Beyond disclosure: gambling research, political economy, and incremental reform

Abstract

Gambling research is beset with vested interests, be they those of the state or the gambling industry. The effect of these on the quality and focus of research has been largely ignored. Full and transparent disclosure policies are a useful first step in identifying possible sources of conflict. Progress in public health tends to be achieved in small, incremental steps, as the experience in tobacco and alcohol research makes plain. The rest of the journey will involve the achievement of the level of independence in gambling research that has been modelled by the alcohol and tobacco research assemblages.

Keywords::

• research independence
• ethics
• political economy
• public health

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Young

Martin Young is a geographer primarily interested in the spatial processes and outcomes associated with the tourism and leisure industries, with particular reference to commercial gambling. His research follows two general directions. The first maps and predicts the spatial patterns of gambling harm associated with gambling venues. This includes various applications of behavioural geography and predictive analyses using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The second is a critical sociological concern with the political economy of resource flows associated with various forms of ‘dangerous consumption’, including the environmental externalities produced by the tourism industries.

Francis Markham

Francis Markham is a PhD candidate in human geography at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. His doctoral research concerns spatial analysis of the impacts of poker-machine venues at local geographic scales, as well as the links between gambling expenditure and gambling harm. More broadly, his research examines the uneven geographies of dangerous consumption, the mechanisms by which gambling industries produce harms, the uneven geographies of gambling impacts and the articulation of gambling these industries and regulation with global neo-liberalism.