Critical Gambling Studies (Journal)
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SQUARING A CIRCLE? Sustainability Reports as a Legitimacy-Seeking Strategy in State Gambling Monopolies
Full text linkState gambling organisations are monopolies, that increasingly proclaim a commitment to sustainability principles, however their profits come at a substantial social cost. Gambling raises an array of economic, social and ethical governance concerns. This study examines the evolution of sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, and the growing trend of publishing annual sustainability reports. These aspects are considered within the literature on organisational legitimacy, and a framework of legitimacy-seeking strategies is identified. Qualitative research is utilised to analyse sustainability reports published during 2021-2022 by two state gambling monopolies: the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) in Canada and Veikkaus in Finland. Using Leximancer software, content analysis identified key themes that can be linked to legitimacy strategies and gambling-related concerns. Findings suggest that while sustainability reports enhance organisational legitimacy, fundamental ethical and social challenges persist, requiring more deliberate managerial approaches
Why, by Whom and How? Representations of gambling problems and their solutions in Swedish general administrative court cases
Full text linkTo strengthen the right to support for people with gambling problems in Sweden, legislative changes were enacted in 2018. This study aims to critically examine how problems and solutions are represented in 69 appeals concerning gambling treatment within the general administrative court (2014–2022) and to assess how these representations have evolved following the legal amendments. The study employs Bacchi’s WPR approach to scrutinize court judgments. The results reveal that gambling problems are unequivocally recognized as severe issues requiring intervention, with both explicit and implicit notions of the problem rooted in the concept of loss of control. Prior to the legal amendments, rulings primarily focused on identifying the responsible actor for providing care, often framed within a medical discourse. Post-amendment, the focus shifted to how treatment needs should be met, emphasizing an evidence-based discourse. These varying representations produce discursive, subjectifying, and material consequences, significantly affecting access to different welfare interventions. The new legislation has solidified the responsibility of social services to provide treatment for gambling problems. However, as the study demonstrates, responsibilization of gamblers occurs not only in policy and treatment frameworks, but also within the court system
Review: Unger, Douglas. Dream City. Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2024. 356 pp. ISBN:9781647791650
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A Fatal Contamination: Roger Caillois on Gambling—a “Theme” of (Late) Modern Culture
Full text linkThis article returns to Roger Caillois’ analysis of gambling in his classic text Man, Play, and Games, to provide a framework for understanding the place of widespread legal gambling in late modern culture. The discussion begins with Caillois’ response to Johan Huizinga’s formulations of play and exclusion of gambling from the world of play and games. It then proceeds with Caillois’ rehabilitation of games of chance as culturally significant phenomena. Drawing on some of the central themes of Man, Play, and Games, contemporary gambling is then analyzed, and factors such as the cultural and economic shaping of the social distribution of agon (competition) and alea (chance) provide the basis for an interpretation of the contemporary pervasiveness of games of chance as a socially- and culturally- situated historical phenomenon and “theme” of late modern culture. In this culture, the spatial and temporal boundaries that both Huizinga and Caillois claim mark play off from everyday life have been blurred in the case of gambling games. The article also posits that alea not only “complements” agon, but competes with it, as alea has been legitimated as a social and economic ethic
Time to Shuffle the Deck: Recommendations to Improve Gender Representation at Gambling Studies Conferences
Full text linkThe underrepresentation of women speakers at academic conferences in the gambling studies field is historic and pervasive yet the pressing issue of gender disparity in the field has yet to be adequately acknowledged or addressed. In 2023, an International Forum, hosted by Research And Networking for Gambling Early-career Scholars (RANGES) brought together ten early career researchers in the gambling studies field, all women, from varied research environments and disciplinary backgrounds. The International Forum aimed to answer the question: How can gambling studies conferences improve gender representation and become more inclusive and equitable? The result is this commentary which constitutes a set of recommendations related to gambling studies conferences designed to be implemented broadly as a form of collective action that will (1) contribute to the development of a shared understanding and awareness of the pressing issue of gender disparity; (2) provide actionable pathways for change; and (3) trigger a systemic and comprehensive change in the face of ongoing gender disparity with the goal of creating a more equitable, diverse and inclusive research field
Financialization x Gamblification: Key Concepts for the Critique of Cryptocurrency Exchanges
Full text linkThe blurring of gambling and crypto-finance reflects a wider set of complex social transformations. To help parse these transformations, we discuss two key concepts: financialization and gamblification. On their own, these concepts are useful—if insufficient—for the critical theorization of cryptocurrency exchanges. Taken together, they help highlight the deep interrelationship of cryptocurrency exchanges and gambling in our contemporary moment. Reflecting on the example of BitMEX, a centralized cryptocurrency exchange notable for its gamified interface, we argue that cryptocurrency discourse may operate to obscure the structural mechanisms that transfer wealth from users to platform operators while further embedding speculative risk-taking deep within everyday life. Our article first notes some of the resonances in the ways that cryptocurrency exchanges and gambling markets are organized. We also indicate that cryptocurrency exchange—like gambling—draws some of its appeal from a backdrop of uncertainty and vast inequity in contemporary capitalism. Then, taking advantage of the ‘analytic multiplier effects’ that come from holding the concepts of financialization and gamblification together, we work to decrypt some of the obfuscating elements of cryptocurrency discourse
Reframing gambling harms as the product of a predatory industry: A Habermasian interpretation of a Lived Experience-led ‘counterpublic’
Full text linkThe framing of public health challenges influences how societies and governments respond to them. This paper argues that public health professionals can counter the narrative influence of harmful commodity industries by amplifying the reframing efforts of progressive social movements. We utilise Jürgen Habermas’s ideas to theorise a practical example of a network which shifted narratives to focus on the commercial determinants of gambling harms, offering an original contribution by bridging critical social theory with real-world public health advocacy. Habermasian constructs inform a systematic and theoretically grounded analysis of 33 semi-structured interviews, including people with Lived Experience (LE) of gambling harms. Habermas’s ideas, notably his diagnosis of modern social problems as antagonism between the System and the Lifeworld, provide political-economic context to the emergence of a LE social movement. We show that Habermas’s notion of communicative rationality underpins both the internal dynamics of this movement and public health professionals’ attempt to nurture a ‘counterpublic’ around it: i.e., a space for new ways of thinking and talking about social issues. Paradoxically, the findings reveal the importance and limitations of local collaborations with people affected by harmful industries in the face of those industries’ power, products and advertisements. The findings offer theoretical and practical contributions to commercial determinants research, helping to establish normative foundations and ground it in participatory public health practice