University of Helsinki
Virve Marionneau, M.Soc.Sci, will defend her doctoral dissertation entitled “Socio-cultural contexts of gambling – A comparative study of Finland and France” on Saturday, 19th of September. Marionneau, who lives in Paris, has prepared her thesis as part of the CEACG-group as well of the Academy-funded IMAGES project (2007-2011).
One of her main points is that contemporary research and discussions on gambling have centered strongly around the individual player gambling:
– Studies have lacked sensitivity to the fact that how gambling is understood is actually based on social contexts. I have filled in some of the gaps in previous research by introducing a qualitative and comparative research approach that makes use of contemporary sociological theory, including theories on habits and habitus, agency, reflexivity and consumption, explains Marionneau.
The main theoretical premise on which the analysis was conducted was based on an application of the theory of justification by French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. The analysis is based on group interview data collected amongst recreational gamblers in Finland and France, and of legal texts legislating on gambling in the two countries.
How, then, does gambling differ in Finland and France?
The dissertation is based on four sub-studies, all of which show that the ways in which gambling is understood and conceptualised in Finland and France is based on the institutional and cultural specificities of these two countries.
The first sub-study shows that although both countries are subject to similar pressures from the European Commission to justify their gambling provision in acceptable terms, the justifications still differ. In France, preventing criminality is the most common justification, while in Finland charitable causes funded by gambling is the most common way to justify offer.
In the second study she compared how well the Finnish and French recreational gamblers accept their national gambling offers:
– I found that although the countries have a similar availability of and accessibility to games, the Finns were much more accepting of the national gambling offers. The qualitative analysis showed that this was essentially because the Finnish monopolistic gambling companies have been able to legitimise themselves in the eyes of the consumers owing to their charitable contributions, says Marionneau.
In the third sub-study Marionneau focused on the terms in which recreational gamblers justified their own gambling. The results showed that in both countries participating in gambling was mainly justified in terms of individual pleasure and gratification, but the French tended to highlight dreams of big wins while the Finns emphasised wanting to develop as a player.
In the last sub study Marionneau analysed Finnish and French gamblers’ views on the causes of gambling-related problems:
– The analysis showed that Finnish gamblers tend to attribute blame for gambling problems to the individual gambler and view problem gambling as an individual failure, while the French participants sought causes for problem gambling either from the individual biology or the social surroundings.
Marionneau concludes that considering the results from the study it stands clear that gambling studies should be more sensitive to the importance of socio-cultural contexts. According to Marionneau there should be more comparative studies and researchers should be careful when generalising results from one context to another. She emphasizes the importance of political decisions being based on evidence from that country-context:
– Experiences from other countries should of course not be ignored, but there should be more comparative analyses on whether they can be applied to other areas. Gambling also proved an excellent case study of how a social phenomenon operates in different contexts. The research suggests that a comparative contextual approach can be useful for studying how individuals understand social phenomena and how they construct their own agency, explains Marionneau.
The public examination will take place on 19 September 2015 at 10 at Porthania, lecture hall P673 (Yliopistonkatu 3).
Opponent: Dr.ir. Sytze Kingma, VU University Amsterdam
Custos (chair): professor Pekka Sulkunen