ABSTRACT
There have been remarkably few sociological attempts to account for gambling – and this applies whether ‘accounting’ is taken in the sense of explanation, in the sense of understanding, or as covering both simultaneously. Whatever the reasons for this strange gap in sociological accounting – and the sheer absence of reasonably comprehensive empirical evidence may be among them – it should soon be filled by the re-emergence in fashion of carefully conducted small-scale ethnographic inquiries, and the growing availability of officially designed statistics and opinion polls. As things stand, the theoretical perspectives against which such data can be weighed may turn out to have been false starts, or of severely limited use. Nevertheless, they are all we have, and for their authors to have constructed them at all is a high contribution in a field otherwise bereft of all but polemic.
