The socio-temporal dynamics of gambling: Narratives of change over time

Introduction This chapter discusses the findings of a longitudinal, qualitative study designed to explore the temporal and social dynamics of gambling. We began the project with the understanding that different types of research inquiry are productive of different types of knowledge, and also different kinds of research subjects. Quantitative surveys designed to measure the prevalence of problem gambling, for example, produce individuals as units of information that are isolated from their social rela tions and suspended in a particular moment in time, while clinical studies of pathology tend to reify gamblers’ behaviours and attitudes in diagnostic screens. These types of approaches to a wide range of social issues are often popular in policy circles where the enumeration of trends and behaviour is often equated with ‘objective’ knowledge upon which to form ‘evidence’-based policy (Olsen 2009).