1st Edition

Gambling, Losses and Self-Esteem An Interactionist Approach to the Betting Shop

By Cormac Mc Namara Copyright 2020
    156 Pages
    by Routledge

    156 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book provides new insights into contemporary betting shops, with a particular focus on the manner in which losing bets are dealt with by customers. Drawing on research undertaken in Ireland, it demonstrates that customers tend to shift responsibility for monetary losses onto factors external to themselves as part of a collective process engaged in to restore self-esteem, and considers the role played by announcements made in betting shops in creating an atmosphere of inclusion - and the implications of this for ‘problem gambling’. Through an analysis of newspaper representations of the first legally operating betting shops in Ireland, which opened in the 1920s, the author places the contemporary betting shop in historical context and examines trends in gambling across the British Isles with reference to social class and the security or precarity of work. An interactionist study not only of gambling but also of responsibility and the connection between the micro-world and social structures, this volume will appeal to sociologists with interests in symbolic interactionism and strategies of blame.

    1. Introduction

    2. Research Approach

    3. Responsibility-Shifting – part I & part II

    4. Betting and Belonging

    5. The Early Days of the Irish Betting Shop – 1926-1930

    6. Gambling and Work in the 21st Century

    7. Concluding Remarks

    Biography

    Cormac Mc Namara is Lecturer in Social Science in the Faculty of Education at Northeast Normal University in China.