ABSTRACT
Central to Bourdieu’s commitment is the need for the theorist to acknowledge her dominant position and accompanying social responsibility. “Why have we moved from the committed intellectual to the ‘uncommitted intellectual’?” (Bourdieu 1998, 44). Bourdieu suggests a model of the theorist who is committed to the possibility and necessity of the integration of philosophy and eldwork. Like his latter-day stances against globalization and his ongoing investigations of everyday political activism (such as the French farmers’ protests against McDonald’s restaurants), the particular gambling community analyzed in this chapter responds to power by refusing to interpret life chances according to the logic of economic cost/benet rationality. e North American horse track bettors who are topicalized here in these initial explorations of risk and gambling attempt to cheat not only the market, but also conventional economic structures of work and time. is chapter suggests that gambling oers an example of diering access to cultural/economic/social capital in which seemingly non-rational choices make sense as acts of resistance. is interpretation diers radically from the “problem gambling” literature that dominates much of the research, and is specically related to Bourdieu’s insights. is research seeks to describe and analyze some of the particularities of horse betting, and to place this within the context of gambling as an economic and social enterprise. e premise underlying this research is that it is necessary to gain insight into typical gambling behavior and accompanying thought processes before we can begin to develop an understanding of aberrant or addictive gamblers’ actions.
