Getting the Bingo Hall Back Again? Gender, Gambling Law Reform, and Regeneration Debates in a District Council Licensing Board
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663911407652 |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Getting the Bingo Hall
Back Again? Gender,
Gambling Law Reform,
and Regeneration
Debates in a District
Council Licensing Board
Kate Bedford
University of Kent, UK
Abstract
This article explores the gendered nature of gambling promotion as a modality of
economic regeneration in the aftermath of the Gambling Act 2005. Using an exploratory
case study of a district council licensing board, I examine how the gambling forms that
reflect women’s gambling cultures are faring under the current legal environment,
focusing on the apparent contrast between casino promotion and bingo neglect. I ask
what this reveals about the intertwining of legal reform, gender, and perceptions of
worthwhile risk-taking in attempts to promote local development. In particular I probe
the discrepancy between the state’s legal regime (more restrictive of casinos than bingo
halls) and local actors’ regeneration ambitions (centred on casinos). In this way I examine
what local legal actors ‘see’ as being legally and economically necessary or possible as
they encounter a new legislative landscape around gambling.
Keywords
gambling, gender, regeneration
Corresponding author:
Kate Dawn Bedford, Eliot College, Canterbury CT2 7NS, UK
Email: k.bedford@kent.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
20(3) 369–388
ªThe Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663911407652
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Introduction
One of my neighbours, every time she sees me on the street, she says, ‘When are going to
get the bingo hall back again?’ (Licensing board member and District Councillor in a town
that lost its bingo hall)
In the past 40 years a global liberalization of gambling laws has occurred, and many
states have become reliant on revenues from gambling (Cosgrove, 2006; Della Salla,
2004). The gambling industry has successfully established itself – or is trying to do so
– as a mainstream business, selling a commodity (chance) to consumers seeking entertain-
ment (Kingma, 2010; Orford et al., 2003; Reith, 2003: 20). The legal register in which
gambling is discussed has thus in many cases shifted from one of vice, criminality, or
reluctant tolerance to one of leisure, consumption, or contributions to growth.
This article explores the gendered nature of gambling promotion as a modality of
economic regeneration in the aftermath of the UK government’s 2005 shake-up of
gambling law. While speculation is clearly a gendered construct (see, inter alia, de
Goede, 2005) the gendered ways in which risk-taking is institutionalized in law and
politics – including via gambling promotion as a regeneration mechanism – are poorly
understood. I examine here how the gambling forms that reflect women’s gambling
cultures are faring under the current legal environment, focusing in particular on the
apparent contrast between casino promotion and bingo neglect. I ask what this reveals
about the intertwining of legal reform, gender and perceptions of worthwhile risk-taking
in attempts to promotelocal development.
I explore this question by investigating how the local officials and politicians who
implement new, liberalized laws around gambling understand the contribution of differ-
ent gambling forms to their regeneration efforts. As Andrew Davies has noted, law has a
far from straightforward impact on gambling behaviour, with criminalization efforts
largely failing to stop working-class betting for example (1991). More broadly, research
in legal anthropology and law and politics has elucidated the importance of exploring
local authority decision-making and legal cultures (e.g. Cowan, 2003; Vincent-Jones,
2002), particularly in order to examine how legal actors at the local level interpret,
implement, ignore, defy, or ‘covertly circumvent’ (Cooper, 1996: 261) laws from other
scales. A central concern is to unpack the common sense (Ewick and Silbey, 1998) of
what actors at various levels ‘see’ and what they overlook. Law itself plays a complex
role in this process. In research on Djibouti, for example, Emilie Cloatre (2008) notes
that pharmaceutical patents exert regulatory effects in the country even though they have
not been given official legal existence; that is, they appear weak as a set of prescriptive
legal rules but loom large in what local actors ‘see’ when importing drugs (2008: 272).
In a connected vein I explore local officials’ and politicians’ common-sense understand-
ings about the risk-taking leisure activities that are understood to best serve development
aims. In particular I probe the interesting discrepancy between the state’s legal regime
(which remains more restrictive of casinos than bingo halls) and local actors’ regenera-
tion ambitions (centred on casinos). In this way I examine what local legal actors ‘see’ as
being legally and economically necessary or possible as they encounter a new legislative
landscape around gambling.
370 Social & Legal Studies 20(3)
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