Introduction

This collection is concerned with the diverse ways in which gambling makes risks pay, creating value from contingency, and especially with the ways in which gambling products and practices engage with local and regional priorities. Our focus is less on the consumption of gambling and the problems it may cause for individuals or communities, already the subject of a large and growing literature, and more on the range of practices and meanings of gambling in particular settings. The collection emphasises the diversity of gambling products and the distinctive ways in which they are adopted and adapted by particular communities, including variations in their categorical identification, symbolic significance and moral associations. The primary purpose of the collection is to reopen fundamental questions about the nature and meaning of gambling and its relationship to other kinds of institutionalised risk taking and play.