The ‘Problem Gambler’ And Socio-Spatial Vulnerability

Authors: Dr. Marc Welsh, Professor Rhys Jones, Dr. Jessica Pykett, Professor Mark

Whitehead

Affiliation: Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University

Abstract

This chapter takes a discussion of the construction of the ‘problem gambler’ as a

starting point for exploring questions of vulnerability in a socio-spatial, rather than

individualised setting. The representation of problem gambling and the problem gambler, in

legislative and political discourses, as an individualised medical condition feeds into (and

constrains) the ways in which political and regulatory measures relating to gambling are

devised and implemented. Understanding the connections between ‘problem gamblers’, as

vulnerable individuals, and the communities within which they live and work is an under-

examined aspect of problem gambling research. Problem gambling is played out through

social relations that are embedded within particular places. We argue that there is a need to

consider the connection between problem gambling and social and spatial vulnerability. We

illustrate the above through reference to a case study focusing on the perceived proliferation

of bookmakers on the British high street.

1. Introduction

How we frame the issue of problem gambling has implications for how we conceive

its origins and understand its expression in certain individuals and in society at large (Korn et

al., 2003). As a medicalised discourse, problem gambling is readily identifiable and treatable

using a variety of interventions (psychological, psychiatric, pharmacological) upon a category

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of vulnerable people called ‘pathological gamblers’. As a moral discourse, problem gambling

is located in a weakness of character, raising issues about reform of those with an

uncontrollable compulsion to gamble and about the effects of gambling upon the wider

community. As a socio-cultural discourse problem gambling is one component of a spectrum

of heterogeneous gambling behaviours distributed through the population influenced by a

wide variety of factors ranging from the type of game being played, where it is being played,

who is playing it and why they are playing it (Strong 2011; Reith 2007).

It is fair to say that a medical model has dominated problem gambling research and

regulatory discourses of gambling since the classification of pathological gambling as a

disorder of impulse control in the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) (American Psychiatric Association, 1980)

(for critiques of the medical model in relation to gambling see Castellani, 2000; Cosgrave &

Klassen, 2001; Reith, 1999, 2007; Schüll & Zaloom, 2011; Young, 2010). More recently,

neurobiological and psychological investigations of ‘problem gambling’ have examined the

neurological and behavioural changes that occur in the etiology of gambling as a ‘pure’

addiction (Shaffer 1989). While still under-researched, these new approaches have provided

valuable insights into the processes through which certain individuals develop difficulties

regulating their gambling behaviour (Bowden-Jones & Clark, 2011; van Holst et al., 2010).

More broadly integrative models operating within a frame of a ‘biopsychosocial perspective’

are now advocated as a basis for capturing the range of factors that influence the emergence

and maintenance of harmful gambling behaviours (Blaszczynski & Nower, 2002; Griffiths &

Delfabbro, 2001; Griffiths, 2005; Griffiths et al., 2010; Sharpe, 2002).

In this chapter we take a broadly socio-spatial approach to ‘problem gamblers’. We

discuss in particular the construction of vulnerability in relation to gambling. In an era of

economic austerity and a shrinking state, constructions of ‘vulnerability’, and the protection

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of vulnerable groups of people, have become increasingly significant in debates over

government social policy. The malleable notion of vulnerability encompasses a whole range

of different factors (e.g. risk of exposure, capacities to cope, potentialities of serious

consequence) that, when viewed as a whole, may capture whether an individual is in danger

of becoming a ‘problem gambler’. These include their exposure and sensitivity to gambling

temptations; and their resilience in coping with or withstanding them (cf. Turner II et al.,

2003). We are interested specifically in the way in which vulnerable individuals are

conceived of within academic and recent policy literature on gambling. As well as discussing

the various psychological and social cues that lead a vulnerable subject to become a ‘problem

gambler’, we focus on how the formation of ‘problem gamblers’ takes place within what we

term vulnerable communities. It is clear that particular communities form “spaces of

vulnerability” (Watts & Bohle, 1993), within which various risk factors combine to promote

the expression and maintenance of gambling related problems in potentially susceptible

individuals. Our broader aim, therefore, is to understand the connections between ‘problem

gamblers’, as vulnerable individuals, and the communities within which they live and work;

or, in other words, to examine the socio-spatial vulnerabilities of ‘problem gamblers’.

2. The pathologising of gambling

Analysis of problem gambling and of gambling generally has adopted an

individualistic perspective (Cosgrave & Klassen, 2001, p. 2), reflecting the discursive shift of

gambling and problem gambling from a moral to a medical framework (Castellani, 2000).

Where, for much of Western history, excessive gambling was represented and regulated as a

moral problem in the twentieth century (Miers, 2004) it came to be explained in terms other

than the moral and legal notably starting with the publication of Edmund Bergler’s ‘The

gambler: A misunderstood neurotic’ in 1943. Bergler contended that compulsive gamblers

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are caught in the grip of an illness and needed medical treatment rather than moral

condemnation (1957). As described by Rosecrance (1985) in America a coalition of interests

(support groups like Gamblers Anonymous and clinicians) mobilised a medical model of

compulsive and pathological gambling which gained legitimacy and authority in legal and

scientific discourse during the late 1970s and 1980s. This was most visibly expressed in the

classification of compulsive gambling as an impulse control disorder in DSM III and IV

(American Psychiatric Association, 1980, 2000). This process is captured by the term ‘the

medicalisation of deviance’ (see Conrad & Scheider, 1980), where the ‘moral neutrality’ of

the medical model (ibid, p. 35) provides one discursive strategy through which particular

ways of knowing and representing the world are afforded the status of ‘truth’ and others are

denied it. As such the naming and claiming of a state of being, like pathological gambling, is

a highly contingent and political act.

As a social construct ‘problem gambling’ served to pathologise specific behaviours

emphasising the responsibility of individuals to seek help to treat their illness. Over the past

40 years the problem gambling construct has gained currency, legitimacy and authority as

government, commercial gaming interests and treatment professionals refined, codified and

institutionalised it (Volberg &Wray 2007, p. 58). Centrally, this set of discourses

conceptualised ‘problem gambling’ as a form of individual pathology to which some people

were susceptible and exceptionalised against a norm of ‘responsible gambling’ (Rosecrance,

1985). This individualisation of illnesses tends towards a shearing of behaviour and

symptoms from social context. The latest iteration of the DSM renames the illness (‘gambling

disorder’) and relocates it as (the only behavioural) addiction in the broader category of

‘substance-related and addictive disorders’ (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The

rationale for this change is in part based on the growing scientific literature that reveals

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commonalities between gambling disorders and substance use disorders (in clinical

expression, brain origin, comorbidity, physiology, and treatment).

Such a move has been contentious, not least because for some it exemplifies a wider

critique of DSM V for continuous diagnostic expansion (e.g. see Frances, 2012). For

example, in their response to the American Psychiatric Association consultation on DSM V,

the British Psychological Society challenged the ‘continuous medicalisation’ of responses

that may be ‘natural and normal’ in the context of lived experiences. Concerned at the

subjective and normative dimensions inherent in diagnostic criteria such as the DSM V, they

argued that ‘We are also concerned that systems such as this are based on identifying

problems as located within individuals. This misses the relational context of problems and the

undeniable social causation of many such problems’ (BPS 2011, page 2).

Of course, such themes echo the work of Foucauldian scholars who have argued that

one of the features of ‘advanced liberal’ or neoliberal governmentality (Rose 1996; 1999) is

an emphasis on subjectification through the responsibilisation of the self (see also Clark,

2005; Dean 1999, 2007; Foucault 1991; 2007; O’Malley, 1996, 2004). Advanced liberal

governmentalities seek ‘to govern not through “society”, but through the regulated choices of

individual citizens, now construed as subjects of choices and aspirations to self-actualisation

and self-fulfillment. Individuals are to be governed through their freedom’ (Miller & Rose,

2008, p. 24). In this neoliberal discursive frame (contra welfare state practices) government

transfers risk to individuals through constructing social risks (poverty, crime, health) not as a

responsibility lying with the state or the collective, but lying with the citizen as the consumer

of state and market services.

Responsibilisation as a strategy of government regulates freedom through the moral

and legal cultivation of normative and idealised forms of responsible and rational citizen-

consumers. Whilst reducing the size and scope of intervention of government, government

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(not limited to the state, but ‘government’ conceived more broadly as the ‘conduct of

conduct’ (Dean, 1999, p. 10) becomes increasingly reliant on technologies that point

individuals to choose the rational, prudent course. One of the ironic aspects of the discourse

surrounding problem gamblers, of course, is the fact that they are cast as both responsible and

yet irrational citizen-consumers. The medicalised discourse largely promotes a notion of the

problem gambler as an individual who is responsible for the predicament in which they find

themselves. At the same time, the problem gambler has arrived at that position precisely

because of their inability to act in rational ways.

More broadly, the net effect of this individualisation through medicalisation and

responsibilisation discourse is a depoliticisation of social problems associated with gambling,

transposing them to individual sites of responsibility. The problematisation of the problem

gambler therefore has the discursive effect of undermining consideration of social (the

distribution of effects through society) or structural issues (questions of supply, accessibility,

type of product and their circulation in various formats) in political discourse. This rather

narrow focus on a category of pathological or problem gambler draws attention away from

the wider effects of gambling on communities and societies as a whole (Reith, 2006).

From a sociological perspective, conversely, health or illness is socially constructed.

That is, it is defined by the labels or the meanings attached to particular ways of being, and

by how the labelled and those doing the labelling act in relation to those socially produced

labels and meanings. This is not to say that a disease does not exist with causes, symptoms

and treatments but rather that how those causes, symptoms and treatments are discursively

produced and mobilised is a social process and inherently contingent upon asymmetrical

power relations. In relation to disability, for example, a medical discourse leads to disability

being understood as an individual problem, that a person is both socially positioned and

positions themselves against a normative standard of ‘health’ and acts accordingly. In effect

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disabled people become ‘the problem’. A social model of disability locates disability as an

unequal relationship within society which through systemic barriers, cultural attitudes and

processes of deliberate or accidental exclusion or disempowerment mean that society actually

‘causes’ the disabling of people. A social model frames our questions in terms of how

disability is socially produced and therefore places focus on looking at society and structural

factors for both the causes and the solutions to problems facing ‘disabled people’.

So, a social model of analysis focuses attention on the social distribution of socially

determined characteristics, like problem gambling or vulnerability, and how these become

stabilised or change over time. The object of analysis is the mechanism by which something

like problem gambling is both socially constructed and socially caused. As a consequence

there is a presumption that the setting in which an individual or community experiences some

form of harm is a key factor in the social production of that harm. In this case ‘setting’ does

not merely mean the situational characteristics of, for example, a casino, but also the socio-

spatial, socio-economic and socio-cultural relations of those involved and in which the social

practice takes place.

Taken together, such themes illustrate the need to examine how vulnerable subjects

and problem gamblers are socially constructed within policy and popular discourses. They

also demonstrate the need to examine the way in which particular spaces of vulnerability can

lead individuals to succumb to the buzz of gambling. It is to these socio-spatial impacts on

vulnerability and problem gambling that we turn in the following section.

3. The vulnerable gambler

Much academic work has attempted to map out the key areas of vulnerability that lead

certain individuals to become problem gamblers. We can distinguish here between research

that has attempted to chart the most vulnerable individuals and that which has sought to

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determine those groups who are at risk of becoming problem gamblers. While there is some

overlap between these two bodies of research, there are also interesting discrepancies

between them. The research on individuals tends to adopt more of a biological and

increasingly a psychological take on problem gambling, while the research on groups,

conversely, tends to explain problem gambling through recourse to social factors.

We have alluded to the individualised conceptualisation of the problem gambler in the

previous section. In this set of explanations, the ‘problem gambler’ is constructed as victim

of their own biology or life experience. They are a vulnerable minority whose own ‘midbrain

mutinies’ (Ross et al., 2008) 1 when repeatedly stimulated by the prospect of a quick bet. As

these people behave irrationally, struggling to regulate their behaviour, the objective is to

provide tools to recover their rationality, whether in the form of technologies to regulate their

gambling practice (e.g. timers, self-exclusion) or treatments to respond to their condition.

Conceiving problem gamblers as vulnerable individuals also opens up worrying potentials of

using psychological and neurological techniques as a means of screening these individuals

and intervening at an early stage of their descent into pathological gambling behaviour. Such

interventions entail determinate actions (actions with real world effects) that are focused on

individuals in response to what are probabilistic outcomes. Following Conrad & Schneider

(1980), and more recently in relation to an emerging logic for the conduct of conduct as being

to ‘screen and intervene’ Rose (2010, p. 97), we write of ‘worrying potentials’ here for a

couple of reasons. Whilst the innate hope associated with such techniques is that they could 1 The authors argue that the best way to understand the phenomenon of

irrational consumption, exemplified by disordered and addictive gambling, is with a

hybrid picoeconomic-neuroeconomic model. Pathological gambling is characterised

here as a true addiction involving physiological disruption in the balance of the

midbrain dopamine and frontal serotonergic systems but (contra substance addiction)

without the ingestion of a chemical agent.

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allow for intervention to prevent damage to individuals or wider society, here

‘medicalisation’ can also be conceived as a form of social control, the focus being ‘fixing’ the

person rather than looking at the social system in which the behaviour is embedded. There is

also an innate anxiety around the regulation of behaviour through an increase in preventative

interventions in the name of public protection.

A range of biological, psychological and social risk factors have been identified that

may promote the development and maintenance of gambling related problems, particularly

pathological gambling behaviour (e.g. see Welte et al., 2004a; Fong 2005). Such risk factors

play out in the context of contemporary socio-economic relations and associated asymmetries

of power in liberal societies, and may work in concert to create vulnerabilities in certain

demographic groups. A number of groups of people have therefore been identified as

particularly vulnerable to developing unsustainable forms of gambling behaviour. These

include-those of a lower socio-economic status, minority and immigrant populations,

adolescents, elderly, those with co-morbid psychiatric or substance abuse problems (see Fong

2005, for an overview) and deficits in impulse control and executive functioning (Michalczuk

et al 2011; Ledgerwood et al 2012). There are also differential susceptibilities between the

genders (see Volberg, 2003; Volberg & Wray, 2007). This latter work has drawn attention to

the different experiences of problem gambling between men and women, as well as their

differing motivations for engaging in gambling practices in the first place (Potenza et al.,

2001; Griffiths, 2003).

When these factors are viewed together, there is a perception that the gambling

industry targets individuals who may be vulnerable to developing gambling related problems

and, as we discuss in the following section, the communities within which they live. This

perception has led some to maintain that there is a political and racial economy of gambling

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that transfers resources vulnerable individuals and communities to sites of centralised ‘white’

power (Young et al 2011).

While much has been written in an academic context – at least implicitly – about the

notion of vulnerability, it is evident that the policy literature on the problem gambler as a

vulnerable citizen is, at best contradictory and at worst, non-existent. We want to highlight

three themes that arise when viewing this literature as a whole. First, and perhaps

surprisingly for the readers of this chapter, much of the policy literature undermines the

notion that there is such a thing as a vulnerable individual that is susceptible to problem

gambling practices. The report prepared by the Gambling Review Body in 2001 (the ‘Budd

Report’), for instance, presented a model of the gambler as essentially rational, engaged in an

activity in which ‘punters’ know there is a high probability they will lose (DCMS, 2001, p. 3;

see also DCMS, 2002) and who therefore choose to lose as a form of leisure entertainment.

Furthermore, the gambling industry and libertarians point out that the percentage of the UK

population, as evidenced from the British Gambling Prevalence Surveys (BGPS), that can be

described as problem gamblers has been relatively constant since 1999, despite the increased

gambling opportunities that become available over that period. An argument is thus made

that a proportion of the population is inherently predisposed to problem gambling but the vast

majority are not and, as such, restricting the freedoms of the majority to protect a minority is

antithetical to freedom itself. The Budd Report (DCMS, 2001, p. 4), for instance, makes

reference to the figure of the problem gambler as follows: “some individuals become

obsessed by gambling to the point at which they cease to function as normal members of

society and may do great harm not only to themselves but also to their families and possibly

to the general public”. The upshot of such an argument is that the problem gambler becomes

something that is marginal to the operation of a ‘socially responsible’ industry and a leisure

pursuit enjoyed by the majority. Problem gambling, in this scenario, almost disappears from

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policy view since it only applies to a small minority of misguided and irrational individuals.

It is almost as if the policy literature views problem gamblers – and those individuals who are

vulnerable to becoming problem gamblers – as individuals who lie beyond the policy pale.

Second, and perhaps paradoxically, policy guidance and legislation seeks to define

those individuals that are vulnerable to becoming problem gamblers; but it does so in highly

limited and, to a large extent, ill-defined ways. These two aspects of the policy debate about

vulnerability and gambling are encapsulated in the fact that section 1(c) of the Gambling Act

2005 seeks to protect “children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited

by gambling”. Echoing in many ways Mills’ (1859) exhortation that the state should

interfere legitimately only in the lives of children and other vulnerable adults, this third

objective of the Gambling Act patently fails to define ‘vulnerable persons’. This may reflect

the legal complexity of defining a condition of vulnerability but the vague phrase ‘vulnerable

person’ has resulted in a primary focus, by the Commission, government and advisory bodies,

on children and young people (age verification) and (limited) measures to protect those

already demonstrating behaviour that may indicate problem gambling.

Whilst the industry regulator, the Gambling Commission, also does not define ‘vulnerable

persons’, it does go beyond the legislative text and for regulatory purposes sets out the

assumption that this group “includes people who gamble more than they want to; people who

gamble beyond their means; and people who may not be able to make informed or balanced

decisions about gambling due to mental health needs, learning disability or substance misuse

relating to alcohol or drugs” (Gambling Commission, 2012, para 5.22). In practice the

application of such guidance in situ is problematic, reliant primarily on self-presentation or an

assessment by staff of the mental state of a user of the premises. Accepting the complexity of

trying to meaningfully define the vulnerable in legal terms the prevailing discourse places

primary responsibility with the vulnerable person, with the gambling industry responsible (to

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the best of their ability) for protecting the problem gambler only once they are exposed or

present themselves.

Third, it is clear that the policy literature on gambling presents a tautological vision of

the subject that is vulnerable to problem gambling. To put it bluntly, in political terms – and

those of the gambling industry itself – the subject that is susceptible to problem gambling is

the problem gambler themselves. The vulnerable ‘other’, in other words, has been

discursively produced as the problem gambler, a person by definition who is vulnerable to,

exploitable and potentially harmed by gambling. Thinking about vulnerability to gambling in

such a limited way means that the only real methods of responding are a series of technical

solutions that centre around the attempt to manipulate the gamblers decision-making

processes (see Jones et al., 2011a; 2011b; Whitehead et al 2011). Through the enforcement

of new codes of practice for licensed gaming locations, the government now requires that

businesses enable the irrational tendencies of the gambler to be coupled with technologies of

rationalisation. Such technologies include spending monitors and reality-check facilities,

which are specifically designed to counteract the emotional flow of gambling decision-

making processes. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the ‘Licence conditions and codes

of practice’ (Gambling Commission, 2008) 2 implemented as part of the 2005 Gambling Act

was the self-exclusion option. Self-exclusion works by separating out (in both time and

space) the rational choice not to gamble from the less-than-rational impulse that may take

hold when confronted by gambling establishments. Once the decision not to gamble has been

made, it is expected that gambling establishments will enforce these self-imposed restrictions,

with the assistance of the police if necessary (ibid, p. 32 (revised 2011 & 2012)).

Yet patently the problem gambler, by whatever form of categorisation adopted, is not

vulnerable to gambling as a future practice; they are already exploited and harmed by it. In

2 ‘Licence conditions and codes of practice’ are kept under review by the Gambling Commission. They were consolidated as LCCP 11/02 in 2012.

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defining vulnerability in such a way, the state and the gambling industry absolves in any

meaningful way any responsibility for either considering the exposure of vulnerable

individuals, (however defined), to gambling opportunities, the sensitivity of such individuals

to the temptations of gambling, or the resilience that vulnerable individuals exhibit coping

with or withstanding these temptations (cf. Turner II et al., 2003). Instead, the state’s and the

gambling industry’s focus of attention lies on those individuals – problem gamblers – that

have failed on all counts in their attempts to deal with the varied temptations associated with

gambling. This seems to us to be a severely limited – and limiting – way of conceptualising

vulnerability with regard to problem gambling.

4. Gambling and vulnerable communities

4.1 Socio-economics of accessibility and ubiquity

As well as thinking about how vulnerability is understood socially – or in other

words, constructed in relation to the notion of the problem gambler – there is also a need to

examine the way in which certain communities or spaces influence gambling practices.

Much recent research has explored the way in which the increasing significance of internet

gambling creates new kinds of geographical questions about the location of gambling.

Wilson (2003), for instance, has examined the economic geography of internet gambling,

focusing specifically on how the internet and now mobile telecommunications are changing

the accessibility and availability of gambling opportunities yet they remain embedded in

place-based regulatory, fiscal and technical regimes. So for example off-shore gambling

websites may, for legal and financial reasons, be located in the Caribbean yet present

themselves at point of sale as based just down the road from the consumer.

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Indeed the online realm destabilises notions of what gambling actually is. The rise of

‘social gaming’ has meant that not only is ‘real gambling’ for money now more available in

more places – the development of mobile applications to enable sports betting and mobile

casino gaming on the move makes it available in all places at all times – but increasingly

people can play risk free ‘simulated gambling’ games at any age.  ‘Social gaming’ on

websites like Facebook tap into the demand for simulated gambling with games such as

Zynga Poker, Roulette Madness, online ‘slots’ machines and scratchcards all prominently

promoted. These are games people with an account can play for free in a limited manner or

use their credit card to purchase additional ‘Facebook credits’. In these games you are not

playing to win money as such but to win more credits or to progress in the game. Features of

these games mirror those of gambling games (rapid play, illusion of control, playing as the

end in itself, schedules of reinforcement, visual and aural stimuli, perception of skill)

combined with innovative narrative progression and social networking elements. The

boundary between such simulated gambling and real gambling games is increasingly blurred

and under-researched (see Griffiths et al., 2009; King et al., 2009; Griffiths & Park, 2010).

The potential for monetizing the social gaming experience has become so tempting that

Facebook amended its policy in 2012 to allow real money gambling, partnering up with

Paddy Power in 2013 to trail real money sport-betting for the first time.

Yet while remote gambling is one of the fastest growing forms of gambling – the

Remote Gaming Association estimate worldwide online gross gaming revenues at US$30

billion in 2010 (Ernst & Young 2011) – it is dwarfed by revenues from gambling in physical

locations dedicated to the sale of gambling products such as betting shops and casinos (gross

global gaming revenues were estimated at US$358 billion for 2008 (ibid)). In a very material

sense gambling, in many cases, remains a practice that is rooted in particular communities

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that are geographically defined. It is these kinds of themes that we want to focus on in

remaining paragraphs of this section.

Despite protestations to the contrary by the gambling industry, it is patently clear that

in many of the jurisdictions that have liberalised gambling regulation there is significant

clustering of gambling establishments providing access to new gambling technologies, in

particular Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMs) – called generically Fixed Odds Betting

Terminals (FOBTs) in the UK, Video Lottery Terminals (VLTs) in Canada. EGMs in

different contexts and jurisdictions are associated with higher rates of problem gambling

(Griffiths 2009; Productivity Commission, 2010; Young & Stevens, 2009) and are the subject

of our case study below. While we are cautious of reading across analysis from one socio-

cultural context to others (for example, in the use of screening instruments to assess and

compare rates of problem gambling amongst populations, e.g. see Svetieva & Walker, 2008;

Volberg & Wray, 2007), research in Western jurisdictions seems to reveal some consistent

relationships between the spread of EGMs and problem gambling. Research in New Zealand

and Australia, in particular, has shown how there is a close correlation between the location

of high levels of problem gamblers and gambling opportunities. More specifically there is

also a positive relationship between the socioeconomic status of neighbourhoods, the density

of gambling sites or gambling opportunities located in those neighbourhoods and levels of

expenditure (see Doughney, 2006; Gilliland & Ross, 2005; Livingstone, 2001; Marshall,

2005; Pearce et al., 2008; Welte et al., 2004b). The only UK study to map gambling machine

location with socio-economic and socio-spatial measures found a positive correlation

between machine density and areas of lower income, economic activity and employment

status (NatCen, 2011). However, this was a first stage study looking at all gaming machines

and was not able to look at different machine categories, such as the politically sensitive B2

FOBTs.

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Research by Livingstone et al., provides findings “consistent with other studies, that

poker machine losses tend to be higher in communities with lower incomes. At the CED

[Commonwealth Electoral Divisions] level, those communities with lower incomes also tend

to have higher numbers of poker machines, a factor that is also associated with higher

average losses” (2012, p. 4; see also Wheeler et al., 2006; Marshall & Baker, 2001).

Countering the gambling industry’s claims that the industry provides a community benefit, in

relation to employment and investment in the community, Livingstone et al. (2012, p. 4)

further maintain that ‘the actual level of community support provided by poker machine

operators, and documented by their official reports to regulators, is miniscule in comparison

to the amount of money lost by poker machine users within local communities’ (p. 4). It is in

these contexts that certain authors have argued for the existence of a political economy of

gambling, in which the gambling industry can be accused of siphoning resources from

disadvantaged communities to centres of financial and political power (see Young et al.,

2011).

The gambling industry’s response to such accusations is that they are merely catering

to the demands of gamblers. The relatively successful move to reinvent gambling as a simple

leisure pursuit, rebranded ‘gaming’, and its increasing visibility and ubiquity in the material

and virtual places people dwell, have in part been aided by the shift to a medicalised

discourse in the context of a broader responsibilisation and neoliberal (freedom manifest

through market choice) political discourse. Argument founded on explicit moral norms is

presented as antithetical to freedom in these terms, its refutation disingenuously but implicitly

presenting gambling liberalisation as a morally neutral, objective, position. Argument

founded on associations and relationships between social problems and social practices is

challenged by industry representatives as not being sufficiently ‘evidence based’ or

categorical to justify any pause or derailing of on-going government liberalisation programs.

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It is hard to demonstrate categorically lines of causality in this respect, but many

studies now argue that increased accessibility to gambling opportunities does not merely cater

for but creates a demand for gambling. Pearce et al (2008), working in New Zealand, found

that residents living in neighbourhoods with the closest access to gambling opportunities

were more likely – even when adjusted for age, sex, socio-economic status at the individual-

level and deprivation, urban/rural status at the neighbourhood-level – to be a gambler or

problem gambler. Storrer et al. (2009), in their meta-analysis studying the accessibility and

availability of gambling opportunities in Australia and New Zealand, demonstrate that there

is a statistically meaningful relationship between increasing per capita density of EGMs and

the prevalence of problem gambling and gambling related harms (see also Marshall, 2005,

2009; Thomas et al., 2011; and in US/Canadian contexts, Welte et al., 2004b; Cox et al.,

2005; Rush et al., 2007). Significantly, Storrer et al. (2009) found no evidence to support the

hypothesis that the number of problem gamblers would plateau or level off as density of

EGMs increased. This finding, whilst controversial, seems to undermine industry and

libertarian arguments that locate problem gambling as inherent to the individual such that a

given community has a fixed number of individuals susceptible to developing problem

gambling irrespective of the accessibility and availability of gambling opportunities within

the community.

Whilst exposure to gambling opportunities and the development of gambling related

problems are clearly related, the relationship is complex. Correlation does not imply

causation and in the case of gambling understanding the complex web, and relations between,

an array of factors that influence gambling behaviours in particular sites is not reducible to a

simple question of density and demographics. The concentration of gambling locations, their

size and numbers, the types of gambling product offered, accessibility (opening hours, ease of

access), sociocultural acceptability (see McMillan & Doran, 2006; and Thomas et al., 2011)

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and the socioeconomic characteristics of host and user communities are all identified as

external determinants that influence gambling behaviour (Marshall, 2005). Throw in

considerations of the physical environment, inclusive of infrastructure (urban and residential

development, transport routes, community facilities), path dependencies and historical

legacies (existing gambling sites, past economic activities, regulatory regime, local class

structures) and the idiosyncrasies of ‘place’ more generally, and that complexity is multiplied

many times.

Consequently one size fits all explanations of problem gambling and gambling related

harm as a consequence of simple exposure are problematic, not just between countries but

within them. This sensitivity to local context is reflected in more place-based attempts to

understand how gambling and communities interact in particular localities. The remaining

sections of this chapter explore some of these interactions with reference to the politicisation

of the location of betting shops on the UK high street.

4.2 Betting on the bookies

Betting shops are a small but increasingly significant player in the UK high street and

wider economy. Occupying 9,000 retail sites, they provide 55,000 jobs and generate lots of

money for the gambling industry and government exchequer. For 2010, the gross gambling

yield (GGY) for the betting shop industry was £2.8 billion (Gambling Commission, 2011b).

Nearly two thirds of these shops are owned by three companies: William Hill, Ladbrokes and

Gala Coral. And nearly half of their income now comes from a category of EGM called the

B2 FOBT.

Whilst the number of betting shops has remained relatively stable, the number of

machines they host has increased substantially, doubling between 2006 and 2011 to 32,000

FOBTs. Recent shifts in the location of betting shops, particularly in deprived urban

18

environments, is linked by community activists and betting shop corporations themselves to

attempts to increase availability and accessibility of FOBTs. Following the Gambling Act

2005, the location of betting shops, and in particular their role as supplier of these machines

(dubbed pejoratively the ‘crack cocaine of gambling’) has become a major local and national

political issue and formed a focal point for debates about vulnerability and the ‘problem

gambler’.

Betting shops not only report much greater proportions of their profit from these

machines but also the amount of profit each machine generates rising year on year. For

example, Ladbrokes PLC reported a ‘gross win per terminal per week’ of £923 for the first

quarter of 2012, a 24% increase on the previous year (Deutsche Bank, 2012). In part this

reflects a broadening of the customer base, with EGMs attracting a younger demographic

(18-34 year olds). Betting shop corporations are also encouraged to continue maximising

revenues ‘through the use of yield management techniques, which involves the use of

predictive modelling and analysis of player behaviour to help maximize usage and spend’

(ibid, page 13).

Given their reliance on EGMs for continued profitability, it is unsurprising that the

industry has sought to expand this revenue stream by increasing their availability, either in

existing or new premises. Even industry representatives accept that there has been a recent

‘proliferation of betting shops on the high street, […] largely driven by unsatisfied demand

for FOBTs’ (Written Evidence submitted by the Gala Coral Group to the CMS Select

Committee (GA 06), June 2011, para 8.4).

Barely 4% of the public used these machines in 2010 and yet they accounted for 13%

of the UK land based gambling industry’s GGY. A key question is how this growth and profit

has been achieved. In large part the answer seems to be: from the spatial targeting of

vulnerable populations in vulnerable communities. The British Gambling Prevalence Survey

19

(BGPS) reveals that users of EGMs are likely to be young, single and male, more likely than

the national average to be unemployed or a student, with a lower than average personal

income, spending a relatively high amount of time and money playing the machines and have

approximately a nine percent chance of meeting criteria for being a problem gambler (BGPS

2010). The number of problem gamblers is estimated by the BPGS at somewhere around

360,000 and 451,000 adults depending on which screen is used. In other words, this is about

the same number of people as live in the city of Leicester or Leeds. Evidence from Australia

and other countries that liberalised the regulation of EGMs earlier and to a greater extent than

the UK suggests that the distribution of EGMs and their concentration in areas and venues is

largely responsible for the different problem gambling rates observed within a region (Reith,

2006; Marshall & Baker, 2005; Young et al., 2006).

The combination of gambling establishments and the socio-economic characteristics

of communities gives rise to the emergence of what might be termed ‘debtogenic landscapes’.

Two levels of vulnerability can be identified here. In one respect, particular kinds of

community are vulnerable in terms of the particular socio-economic and cultural mix of

people that live within them. The vulnerability of such communities is heightened in a

second way by the way in which the gambling industry saturates them with different kinds of

opportunity for gambling. In this context – and echoing the points made in the previous

section – an almost tautological argument emerges in which those communities that are

vulnerable to problem gambling are precisely those communities in which there are plentiful

opportunities to engage in gambling.

It is evident that such issues are beginning to exercise the minds of politicians and the

public alike in the UK as gambling establishments begin to cluster in particular areas of

towns and cities. The following sub-section discusses the current debates surrounding the

20

clustering of betting shops in the context of the construction of more broadly ‘debtogenic

landscapes’ in certain areas of London.

4.3 Debtogenic Landscapes

Proximity and the embedding of gambling as a normalised behaviour within

neighbourhoods is seen as a key element of the development and management of gambling

related problems over time (Reith & Dobbie, 2011; Valentine & Hughes, 2008). It is clear

that gambling opportunities have been increasingly embedded within particular urban spaces

in the UK over the past few years.

Much of the furore and hyperbole surrounding the passing of the Gambling Act

related to the promotion of destination gambling at mega-casinos as a means of economic

regeneration of deprived areas. This seems to have somewhat misdirected attention away

from the wider social impact of liberalisation. The Act was presented by New Labour as a

classic ‘third-way’ solution, simultaneously harnessing the engine of economic liberalism for

social benefit, (through economic stimulus and revenue potential), whilst protecting the

public from social harms associated with gambling (notably through measures to protect

children and undefined ‘vulnerable’ adults). Perversely one of the outcomes of the Act is the

appearance of clear targeting of poor, working-class communities by a gaming industry

actively contributing to the production of debtogenic urban landscapes, with gambling related

harm the inevitable social consequence.

Where the Gambling Act 1960 begrudgingly recognised the existence of an extensive,

yet illegal, gambling market and sanctioned the opening of betting shops, the stigma

associated with them meant that they tended to be located in off-high street locations, in

places of little visibility. In the 1980s, with the advent of live television coverage in betting

shops and the growing political and economic influence of gambling corporations, the

21

industry consolidated into a few dominant corporate entities and betting shops began to

relocate to more prominent retail locations in order to broaden the socio-economic appeal of

the industry. Since the 2005 Gambling Act, the trajectory of changing locational patterns of

betting shops in the UK (see Jones et al., 1994; 2000) has accelerated leading to the

colonisation of the high street by gambling establishments in ever greater numbers,

particularly those high streets located in relatively deprived areas.

Under the current planning and licensing system, betting companies find themselves

one of many choice architects in the design of the debtogenic urban landscape, most notably

in economically disadvantaged areas. The 2005 Gambling Act makes provision that

licensing authorities should ‘aim to permit’ the use of premises for gambling unless it is

thought that such premises would endanger vulnerable persons or promote crime and

disorder, without need for an assessment of the levels of demand for such a development, and

provided that assistance is made available to those who could experience problems by being

exposed to new gambling opportunities (Gambling Act 2005: section 24; section 153). The

removal of the notion of ‘unstimulated demand’ was a particularly radical shift. As a result,

local licensing agencies did not possess the wherewithal to restrict the opening of new

gambling establishments, even when public opinion within the locality was strongly voiced

against such establishments.

Compounding the impotence of the local community and its regulatory capabilities, a

quirk of Town and Country Planning (Use Classes Order, 1987) allows changes of use

between premises of the same class. Betting shops are in these terms equivalent to banks,

estate and employment agencies, and financial service companies and therefore can be

occupied without planning permission. Additionally premises such as cafes, restaurants and

pubs can also become betting shops without permission for change of use. It is primarily

through taking over such premises as they become vacant that betting shops have been able to

22

occupy such a prominent position on the high street, leading to the perception of the, almost

epidemiologically described, ‘clustering’ of betting shops.

Access to money is central to the activity of gambling. Increasing demands for credit

is seen by treatment providers, clinicians and gambling operators as a classic symptom of a

gambling problem. As a problem gambler we interviewed put it, ‘the gambler will look for

any form of money with which to feed their habit. So obviously credit is a good way of

feeding habit […]; the role of credit for me really has been as an enabler to gambling’

(Source: Interview, recovering gambler, male, late 30s). The creation of debtogenic

landscapes has been further fuelled by the growth in opportunities for obtaining credit within

particular urban spaces. According to a Local Data Company report (“Pawn is Reborn”),

between 2008 and 2010 the number of pawnbrokers increased by 44% (Source: Retail

Gazette, 1st November 2010).

The problem in many cases, moreover, is the co-location of gambling opportunities

and credit facilities. For example, on Deptford High Street between numbers 14 and 70 you

will find five betting shops. Sandwiched between them you will also find four pawnbrokers3.

Tour Tottenham and along with ATMs, pawn brokers, cash converters, and high interest loan

‘money shops’, the ever present ‘money transfer’ facilities common in places with significant

immigrant and transient populations are accompanied by the words ‘cheques cashed here’

and ‘payday loans’. The co-location of gambling opportunities and credit facilities takes

place at an even smaller scale than this. In the UK, gambling on credit is not illegal, contrary

to the US, for example, where it is illegal to use a credit card to fund online gambling).

Betting shops and casinos can offer clients a credit facility if they want to. Whilst EGMs in

betting shops do not accept credit or bank cards, they may conveniently provide ATM

machines.

3 Source: Crosswhatfields.blogspot.com, September 14th, 2011

23

Loopholes in the licensing and planning laws, therefore, have led to the creation of

particular choice environments in many urban neighbourhoods, in which gambling has been

normalised in both social and spatial contexts. This situation has been further exacerbated by

the proliferation of credit facilities within such environments. It is in these contexts that the

gaming industry contributes to the creation of debtogenic landscapes - places designed to

encourage us to spend beyond our means. The creation of such landscapes has, not

surprisingly, led to considerable consternation within these neighbourhoods and it is to these

contestations that we turn in the following sub-section.

4.4 Battling the bookies – Tottenham tales

Recent debates over the impact of the deregulation have generated a vigorous

campaign to limit the migration of betting shops onto the high street. Betting establishments

are presented as attracting anti-social behaviour, reducing the attractiveness of the high street,

exploiting the poor and vulnerable, siphoning money from the locality, normalising through

exposure gambling amongst passers-by – specifically children – and of creating an

environment in which the community has to accommodate a growing number of people with

gambling related problems. Local community activists, faith groups, and numerous local and

national government representatives have sought to interpret different aspects of the law or

introduce new legislation in such a way that the “blight” of betting shops on Britain’s high

streets (see the Coalition government commissioned, Portas Review 2011, page 29) can be

controlled.

Tottenham High Road, with fifteen betting shops along or within 500 metres of its

length, has become something of a totemic site in the battle of the high streets. The

Tottenham constituency hosts 39 of the 65 shops found in the Haringey Borough of London.

(see Figure 2). That the bookies of Tottenham function as leisure sites, as places for

24

entertainment, social interaction and banter is obvious. Yet community concern about the

proliferation of betting shops and more particularly FOBTs within the community has been

particularly vociferous here, a regular feature of local news media reports, council meeting

agenda, community fora, and an active campaigning issue for local MP David Lammy.

Given the presumed consent surrounding the awarding of licenses to high street

betting establishments, it should come as little surprise that Haringey has witnessed a

congregation of betting establishments within its constituency. Councils, local residents,

GP’s, the Director of Public Health and local police officers have argued during the licensing

process of links to crime and risk to children and vulnerable people, but both are hard to

prove empirically in relation to an individual application for license and as such subject to

challenge in the courts. Such appeals have consistently gone against those individuals and

groups contesting the actions of the gambling industry.

Opposition to the opening of new betting shops mostly focuses around social harm

associated with them. Many residents are concerned over crime and anti-social behaviour in

the vicinity of betting shops, a worry seemingly borne out by representatives of betting shop

staff themselves. ‘Community’, the betting shop workers union, reported in 2009 a ‘massive

explosion of reported anti-social behaviour’ in and around betting shops, up 65% between

2005 and 2008 (Community, 2009). Many opponents report on a detrimental change in the

feel and appearance of the high street as a public space, particularly with the loss of local

landmarks (post-offices, pubs, banks, restaurants) that convert to betting shops. Thousands of

residents have signed petitions against further betting shops in their community, local traders

associations have opposed licensing and planning applications fearing both an effect on local

rents, the social mix of customers, and rise in crime. And, unsurprisingly, active campaigning

at local and national levels has been led by faith groups based in communities affected. There

is an obvious moral tone to these discussions. Any hint of moralising is criticized by

25

representatives of the betting shop industry, seemingly believing their industry, the market

philosophy it promotes and debate about its practices are somehow outside of or shorn of

moral imperative.

Community representatives in Tottenham point to a number of features of the area

that suggest heightened vulnerability in the community: extensive mental health care

facilities (St Ann’s Hospital), vulnerable adults living in care in the community, and an

unusually high number of Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) with large numbers of

poor quality small units. These are often found to be homes of young single men, with many

of them vulnerable adults: recent migrants, asylum seekers, and those who lack the means to

live anywhere else (Written Evidence by the Ladder Community Safety Partnership to the

CMS Select Committee (GA 08), July 2011).

As one resident of Tottenham said in his submission to the 2011-2012 UK Parliament

Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMS) Inquiry into the implementation of Gambling

Act4, there should be ‘wealth [sic]warnings on the outside of betting shops […]; all

promotion on the outside of betting shop is about winning and nothing about losing. And yet

overall, gamblers lose. […] These modestly-sized machines [EGMs] are the fastest legal way

of transferring money out of poor communities’ (Written Evidence by Clive Carter to the

CMS Select Committee (GA 18 ), July 2011). The location of betting shops and Adult

Gaming Centres for campaigners such as the above is seen as inherently an issue of

protecting the vulnerable within particular communities.

As well as being an issue that has exercised the minds of local campaigners, it is clear

that the location of betting shops and the FOBTs they contain became keenly contested in

formal political circles. Local MP David Lammy, for instance, says that in his eleven years

as representative for Tottenham ‘by far and away the local issue I have received the largest

4 in July 2012 the Committee published the first report of its inquiry into the Gambling Act 2005 as “The Gambling Act 2005: A bet worth taking?”. Copies of written and oral evidence given to the Committee inquiry were included in the report.

26

amount of representation on is the clustering of betting shops’ (Written Evidence to the CMS

Select Committee  (GA 47), July 2011). His opinion – one consistently reflected in the words

of many other activists and local representatives – is that the ‘gambling industry is targeting

deprived areas, saturating them with more outlets’ (Evening Standard, 25th February 2010).

It is a process described by his colleague Harriet Harman MP, in her report to the House of

Commons, as ‘predatory profiteering’ (Harman, 2011, p. 4). What we witness in statements

such as the above is an attempt to illustrate the insidious connections forged by a ‘predatory’

gambling industry between gambling and vulnerable groups of people located within

particularly vulnerable neighbourhoods.

However, Tottenham is illustrative, not exceptional. Where Tottenham High Road is

home to a number of betting shops, so are many other urban thoroughfares; for example,

Newham High Street has 18, Deptford High Street has eight, Luton High Street has eight, and

so on. Echoing the point made in the previous paragraph, activists point to the lack of similar

clustering and migration into wealthier neighbourhoods. They say there is a clear targeting of

betting shops ‘in the poorer areas of the borough [of Haringey] and those with a known

demographic which is more likely to gamble’ (Written Evidence by the Ladder Community

Safety Partnership to the CMS Select Committee (GA 08), July 2011). As a result, the sixty

six betting shops in the borough are clustered in much higher numbers (85%) in the poorer

wards than in the wealthier ones (like Muswell Hill and Highgate). Similarly Hackney

Council, which hosts 64 betting shops in the borough, finds that ‘a mapping of the location of

these shops reveals that they cluster in the poorer areas of the borough’ (Hackney Council

2009).

27

Figure 1 – Betting Shops in Haringey

Local residents and campaigners point to examples of clustering in economically

disadvantaged areas such as Hackney and Haringey. Islington hosts 82 betting shops, Ealing

87, Southwark 77, and Westminster 63. However, the issue is not restricted to inner city

London. Other urban authorities (such as Bradford, Liverpool and Middlesborough) have

found themselves under fire from community and trade representatives for not limiting the

proliferation of betting shops. And smaller towns have likewise faced the same concerns.

Councils in Paignton (Devon), Long Eaton (Nottinghamshire) and Bridgewater (Somerset),

all had their attempts to constrain betting shops from opening in their high street overthrown

on appeal.

28

The issue has become so contentious that in 2011 the Local Government Association

(LGA) called for more powers for local governments to limit the number of betting shops.

David Parsons, speaking for the LGA said ‘we are seeing a reckless gamble with our high

streets which is contributing to higher policing and health costs, in addition to reducing the

quality of life for local residents’ and called for a change in the law, claiming that high

numbers of betting shops result in ‘crime, disorder and misery for local people’ (‘Councils

fight against 'betting shop blight’, The Telegraph, 8th November 2011).

Notable in these discourses is that the problem gambler is a given – an inevitable

outcome of greater opportunities to gamble. Campaigns focus more on the injustice of

targeting vulnerable people in vulnerable communities in this way as well as the lack of

power for local communities to determine the look, feel and function of their high streets (e.g.

see the ‘High Streets First’ campaign). This latter dimension is particularly evident in the

rhetoric of politicians of all parties supporting attempts to introduce new legislation on the

issue. For example, in the 2012 London Mayoral election, all candidates supported a change

in the law. Since 2009, there have been three attempts to introduce legislation in Parliament

on the issue. In 2009, Hackney Borough Council used the Sustainable Communities Act to

apply to the government for stronger powers to control the concentration of betting shops; in

2011, David Lammy tried to introduce an amendment to the Localism Bill and, when that

failed, Joan Ruddock MP introduced the Betting Shops Bill as Private Members Bill. While

all three attempts failed, they testified to a widespread view among activists and politicians

alike that the gambling industry has been seeking to develop, since 2005, a pernicious but

highly profitable connection between gambling and vulnerable individuals and communities.

4.5 The industry response

29

The gambling industry and its advocates deny any targeting of vulnerable

communities. According to them, the perception of clustering is just that: a perception. In

reality, the number of betting shops is stable, their profitability marginal and facilitated by

shifts in consumption patterns from sports betting to EGMs. The relocation of a few of these

from less profitable locations has made them more visible but the economic benefits they

bring to communities means they are a boon to the high street, not a drain on community

resources. The driver for relocation is incomplete deregulation and the effects on the

community are unproven. As Dirk Vennix, Chief Executive of the Association of British

Bookmakers said: ‘If we look at the evidence, and this has been endorsed by the

[government] Minister […], there is no clear link between problem gambling and electronic

gaming machines, or FOBTs as they are being called.’ (Dirk Vennix, Chief Executive,

Association of British Bookmakers, CMS Gambling Act inquiry – Uncorrected Transcript of

Oral Evidence (HC 1554-i), 18th October 2011).

A further illustration of the argument is provided by Conservative MP Philip Davies’s

views. As a member of the 2011-12 House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport select

committee inquiry into gambling and also as an ex-bookmaker, he articulated in Parliament a

classic libertarian rationale arguing that the arbitrary restriction of B2 FOBTs to four per

betting shop results in localities where demand for the product is not met. Clustering is

therefore merely an artefact of an industry responding to market demand for FOBTs in

particular locations. The solution to the clustering of betting shops posited using this

argument is to increase the number of machines allowed in each shop. Indeed in the

subsequent Committee Report the members recommended giving local authorities the power

to “allow betting shops to have more than the current limit of four B2 [FOBT] machines per

premises if they believe that it will help to deal with the issue of clustering” (DCMS 2012,

para 66).5 5 Further the Committee recommend this limit of four become a minimum rather than maximum.

30

The Committee completed its first report in 2012. This coincided with three

developments that have changed the nature of the discourse somewhat. First, concerted

campaigning by newly established and organised groups such as the Campaign for Fairer

Gambling, Gambling Reform and Society Perception (GRASP) and Gambling Watch.

Significantly former ‘compulsive gamblers’ [sic] are actively participating in the work of

these organisations. Second, betting shop proliferation has been reframed as a national issue

with local ramifications, notably through local authority and parliamentary attempts to

increase the powers of local government to regulate the number and location of betting shops

in their areas. For example; the national body representing the interests of local authorities in

England and Wales, the Local Government Association (LGA), have made a number of calls

for changes to licencing and planning regulations to provide them with power to limit the

opening of book makers. Most recently they have reframed their argument from the location

to individual betting shops to a more public health framed one that seeks to allow council’s

the right to consider ‘cumulative impact’. Informed by approaches developed in New

Zealand, Australia and the United States of America they advocate “interventions at a

community and population level” (LGA 2013, p. 10).

Broadly, however, attempts to use existing legislation to prevent relocation of betting

shops have failed at appeal. Attempts to introduce amendments to existing or pass new

legislation in Parliament have similarly failed to secure support of the UK government, citing

the need for evidence based policy. However, combined with the third development, a series

of highly critical pieces in national and local television and print media, the terms of the

debate are being further reframed and politicised. National and regional documentary and

newspaper reports have focused primarily on the FOBTs and the clustering of betting shops

in poorer communities rather than the Gambling Act per se. Such reports have also

emphasised concerns around money laundering, criminality and anti-social behaviour. Whilst

31

the Labour government introduced the mechanism through which FOBTs have proliferated,

in opposition the party has since made the control of FOBTs a campaigning issue, framed

around a localism agenda to give local authorities the power to limit the number of FOBTs in

their area.6

What is striking about these debates is the position of the ‘problem gambler’ in the

discourses of different actors seeking to influence future regulation of the gambling industry

in the UK. Residents and community activists deploy the problem gambler as a category of

person subject to temptation, victim of the predatory tactics of a gambling industry that

targets the vulnerable in places that are more likely to host such people. The gambling

industry presents its activities in terms of simple supply and demand, the supply of which

afflicts a few unfortunate individuals with an inability to regulate what for the vast majority

of people is a trivial leisure pursuit.

As a rhetorical device, the focus on the problem gambler has been quite successful in

placing the onus on the community or academic or politician to provide evidence to

demonstrate that harm is caused, rather than that no harm is caused, by the different activities

of the industry. This is a rather perverse situation in a political culture that is supposed to

operate on the ‘precautionary principle’ – namely that the burden of proof for decision

making lies with the hazard creator, not the potential victims.

5. Conclusions

It is clear from the above case study of debtogenic landscapes in north London that

there is a need to consider the connection between problem gambling and social and spatial

vulnerability. Part of the significance of the emergence of these kinds of landscapes – at least

according to the campaigners that have aligned themselves against such developments – is

6 Most recently in January 2014 Labour were defeated in the UK Parliament on a motion to give local authorities control over FOBTs.

32

that they help to further normalise gambling within particular vulnerable groups and within

particular kinds of community. While those associated with the gambling may contest the

significance of such ideas, it is clear from the evidence amassed in this chapter that there

exists a pernicious connection between the gambling industry and particular groups of people

located in particular kinds of community. It comes as no surprise that gambling has been

found to represent a social and spatial extraction of surplus value from those that are least

able to afford it (Livingstone et al., 2012).

In discussing the significance of social and spatial vulnerability for the idea of

problem gambling, we have perhaps been guilty of separating them out into somewhat

discreet categories. And yet, as the case study of Tottenham showed, there is a close

connection between these two vectors of vulnerability; we need to think about socio-spatial

vulnerability and the way in which it is connected to problem gambling. Such ideas echo the

work of Reith and Dobbie (2011), who maintain that both geography and social relations

matter when seeking to explain emergence and social reproduction of (problem) gambling in

places. For these authors, when gambling begins and where it takes place feeds into its

development as a problem among adults. Moreover, they advocate a focus on individuals’

and groups’ experiences of gambling or, in other words, how gambling and gambling

problems are lived. The ‘place’ of gambling, thus, is important: extending beyond mere

accessibility to the social relations embedded in the places where gambling is encountered.

We contend that the twin notions of the vulnerable gambler and vulnerable

communities – which we have promoted in this chapter – also help to highlight how problem

gambling is played out through social relations that are embedded within particular places.

What we perceive in the context of the problem gambler – at least in the context of locations

such as Tottenham – is a peculiar concatenation of social and spatial factors that make certain

individuals and groups far more likely to engage in problematic levels of gambling. More

33

broadly, when grappling with the close connection that exists between social-spatial

vulnerability and problem gambling, one appreciates full well that problem gambling does

not come about because of the inability of a few unfortunate individuals to regulate

themselves, as the gambling industry maintains. Instead of abstracting the category of the

‘problem gambler’ from the broader society, we need to determine how practices of problem

gambling are enabled by the targeting of ‘vulnerable communities’/‘buoyant markets’ by the

gambling industry. Doing so, we maintain, can help to further a public health or societal

interpretation of the nature and impact of problem gambling.

The gambling industry has been highly successful in prescribing the way in which

gambling is discussed in terms of the problem gambler rather than public health or societal

discourses that emphasise gambling-related harms in a pluralistic sense. Its lobbyists,

political supporters and enablers have deployed a highly effective discursive strategy that

constrains consideration of gambling-related harms to the singular rather than social, to an

abstracted category of the ‘problem gambler’. This strategy also enrolls a carefully

constructed risk discourse that argues that the risk to the population as a whole is small

because only a ‘tiny’ number of people have a problem with their gambling at any one time.

Yet the evidence suggests that problem gambling, to the extent that it can be described, is a

fluid condition which many people recover from over time and many others will move in and

out of phases of uncontrolled gambling over their lifetime. It is also a socio-spatial condition;

the likelihood of a person or community encountering difficulties as a result of gambling

practices being contingent on a complex array of social and place-based factors, factors that

are not easily captured or translated into a political discourse that emphasises the

vulnerability and responsibilities of the individual. As a consequence, a political fetishisation

of the ‘problem gambler’ as a discrete, fixed, category of person unusually susceptible to

developing gambling related problems is perhaps a problem in itself.

34

35

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