Gambling Drivers: Regulating Cultural Technologies, Subjects, Spaces and Practices of Mobility

Abstract

In this article, we analyse intersections between gambling and driving as everyday cultural practices of mobility. Building on Nikolas Rose’s argument that subjects in post‐industrial democratic societies are governed through appeals to ‘freedom’ rather than through overt forms of coercion or organised campaigns of state propaganda, we explore the different ways that producers, regulators and consumer advocates involved in gambling and driving appeal to our ‘powers of freedom’. We demonstrate that promotional and regulatory discourses of driving and gambling rely on a concept of freedom as self‐regulation. And we argue that the cultivation of social responsiveness is needed to address some of the problems created by individualising practices, spaces and technologies of mobility currently offered by automobiles and poker machines.

Key Words:

• Driving
• gambling
• neoliberalism
• control
• advertising

Notes

1. Such tragedies are evident in the association between suicide and large gambling losses with sole‐occupant car crashes one of the most frequent but under‐reported types of suicide, particularly among young men.

2. Poster advertising betting at the TAB in The Chinese Club, a gambling venue visited by the authors in Brisbane 2006.

3. In the policy‐related literature poker machines are also referred to formally as Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMS) while in advertisements and vernacular expression, they are most often referred to as ‘pokies’.

4. Analysis of the involvement of motoring organisations in the development of road safety by O’Connell (1998) in Britain and Davison (2004) in Australia have shown the way in which the motoring lobby influenced the direction and form of mobility by tempering attempts at road safety in order to avoid restricting motorists or the development of the motor vehicle industry. Speed restrictions have been fought throughout the history of motoring despite soaring pedestrian casualties, including children.