The Problem with Problem Gambling: Historical and Economic Concerns

Gambling, taken to be the staking of money on the outcome of events of chance, pervades all human existence. Recent expansion of legal gambling has given rise to an equally massive expansion in gambling research, with a focus on 'problem' gambling and its pathological and addictive aspects. This paper proposes that in the long transition of capitalism in the twentieth century, gambling emerged as a final stage of consumer expenditure. It proposes that the research response to this market remains tied to an earlier phase of capitalist accumulation, when gambling threatened production. In reviewing the history of gambling research, this paper proposes a reconception of gambling along economic rather than psychological lines and suggests that an older ethnographic tradition of research ought to replace the highly medicalised focus driving much current policy