Volume 5, Number 2, 2024

EN:

We report on a collaborative qualitative study to identify gambling expenditure trajectories associated with COVID-19 restrictions on in-venue gambling for people in a regional First Nations Community in Victoria, Australia. Drawing from interviews with 20 First Nations people and seven workers, we use three people’s stories to illustrate experiences associated with: reduced gambling expenditure; little change in gambling expenditure; and increased gambling expenditure. Across each trajectory, many participants took up or increased online gambling during restrictions. The largest proportion returned to pre-COVID-19 gambling expenditure once restrictions eased. Some took the opportunity of a forced break from in-venue gambling to reassess its role in their lives, and a further small proportion spent more money on gambling after the pandemic than prior to it. We highlight the importance of Community in participants’ capacities to manage gambling during this period. Participants described the presence of Community members at in-venue gambling as limiting their spending, something that became unavailable when gambling online at home during lockdowns. Willpower was identified as most participants’ preferred means of managing gambling. This worked for some, but others noted that the ubiquity of online gambling products and ongoing effects of trauma and disadvantage stymied their efforts. As some participants insisted, the gambling industry and governments that are its beneficiaries perpetuate colonization by extracting money from First Nations peoples, with gambling harm attributed to Indigeneity rather than poverty resulting from colonization and dispossession. Thus, First Nations Communities and individuals are held responsible for problems that are largely not of their making.

EN:

This 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.

EN:

The 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.

EN:

This article examines cryptocurrency trading in Turkey, focusing on the ‘gamblification’ of this emerging market. Based on 18 months of ethnographic research (2021-2022) conducted during an economic crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the research reveals how Turks engaged with cryptocurrencies are considering the structural parallels between trading and gambling. The article also incorporates the perspective of Turkey's Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which has declared cryptocurrency trading impermissible, highlighting the tension between contemporary financial practices and traditional Islamic frameworks. The article links the perception of cryptocurrency trading as a modern game of chance, as articulated by research participants, to Turkey's economic instability and their technological shift from traditional state-regulated games of chance (lotteries, betting on sports, and horse racing) to cryptocurrency trading. My ethnographic method brings new empirical data and qualitative analysis to understand the cultural and religious dynamics shaping this emergent financial phenomenon in the under-studied context of Turkey. I argue that cryptocurrency adoption in Turkey is driven by more than economic necessity; it reflects a cultural transformation valuing modernity and innovation. Many Turks view cryptocurrency as a viable alternative to traditional financial systems and a representation of the future of money. This shift signifies a departure from conventional monetary practices and reflects a collective idealisation of the future of finance. The article thus illuminates how Turkish individuals navigate risk and speculation during economic crises, demonstrating their adaptability in engaging with non-monetary financial markets.

EN:

The 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.