Critical Gambling Studies (Journal)
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Loot boxes as a form of gambling, and their potential for contributing to gaming related harm
Full text linkA CGS blog entry titled "Loot boxes as a form of gambling, and their potential for contributing to gaming related harm"
Building Bridges: A Reflection on the Need to Decolonize Gambling Studies
Full text linkThis article is a commentary by Sylvia Kairouz, Ph.D., written for the Critical Indigenous Gambling Studies special issue of Critical Gambling Studies
Health Promotion Strategies to Address Gambling-Related Harm in Indigenous Communities: A Review of Reviews
Full text linkThe evolution of commercial gambling and its expansion into digital arenas has increased opportunities for people all over the world—including Indigenous people—to gamble. While there is considerable evidence for the suitability of a health promotion approach to improving the health and well-being of Indigenous communities worldwide, the evidence-base does not extend to the field of gambling research. A systematic review of reviews was conducted to identify relevant reviews in crossover areas of interest: interventions to address gambling-related harm in Indigenous populations and/or health promotion interventions on related health or behavioural outcomes. The quality of reviews was critically assessed—13 fit the inclusion criteria. Principal themes were characterised as being either related to ‘cultural,’ ‘structural,’ or ‘methodological’ factors. Findings indicate that an appropriate model of health promotion to address Indigenous gambling would necessarily involve careful consideration of all three elements. Applying a health promotion approach to the context of Indigenous gambling harms is increasingly relevant considering recent conceptual shifts in key areas, but there is currently limited evidence to guide the implementation and evaluation of such strategies. This review highlights what published evidence is available to strengthen future research in this area
The Musings of ‘Evil Bastards’: Perspectives from Social Casino Game Professionals
Full text linkTechnology has blurred the lines between gambling and gaming. While the convergence can be witnessed on many different levels, social casino games on social networking sites and mobile apps illustrate just one example. Much of what we currently know about social casino games focuses on player behaviour, with little understanding about this genre from the perspective of social game professionals. This paper aims to fill the gap in our understanding of social casino games through interviews with the professionals who design them.
In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 professionals from the social casino games industry. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings illustrate tensions that exist between the two fields of gambling and gaming; however, both are trying to separate themselves from the stigmatized ‘dirty secret’ that is gambling. Further, as a result of social casino games residing, for the most part, in an unregulated ‘grey area,’ findings illustrate the ethical struggle felt by social casino game professionals. This convergence has significant consequences, not only for players, but for game developers, designers, and researchers, and highlights the importance of game designer education
Editorial: What are Critical Indigenous Gambling Studies?
Full text linkEditorial by the Editors of the special issue, "Critical Indigenous Gambling Studies"
Gambling with the Windigo: Theorizing Indigenous Casinos and Gambling in Canada
Full text linkThe legacy of colonialism in Canada manifests through land dispossession, structural violence and assimilative policies. Casinos are an anomaly emerging in Canada, becoming major economic engines, generating capital for housing, education, health, and language and cultural rejuvenation programs. On the other hand, the literature on Indigenous casinos raises crucial questions about compromised sovereignty, addiction, and neocolonial economic and political entrapment. This article theorises Indigenous casinos as a modern expression of the windigo. In Algonquian oral history, the windigo is a mythic giant cannibal. The underlying meaning of the windigo is the consumption of Indigenous peoples leading to illness and death. One can become a windigo and consume others, and one must always be cautious of this possibility. I propose casinos and Indigenous-provincial gambling revenue agreements are modern-day windigook (plural form of windigo). This framework provides an urgently needed new theorisation of casinos, grounded in Indigenous epistemology and ontology
Pocket Queens: Poker, Women, Stories
Full text linkA CGS blog entry titled "Pocket Queens: Poker, Women, Stories"
Gambling Self-Exclusion Programmes in Australia: Are They Really Effective?
Full text linkA Critical Gambling Studies blog entry on gambling self-exclusion programmes in Australia
A Critical Analysis of Interventions for Women Harmed by Others’ Gambling
Full text linkAt present, gambling studies literature has multiple understandings of family and others affected (FAOs) by gambling harm and their support needs in play, each with different possibilities and constraints for harm reduction engagement with women. Individual psychological approaches have been privileged, eschewing the social and relational situation of gambling and harm in women’s lives. In Australasia, the majority of those seeking support in relation to a significant others’ gambling are women. Gender has been posited as a shaping force in the social stratification system, distribution of resources, and gambling and harm within society. There has been minimal engagement with the lived experiences of FAOs, which limits gambling harm reduction service development and planning. This research critically engaged with gambling harm reduction studies for FAOs, alongside interviews with eight women FAOs who presented to community services from a social constructionist perspective. The aim was to provide insight into how women FAOs position themselves and their support needs in relation to gambling harm and recovery. Data was analysed using thematic analysis informed by feminist poststructuralist theories of language. Results suggested that this small group of women were subject to intersecting patriarchal constraints and economic determinants of gambling harm. Powerful normative and moral constructions of ‘good/bad’ mothers operated to individualise some women’s responsibility for addressing harm in families and to alienate these women from gambling support services. These findings suggest that gambling services must support women and families in ways that go beyond personal functioning, extending into the social and political conditions of possibility for harm and recovery. Critical psychology and coherent gender analysis may offer opportunities to expand the role of gambling support to include advocacy, community development, and more client-led and gender-aware practice with women affected by gambling harm
Patterns of Disciplinary Involvement and Academic Collaboration in Gambling Research: A Co-Citation Analysis
Full text linkThe purpose of this study was to investigate the current academic research foci in peer-reviewed studies on gambling. The researchers used co-citation analysis as a bibliometrics method. All the gambling-related publications indexed in Scopus and Web of Science were identified, and their citation patterns were analyzed. Our dataset includes a total of 2418 peer-reviewed gambling studies published over the five-year period from 2014–2018. The VOSviewer tool was used to visualize bibliometric networks and reveal key clusters among the studies. The findings indicate that gambling researchers mostly cited authors from the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology, health science, and psychiatry. Only 2% of the cited authors were from other disciplines, such as those in the social sciences and humanities. The most frequently cited sources also reveal the same pattern: that gambling researchers mostly cited articles published in neuroscience, psychology, and health science journals. The publications reviewed deal mainly with the pathological and treatment aspects of gambling. We also discovered some unique patterns of citation and collaboration, focusing on topics such as videogames, social network games, family, business, and tourism