Reflections on Gambling in contemporary society: towards a risk biography

Abstract

With this article we propose a theoretical review of Gambling studies, planning a cultural insight towards a phenomenon, nowadays, massively expanded. Our objective is, precisely, to decouple the analysis from the pathologic aspects inherent in problem gambling — gambling addiction — with the aim to capture the cultural aspects that determined the exponential growth of Gambling industries in the last two decades and characterize the subjective experiences of no problematic gamblers in the current context. In a context of advanced economy, we propose a reflection capable to recognize the concept of risk proposed by Ulrich Beck and Antony Giddens, as a powerful driver of this enormous expansion of Gambling in contemporary society.