Racing Tribe

Anthropologists are supposed to do their research in uncomfortable parts of the world but for Kate Fox, investigating the Racing Tribe meant wandering around nowhere more inhospitable than racetracks. It's here that she saw a tribal subculture with distinctive customs and rituals. Kate gives a witty description of the strange ceremonies observed by racegoers and their special codes of behaviour. The personal story of interviewing half-naked jockeys in weighing rooms, overcoming a fear of the scary trainers and struggling to understand the tribe's strange dialect gives this book an endearing human dimension. A day at the races will never seem the same again.

Kate Fox, a social anthropologist, is co-director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford and Fellow of the Institute of Cultural Research. She monitors and assesses global sociocultural trends, researching and writing on aspects of human behaviour