameters of acceptable
behavior the “game” allows. They derive messages and engage in
meaning-making both individually and collectively, even absent
explicit statements by the people and social groups around them.