Taking chances

Abstract

■ This article conceives of heavy gambling loss as a phenomenon driven by situational antecedents located in the foreground of the experience itself, rather than being deeply determined by background factors like biological inclinations or psychological pathologies, as the prevalent biomedical model of pathological gambling assumes. Drawing on naturalistic accounts from first-hand observation, this analysis focuses on the internal states of players as they move through distinct stages endemic to gambling, and, specifically, gambling loss. I argue that structuring the experience in this way plays an important role in showing how ethnographic methods that attend to experiential processes and their situational dimensions enable us to reconceptualize what are seen as individual problems or, in this case, pathologies.