Critical Gambling Studies (Journal)
Not a member yet
122 research outputs found
Sort by
Editorial: What are Critical Gambling Studies?
Full text linkEditorial for the special issue \u27What are Critical Gambling Studies?\u2
The Gambler’s Fallacy: Aristotle’s Sea Battle Paradox and Kierkegaard’s Response
Full text linkI offer a conceptual study of Aristotle’s Sea Battle Paradox and propose that analysis of the paradox, as well as of its various solutions, can help to shed light on the psychology behind and the structure of the gambler’s fallacy. I compare Aristotle’s response to the paradox with Kierkegaard’s subsequent response in his chapter of Philosophical Fragments “Is the Past More Necessary than the Future?” I argue that proponents of each solution lead us to a different diagnosis of the gambler’s preoccupation with predetermination and future determination
Gambling Ain’t What It Used To Be: The Instrumentalization of Gambling and Late Modern Culture
Full text linkThis article addresses significant cultural macro-processes shaping legalized gambling as a mass consumer market, which also serve various state and private industry ends. The processes examined here are “instrumentalization” and rationalization, explored through the seminal formulations of Max Weber and developed further in the work of Jurgen Habermas. Instrumentalization relates to Weber’s concepts of rationalization and instrumental rationality, as well as to Habermas’s distinction between the “system” and “lifeworld”. While the phenomenon of instrumentalization is approached largely from a macro-perspective, it is understood to have effects on the lifeworld, on social action, and the formation of (gambling) subjectivities. The discussion of instrumentalization and rationalization, as broad cultural processes, contributes to the genealogy of gambling in (late) modern culture. It also serves to develop a particular theoretical trajectory within critical gambling studies and indicates themes that could be opened up for further analysis
“Almost the Same but not Quite” : The Camouflage of Play in Gambling Iconography
Full text linkDigitally mediated social networking is now an ordinary aspect of everyday life and gambling platforms are designed accordingly. This article explores how changing iconography has facilitated gambling’s rapid integration within social media and interactive entertainment products and platforms. While there is a substantial literature in cultural studies of digital video games and virtual worlds, most of the academic literature on gambling addresses clinical and regulatory challenges associated with problem gambling. As a consequence, the role of visual iconography, gameplay, narrative and soundscapes in constructing cultural spaces and products of gambling has been largely neglected. Critically engaging with established and emerging theories of mimesis and play, we explore how visual design facilitates the growth of new markets for gambling in a digital culture that privileges interactive forms of consumption
The Zone and the Shame: Narratives of Gambling Problems in Japan
Full text linkJapan has one of the highest rates of severe gambling problems in the world. However, the gambling forms that cause the most harm—pachinko and pachislot—are not recognized as gambling in the key legislation. They are understood as entertainment. On the basis of two group interviews with those who have experienced problems with gambling, this study explores how they have dealt with the shame, guilt, and stigma of pachinko-related gambling problems. The narrative analysis shows that the participants carry self-stigma as a result of self-reproach and others’ condemnation of their behavior. Feelings of shame, guilt, and fear of being stigmatized have distinctly hindered the process of seeking help. The participants describe how their gambling, which they had attempted to limit, had led to isolation from normal life. The isolation and the failures to control the gambling increased their feelings of shame and destructive behavior. Considering the characteristics of the zone, the loss of self, and the shame, guilt and stigma of failing to control excessive pachinko gambling, it is unreasonable to place the main responsibility on the individual gambler. To reduce gambling harms in Japan and the stigma associated with pachinko and pachislot problems, these gambling forms need to be acknowledged as public health concerns and categorized as gambling in the legislation
Editorial: Philosophy and Gambling: Reflections from Macao
Full text linkEditorial by Mario Wenning and Fiona Nicoll, editors of the CGS Special Issue Philosophy and Gambling: Reflections from Macao
Commercial Gambling and the Surplus for Society: A Comparative Analysis of European Companies
Full text linkBackground: Gambling is an important source of public revenue in many countries. Little is known about how this revenue is generated, and how it depends on product portfolios, operating costs, turnover, and the institutional contexts of the industry. Methods: A comparative analysis of income statements from 30 European gambling companies is reported. Scatter diagrams are used to describe how the surplus depends on volume, operating costs, monopoly status, and the game portfolio measured by aggregate return-to-players (RTP). Company profiles are used to interpret the results.
Hypotheses: Commercialization increases aggregate return to players. This is likely to lower the surplus. Low operating costs of automated and fast games compensate for this loss. Commercial companies produce less surplus than monopolies.
Results: The surplus is a linear function of the total revenue. Excluding three big companies, total volume is positively associated with the average return percentages but not proportionately with operating costs. The difference between monopolistic and market-based companies does not appear to be significant. Detailed descriptive analysis shows that the European gambling market may be facing a situation of supply saturation where further growth of gambling proceeds for good causes can no longer be accomplished
A Critical Review of the Scholarly Discourse on Gambling Disorder Treatment: Part 1
Full text linkThis article presents a comprehensive review of the scholarly discourse on psychological and relational approaches to gambling disorder treatment. The article focuses on the “what” of knowledge production and treatment delivery by systematizing information on the types of scholarly articles that have been published in the English language; the treatment approaches that have been researched and discussed in the Anglophone literature; and the context of knowledge production over the past 50 years. The review includes 445 articles that present the findings of case studies and evaluations of disordered gambling interventions (k = 231), descriptive research (k = 49), meta-analyses (k = 10), and literature reviews and descriptions of novel approaches (k = 155). The findings show that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), together with its constituent approaches, was the most discussed and researched approach to gambling disorder treatment in the period between late 1960s and the first half of 2019, covered by about 60% of the articles. Motivational Interviewing approaches were discussed in over one-fifth of the articles, whereas psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches accounted for under 10% of the articles. Roughly three-quarters of articles included in the review were published in North American and international journals. Our discussion situates these trends in critical discourses of the medicalization of mental health, dominance of Western mental health frameworks, and the politics of knowledge production
Absorbed in Play and Gambling: Gadamer and Csíkszentmihályi
Full text linkOne of the most apparent features of playing and gambling is how easily people become engaged and absorbed into playing and gambling. In some cases, people lose themselves in playing and gambling to the extent that addiction might occur. This paper seeks to contribute to the phenomenology of play and gambling by attempting to describe how and why playing and gambling are attractive for us, and how we get absorbed in playing or gambling. In doing so, I disregard the difference between play in a broader sense and gambling with whatever stakes where in the latter case the risk inherently belongs to the activity. To get a nuanced description, I focus on two prominent theories that clarify different aspects of the phenomenon of playing. First, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s analysis of play gives an account of how playing is like submerging into an independent reality. Second, I follow Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s conception of meaningful activity which he called “flow”. The main interest of the paper will be the problem of what it means to enter and to indulge in the context of play, and how we come to immerse ourselves in the process of playing and gambling
What Matters in Macao: Situating the Game in the More-than-Human City
Full text linkIn contrast to the dominant ideas of how \u27game and play\u27 work, which I label \u27transcendentalist\u27 and \u27sedentary\u27, my study on Macao proposes an alternative, \u27materialist\u27 and \u27nomadic\u27, perspective. This comes down to thinking \u27game and play\u27 not as an \u27artificial\u27 activity that takes place in a safe, enclosed environment, but as an elementary part of life, crucial to how imagination works, and to how imagination is entangled in the materiality of the urban sphere. After mapping an alternative history of how to think \u27game and play\u27 differently, working with anthropologist Karl Goos, architect Aldo van Eyk, artist Constant, and in the end philosopher Gilles Deleuze, I engage with the city of Macao, its architecture, its politics, and its gambling practices. I use fiction authors Leslie T Chang and Louis Borges to show, finally, how Macao, in contemporary China, equals the infinite game of chance, materialized; the much needed other in its contemporary urban landscape.