Reith Gerda
school of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow.
Br J Sociol. 2013 Dec;64(4):717-38. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12050. Epub 2013 Oct 30.
This article argues that gambling is a paradigmatic form of consumption that captures the intensified logic at the heart of late modern capitalist societies. As well as a site of intensified consumption, it claims that gambling has also become the location of what has been described as a new form of 'social pathology' related to excess play. Drawing on Castells' (1996) notion of techno-economic systems, it explores the ways that intersections between technology, capital and states have generated the conditions for this situation, and critiques the unequal distribution of gambling environments that result. It argues that, while the products of these systems are consumed on a global scale, the risks associated with them tend to be articulated in bio-psychological discourses of 'pathology' which are typical of certain types of knowledge that have salience in neo-liberal societies, and which work to conceal wider structural relationships. We argue that a deeper understanding of the political and cultural economy of gambling environments is necessary, and provide a synoptic overview of the conditions upon which gambling expansion is based. This perspective highlights parallels with the wider global economy of finance capital, as well as the significance of intensified consumption, of which gambling is an exemplary instance. It also reveals the existence of a geo-political dispersal of 'harms', conceived as deteriorations of financial, temporal and social relationships, which disproportionately affect vulnerable social groups. From this, we urge an understanding of commercial gambling based on a critique of the wider social body of gambling environments within techno economic systems, rather than the (flawed) individual bodies within them.
本文认为，赌博是一种典型的消费形式，它体现了晚期现代资本主义社会核心的强化逻辑。除了是强化消费的场所外，它还声称赌博已成为一种与过度玩乐相关的新型“社会病理学”的发生地。借鉴卡斯特尔斯（1996）的技术经济系统概念，本文探讨了技术、资本和国家之间的交叉如何产生了这种情况的条件，并批判了由此导致的赌博环境的不平等分布。本文认为，虽然这些系统的产品在全球范围内被消费，但与之相关的风险往往在“病理学”的生物心理学话语中得到阐述，这种话语是新自由主义社会中某些具有显著意义的知识类型所特有的，并且起到掩盖更广泛结构关系的作用。我们认为，有必要更深入地理解赌博环境的政治和文化经济，并对赌博扩张所基于的条件进行简要概述。这种观点突出了与更广泛的全球金融资本经济的相似之处，以及强化消费的重要性，赌博就是强化消费的一个典型例子。它还揭示了“危害”在地理政治上的分散存在，这些“危害”被视为金融、时间和社会关系的恶化，对弱势群体的影响尤为严重。据此，我们敦促基于对技术经济系统中更广泛的赌博环境社会整体的批判，而不是其中有缺陷的个体，来理解商业赌博。
