Event overview
CSISP Salon with 鈥楪ambling in Europe鈥� team: Rebecca Cassidy, Claire Loussouarn, Andrea Pisac
Tuesday 21st May, 4.30-6pm in WT1204
"Ethnographies of contingency"
鈥楪ambling in Europe鈥� is an ERC project, based at 牛牛资源 Anthropology. Our team explores the production and consumption of gambling as a global assemblage, influenced by global reaches of digital technology as well as locally adopted and adapted. Our case studies have been concerned with various interactions between gambling producers, consumers and technologies, and more specifically, how certain concepts, such as risk, uncertainty and contingency become productive in gameplay. The four ethnographies explore different gambling environments, such as spread betting, casino gambling and online gambling and social gaming, but are brought together by a joint focus on the 鈥榩rosumption鈥� of gambling as a single cycle. Gambling technologies, from slot machines, semi-automated casino table games, online trading platforms, social games to gambling regulation are explored as sites where certain products and behaviours temporarily stabilise, turning socio-historical and legislative contingencies into productive outputs of risk and play.
In this Salon, we will be discussing Sch眉ll鈥檚 concept of perfect contingency in the context of machine gambling in Las Vegas, following her assertion that 鈥榓ddiction to flow鈥� (interrupted, immersed autoplay) is created through the interaction between the player and the materiality of the machine. Hayles鈥� article introduces the term technogenetic spiral, which will be a useful starting point to consider the place of agency and control in various interactions between people and machines, such as gameplay. Finally, Miller raises the question of technological determinism: how we can avoid it in conceptualising the interaction between technology producers and consumers and the materiality of machines.
We invite you to consider these themes as a frame for more general questions about the place of agency and control, gamification (of gambling but also other social activities) and the ways contingency becomes meaningful and productive.
Readings:
Hayles, N. K. 2012. 鈥淭ech-TOC: Complex Temporalities in Living and Technical Beings鈥�. Electronic Book Review. .
Miller, D. 2013. 鈥淗ow People Make Machines That Script People.鈥� Anthropology of This Century (6) (January).
Sch眉ll, N.D. 2012. 鈥淧erfect Contingency: From Control to Compulsion.鈥� In Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton University Press.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 21 May 2013 | 4:30pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
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