Gambling in the Moral Economy: A Case Study of Law and Regulation in a Pandemic

Abstract

This article adapts the concept of the moral economy and applies that adapted concept to UK gambling regulation during the early years (2020-21) of the COVID-19 pandemic. I extend the moral economy concept beyond the eighteenth-century English food riot, and beyond food staples. I also examine the role of law and regulation in the moral economy and highlight charity's importance to moral economy debates. I then consider gambling through a moral economy lens by exploring the pandemic-era regulation of horserace betting, lotteries, and bingo. I show that gambling in some forms (horserace betting and lotteries) was important to pandemic recovery projects and to spectacles of national coming together. Via lotteries, for example, the state sought to adjust customary expectations about the role of volunteers in providing essential services. Although regulators generally ignored bingo, there was a pandemic resurgence in self-organized games that is especially significant for work on the moral economy. I conclude by identifying some broader implications of this study, including on how essentiality is legally constructed, and on charity and volunteering within the moral economy.