Bingo Regulation and the Feminist Political Economy of Everyday Gambling: In Search of the Anti-Heroic

Abstract

This paper uses bingo—a lottery-style game particularly popular with older working-class women—to take forward feminist political economy debates about the everyday. It highlights consumption and regulation as key to research on everyday political economy, and aims to contribute to studies of gambling as a marker of the everyday within critical political economy. Rather than seeing gambling primarily in terms of vernacular risk-taking, however, it argues that gambling is also a pathway into exploring other, more self-effacing political economies—of entertainment, fundraising, sharing, and ‘having a laugh’. Focusing on three key areas of regulatory dispute (over how to win bingo; who can participate; and what defines the game), the research suggests that players and workers are (re)enabling the diverse, plural nature of bingo as a political economic formulation—involving winning; entertainment; fundraising; care; flirting; and playful speculation—in the face of technological and legal processes aiming to standardize the game’s meaning as commercial gambling.

Keywords:

• gambling
• consumption
• play
• regulation
• gender
• law

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See also Langley (2007) and Simon (2004) on synergies between everyday institutional orders and practices of vernacular risk-taking.

2 The key exceptions in the Hobson and Seabrooke (2008) collection are chapters by an anthropologist (Wilson) and geographer (Langley).

3 Lawnmowers and roller coasters—along with chimneys and cars—are central to Mohun’s history of risk regulation in the USA.

4 See summary in Bedford (2016).

5 The aggregate stakes or prizes must not exceed £2000 in any 7-day period (see Gambling Commission, 2012, part 18); the club must not deduct money from sums staked or won; the participation fee must not exceed the amount prescribed in regulations—£1 per day (or £3 if it holds a club gaming permit)—and there can be no linked games.

6 As an equal chance game bingo cannot involve staking against the house—see s. 8.1 of the Gambling Act (2005) and Gambling Commission (2014). Players’ payments must be divided transparently between stakes (all of which are returned in prizes), or participation fees (Gambling Commission, 2012, s. 25.16). Prize bingo involves no stakes, since the prize is not determined by the number playing or the amount paid for the game (s. 18).

7 From October 2013 to September 2014 machine revenue accounted for 45% of total revenue for the commercial bingo sector (Gambling Commission, 2015, p. 11).

8 A society is non-commercial if it is established and conducted (a) for charitable purposes, (b) for the purpose of enabling participation in, or of supporting, sport, athletics or a cultural activity, or (c) for any other non-commercial purpose other than that of private gain. (Gambling Act 2005, s. 19(1)).

9 See note 3.

10 Except if established for whist or bridge.

11 A national pub chain is attempting the same.

12 See also Austrin and West (2005) on casino workers. For regulation of unpaid workers in Canadian charitable bingo, see Bedford (2015).

Additional information

Funding

The Bingo Project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/J02385X/1].

Notes on contributors

Kate Bedford

Kate Bedford is a Reader in Law at Kent Law School, University of Kent. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers. Her academic research focuses on gender, sexuality, and political economy. She has previously published work on gender and sexuality in development lending in Latin America, and on international care policy. She is currently the Principal Investigator on the Bingo Project, a comparative socio-legal initiative exploring the lessons that we can learn in law and political economy from bingo regulation across the world. Kate is currently writing a book on the feminist political economy of gambling regulation.