The Arizona cowboy : a fight for survival

Abstract

My aim in this project was to discover more about the unique cowboy culture and see how and why it survives in a changing environment and a changing world. I found a striking similarity between the cowboys and pastoral peasants especially when considering the effects of the 'outside' on the cowboy lifestyle. Frank Cancian's description of peasants could, in fact, almost be applied to cowboys. I took the following and applied it to my object of research: 'Peasants live in two worlds. On the one hand they are poor, isolated subsistence oriented, rural people. They care most about what is going on in their fields and villages and their communities reflect this inward looking orientation. On the other hand, peasants are very dependent on the world outside their communities. They are subject to political and economic forces that emanate from jar beyond the area of their everyday concern, and their communities also reflect these important connections to a larger society'. (Stewart Plattner. Ed.: 1989. 127). This project could also be used to compare relatively closed societies to the more urban metropolis. The society in question has access to and contact with the 'other side' but also chooses to avoid it. It should also be interesting to note the effects of a relatively isolated solitary life on the morals, behaviour and habits of these people - it would be interesting, hut maybe beyond the scope of this paper, to compare cowboys to another isolated society in America. The point l would like to make is that despite the possibility and availability of outside influence, cowboys have remained virtually the same as in the days of the Wild West.