ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses gambling practices in terms of their social relations and outcomes as these are treated in some recent Australian popular writing, primarily in the fiction and journalistic work of Frank Hardy. Compared with the frameworks and substance of more sociological, historical and political-economic analyses of gambling, this may seem like a trivial pursuit. However, persuasive literature presented to particular readerships can be used to address and, in certain limited ways (that is, not as direct ‘expressions’ or ‘representations’ of other prior and external realities), even help organise consideration and government of specific cultural and socio-political questions and policy issues such as gambling (Hunter 1984a, 1984b, 1991).
