The Value of Gambling and Its Research

Professor Pauliina Raento writes about gambling research in his introduction to our article published in the latest Suomen Antropologi: Journal of Finnish Anthropological Society.

Gambling today is a multi-billion-dollar industry with global influence. It is a prominent part of culture and a major financial contributor to society in Finland and many other countries where governments own, license and regulate gambling enterprises. Most people in Western societies have some experience of gambling, and many buy a lottery ticket, play slot machines, or bet on sports as a regular part of their leisure. Over the past decades the gambling industry has grown massively, due to its entry into new territories, the increased popularity of gambling, and new globally influential innovations, such as televised poker tournaments and online gambling. The political, economic and cultural implications of this change have been notable. Gambling scholarship is on the rise and its foci are broadening especially in the social sciences and cultural studies.

The time is ripe for anthropologists to take a fresh look at gambling. This would have multiple benefits. For one, a look at new, popular forms of gambling would flush out some disciplinary stubbornness regarding topics and approaches. From the past, distant and primitive the emphasis should continue to shift even more strongly toward what is new and happening here and now. The study of online poker, says Jukka Jouhki in this Forum, offers one opportunity to bring anthropologists up to speed with understanding recent technological developments, and cultural forms that have sprung up with them. After all, more people now log on to online gambling sites than to Facebook (Gambling Online Magazine October 26th, 2010). Ethnography, one powerful tool of anthropology, should be expanded to online environments. More stimulating methodological ponderings and innovation will inevitably follow.

Read the whole article here including the following texts:

Raento, Pauliina: The Value of Gambling and Its Research. Introduction.
Jouhki, Jukka: Writing against Culture with Online Poker.
Kinnunen, Jani: The Social Rewards of Online Gambling.
Matilainen, Riitta: Gambling and Consumption. The Hidden Values of Historical Perspectives.

Postmodernin pelimiehen todellisuus

Kiinnostaako mediaetnografinen pohdinta pokerikulttuurista? Siinä tapauksessa lue allekirjoittaneen kirjoittama Postmodernin pelimiehen todellisuus - Mediaetnografisia huomioita pokerista kulttuurisena ilmiönä. Artikkeli on juuri julkaistu Pelitutkimuksen vuosikirjassa 2010. Alla myös em. artikkelin tiivistelmä ja lista vuosikirjan artikkeleista. 

Artikkelin tiivistelmä
Artikkeli perustuu pokerikulttuuria käsittelevän tutkimusprojektin synnyttämiin näkökulmiin ja ilmiön mediaetnografi seen havainnointiin. Artikkelin kohteena on pokerin fenomenologia ja siihen liittyvä kulttuurinen merkitysjärjestelmä netissä ja offline-maailmassa. Postmodernin kulttuurintutkimuksen keskustelun tukemana kirjoituksessa esitellään myös huomioita pokeriin liittyvästä mainonnasta, maskuliinisuudesta ja rahan merkityksestä. Pokerikulttuurin representaatioiden olemassaolon tapaa kommentoidaan viittaamalla muun muassa hyperreaalin käsitteeseen.


Asiasanat:  nettipokeri, postmoderni, mediaetnografia, hyperreaali, kulttuurinen merkitysjärjestelmä, mieskuva


Pelitutkimuksen vuosikirja 2010: artikkelit

1. Saara Toivonen ja Olli Sotamaa: Pelaajien näkökulmia pelien digitaaliseen jakeluun. 1-10.
2. Vili Lehdonvirta ja Juho Hamari: Pelimekaniikat osana ansaintalogiikkaa – Miten pelisuunnittelulla luodaan kysyntää. 11-21.
3. Katriina Heljakka: Hiljaisen tiedon pelikentällä – Lautapelisuunnittelu vuorovaikutusprosessina. 22-32.
4. Eetu Paloheimo: Verkkorahapelien vetovoimatekijät. 33-41.
5. Jani Kinnunen: Leikkisä raha peleissä. 42-57.
6. Jukka Jouhki: Postmodernin pelimiehen todellisuus – Mediaetnografisia huomioita pokerista kulttuurisena ilmiönä. 58-68.
7. Arttu Perttula ja Pauliina Tuomi: “Tää oli oikeesti aika jännä!” – Mobiilia moninpeliä julkisella näytöllä. 69-82.
8. Jaakko Suominen: ”Pieni askel ihmiskunnalle, mutta jättiharppaus tietokoneistetuille roolipeleille” – MikroBitti-lehden peliarvostelut pelaamisen historiatietoisuuden rakentajina 1984–2008. 83-98.

Lue myös julkaisun katsaukset ja kirja-arviot.


Abstract of my article in Pelitutkimuksen vuosikirja 2010.
The article is based on views generated by a research project focusing on poker culture as well as on observations made by implementing media ethnographical approach in examining the phenomenon. The article concentrates on the phenomenology and cultural system of meaning of poker in online and offl  ine worlds.  Supported by discussion within postmodern cultural studies, the article further presents observations of the advertising, masculinity and meaning of money related to poker. Moreover, the mode of existence of the representations of poker culture is commented by referring to the concept of hyperreal, among others. Keywords: online poker, postmodern, media ethnography, hyperreal, cultural system of meaning, male image.

An anthropologist examining online poker

Talking to Science Journalists
Perhaps because of the strange combination of being a cultural anthropologist studying online poker, I was invited to give a talk to a group of journalists from The Finnish Association of Science Journalists and Editors on an excursion in University of Jyväskylä. I talked about how cultural anthropology can approach online poker as a cultural phenomenon. Below is an edited summary of my talk.

Life is a Gamble

First things first. Every day we invest our resources, money, time or effort in objects, processes, happenings etc. the outcome of which is not sure to us. We might pay 8 € for a movie ticket and regret it afterwards because the film wasn't worth it. We might take time to go for a walk in a park and end up soaking wet because of a downpour and wish we had stayed home watching TV. Then again, we might take a chance and go to a restaurant, pay only a few euros for a meal and think the atmosphere, company and taste of the food were ten times worth the money and the time we paid.

Dice is life (source Psychology Today).

On a larger scale, we might take a leap of faith and get another job, sell the house and go abroad for a year, or meet a girl, get married and have five kids and think it was all worth the trouble - or not. It is all a gamble. And you can get hooked too. You might go overboard with your jogging, eating, painting or work and be satisfied by the return, end up spending all your money and/or time on it and neglet your friends and family. If you are skillful and level-headed enough, you might cope very well with all the elements of chance in your life, estimate the risks, control your time-use and take action accordingly - and end up living an exciting and fulfilling life. If sometimes you end up losing your bet, you might still think it was worth the shot.

In a way life is like poker. Or, poker is a crystallization of the elements of chance and skill and investment and turnout, in life.

New Anthropology

When people think anthropologists are like Indiana Jones I hate to correct them. Dr. Jones is actually an archeologist but archeology and anthropology do have some things in common. Although archeology concentrates on past cultures and societies it usually examines them in some excotic location like anthropology has traditionally done. The object of research of both disciplines also connotes otherness, non-Westernity and certain strangeness - something that is not "Us".

Dr. Indiana Jones (source Hollywood.com).

However, contemporary anthropology is open virtually to all phenomena, new or old, ours or theirs, and fieldwork is increasingly done in one's own native society. The themes that anthropology has always studied, the everyday stuff like marriage, religion, working, pastime, rituals etc., are still studied but extended to include the whole world, not just the remote tribes. I would even dare to say there is no possible thing in the world that couldn't somehow be approached as an object of anthropological research.

"Anthropology can study anything?" my father once asked (perpetuously wondering what an earth I'm doing for work). "Yes, anything," I answered. Then he provokingly asked if going to the toilet, or defecation, could be an object of study in anthropology. I said, actually, it would be a great object of anthropological research. The function is universal but the tradtions vary in different cultures. There are strict rules about when, where or with whom to do it and how to speak about it and what to do with the results. Anthropology is about shared significances, worldviews, actions and norms, or in a word, cultures.

Cultures like online poker.

Approaching Online Poker

The first thing I noticed about online poker research was that it is essentially a problem. At least this is the feeling one gets while browsing through published literature: online poker = addiction = problem. That is what scholars get money for and that is what the media write about and people read about - poker-players as addicts, home-breakers and money-squandering losers. To me it is as strange as it would be to study jogging and focus only on strains or stumbling, or to do research on food and concentrate only on choking accidents, or to approach sex only through venereal diseases. To be fair, not all media does this though. There are all the specialized poker media that endorse poker culture and celebrate its heroes.

Thus it seems like these images are the only ones about poker in media and academia.

Poker champ/addict (sources Miscellaneouspics and Makefive).

I think it is time to get to know the Everyday of online poker and see what happens among the usual, normal people, the over 95 % who are not champions or addicts. I want to know the boring side of poker. For example, a case study of mine about a poker-player and his family certainly revealed refreshingly undramatic things about the game. The main informant, a civil servant with wife and kids, earned a considerable amount of money a month. It helped the family a great deal with rent and other monthly expenditures, and even left some money for a holiday trip - things that weren’t possible without the father's poker hobby. And the father still had time for work, kids and the wife. This is how it usually goes. What a discovery!

I had another very obvious but forbidden observation. My main informant's qualities as a succeful poker player were desirable qualities in other sectors of life as well. Logic, contemplation and self-restrain, just to name a few, didn’t do him harm in work or family life either. All in all, poker was present in the family but in a positive way. Even the wife applauded her husband for doing something fruitful in his pastime. The wife said she only watched television, which never brought the family a penny.

These observations from the case study were welcomed by the media as "exceptional results" and often denigrated by the poker community because the results were too obvious -  most people played poker without problems. Obvious or not, poker is a culturally loaded subject and traditional anthropological themes are easily and fruitfully transferred to study it. For example in my research I have distinguished four interrelated M’s — morality, marginality, masculinity and money — that are particularly interesting to an anthropologist.

• What is the cultural configuration in which the morality of poker manifests?
• What are the sociocultural elements that marginalize poker as a hobby or profession?
• What makes online poker representations a hyper masculine venture?
• What is the social and symbolic value of money in poker?

Serious pokermen (source PokerBonus).

Everything so far implies that poker research and gambling studies in general need more information about the everyday practices. Is mainstream anthropology up to the challenge? Maybe not for a long time. First the discipline should get to know things like television, then perhaps the Internet and mobile phones. Then, if it is still up to it, online gambling could be studied in anthropology.

Or, one can take a chance and go for a short cut.

A Player's Web of Significance

Below you can read the abstract of my paper to be presented at the 8th International Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference in Hong Kong, June 17-21, 2010.  

A PLAYER'S WEB OF SIGNIFICANCE:

A MICROETHNOGRAPHICAL STUDY ABOUT ONLINE POKER CULTURE

This paper is about a narrative of an agent in a complex web of significance or, in other words, a person in a culture. The culture in question is online poker and the agent, or the person, is my key informant who is a civil servant, a family man and a semi-professional poker player with whom I will practice participant observation and whose in-depth interviews will bring precious detail in the cultural context. I will attempt to provide a refined (or high in semantic resolution) presentation of how the player negotiates his role in the online and offline cultures, how he relates himself to the stereotypes and hegemonic discourses of poker culture and how he negotiates his virtual space in the physical world. The study is microethnographical in the sense that although it adds to a holistic description of a culture by concentrating on one person's involvement in the culture.

  

Update May 18, 2010: I had to cancel Hong Kong, so I will propose the final manuscript to be published in Next Generation edition of Fast Capitalism. This is how they describe their policy.

Fast Capitalism is an academic journal with a political intent. We publish reviewed scholarship and essays about the impact of rapid information and communication technologies on self, society and culture in the 21st century. We do not pretend an absolute objectivity; the work we publish is written from the vantages of viewpoint. Our authors examine how heretofore distinct social institutions, such as work and family, education and entertainment, have blurred to the point of near identity in an accelerated, post-Fordist stage of capitalism. [Read the rest.]

Current research: about a serious game

Here's some information on and links to two article mansucript I am proposing to be published. One is titled "A serious game: The imagery of advertisements in Poker Magazine Finland reflecting gender in online poker culture" and it is for International Journal of E-Politics 1 (2). Here's the abstract:

This article analyzes the ways in which gender is represented through an examination of online poker advertisements, specifically the 2009 volume of Poker Magazine Finland. In a typical advertisement, a male poker champion endorses the game in a carefully staged, dark and serious atmosphere connoting a battle-like quality to the game. In advertisements where women or non-professional poker players are portrayed, the mood is less serious. Male poker champions smile in carefully staged advertisements only when they are shown to be winning or when the context is explicitly comical. In analyzing these advertisements, Katharine Frith’s tripartite approach is applied. Inspired by the findings of the analysis, the engendered subculture of online poker and gender in media in general are discussed.

The other one is written in Finnish and is proposed for Pelitutkimuksen vuosikirja 2010 (the yearbook of gaming research) in Finland.  Its title translates "On the reality of a postmodern gaming man: media-ethnographical notes on poker culture", or in Finnish "Postmodernin pelimiehen todellisuudesta: Mediaetnografisia huomioita pokerikulttuurista". Here's the English summary.

The article is based on the preliminary results of an anthropological research project focusing on poker culture as well as the media ethnographical observations within the project. The project concentrates on the phenomenology of poker in online and offline worlds. Supported by the theories of postmodern cultural studies, the article presents some observations of the advetising, masculinity and meaning of money related to poker. Moreover, the mode of existence of the representations of poker culture are commented by referring to the concept of hyperreal, among others.

Again, all comments are welcomed!

Update on my research: manuscript on poker ethics & chapter on Korean cybernationalism

A few recent fruits of my academic tree.

'Game of threat and money: Notes on the ethical discussion concerning state-run online poker service in Finland.' Proposed to be published in Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds 2 (2). (Under review, please do not quote.)


Abstract: Finland’s Slot Machine Association (RAY) is a state-run gambling organization that will launch an online poker service for Finns in 2010. This article describes and analyzes the ethical discussion provoked by an article in Helsingin Sanomat (the leading national newspaper) on the issue, and considers the various moral viewpoints taken of RAY as an online poker service provider, as well as discussing online poker as a wider contemporary phenomenon.

Please feel free to comment on the manuscript here or by email!

'Dokdo Island Dispute: Korean Reconstruction of History and National Identity in User-Created Content Media.' In Digital Memories: Exploring Critical Issues, edited by Anna Maj & Daniel Riha, published by Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009, pp. 179-187.

Abstract: Japanese colonization of Korea (1910–1945) had an immense impact on Korean society and culture, and on a symbolical level, on what being Korean means today. The traumas of colonialism are still being widely discussed in Korea and there are certain key discursive nodes stemming from the colonial history that present Korea‟s concerns of contemporary Japan-Korea relations.

One of the discursive nodes is Dokdo (which the Japanese call Takeshima), a small and remote rocky island between the two countries in the East Sea (which the Japanese call the Sea of Japan. Both Japan and Korea lay claim to Dokdo, and both claim a long historical and geographical connection with the islets. In addition to traditional media, both have harnessed the cyberspace to support their cause. As both countries seek support from the international audience, the amount of Dokdo-related websites and online news in English is relatively high. Thus, the issue has turned from a small border dispute to a rhetorical fight between two nationalisms that use historical evidence to buttress their claims. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Koreans represent Dokdo, a disputed island in the sea between South Korea and Japan, to an international audience in user-created content media such as YouTube and Facebook. Moreover, the paper analyzes the ways the dispute is further used to reconstruct the history of South Korea and strengthen the national identity of Koreans. Theoretically, the paper refers to Anthony P. Cohen‟s analysis of the symbolism in community making as well as Benedict Anderson‟s thoughts on nations as imagined communities.

More information about the conference on which the book is based in my earlier post here.

The Anthropology of Online Poker: A Research Plan

Last week I posted about my future project concerning the culture of online poker, and promised to tell more about my plans. So, here is a summary of my research plan.

I'm interested in four themes of online poker culture, and the hegemonic discourses within it. The themes are 1. the players, 2. the advertising, 3. the counterforces and, finally (not really a theme) 4. a holistic ethnography.

1. The players of online poker
In studying the players I am interested in to what extent the players feel unity with other members of the online poker community and how they uphold this unity. Moreover, I am interested on how the players negotiate their playing to fit their personal historical narrative. I assume the players form a subculture that has to be adapted to each one's personal microculture. On the other hand, the players have to negotiate the status and the position of the game in the wider system of cultural meaning. How exactly this happens is something I'm going to find out.

To study the players I will interview 10 to 20 Finnish poker players, pros and amateurs. In addition to interviews about the meaning of online poker, I will practice participant observation which, in this limited sense, will mean observing players at their gaming interface and asking them to explain the flow of the game and the significances they see in the process.

2. Online poker advertising
The online poker ads seem to appeal to masculinity, sexuality, excitement and the promise of luxury. My purpose is to analyze the hegemonic discourse in advertising and reconstruct the image of an authentic poker-player in that discourse. For this I will go through various poker sites and magazines.

3. Counterforces of online poker
Online poker has evoked a lot of resistance in the media. Especially the well-being of young players is often worried after. It seems like it is characteristic to the resistance to represent players as in jeopardy and constantly on the verge of personal devastation. Thus, I want to analyze the discussion about online poker and find out about the rhetoric and the discursive means the opponents of online poker use to strengthen their arguments.

4. Holistic ethnography of online poker.
Finally, I will attempt a holistic ethnography which means a descriptive account of different infra- and superstructural elements of online poker culture/society. For this I will draw on the results of the previous three themes as well as the popular and academic literature and websites on the subject. Briefly put, I will try to write a straight and informative general description of online poker culture.

If you have anything to comment or suggest

feel absolutely free to post a comment or email me!

Pic sources: Bronislaw Malinowski here, poker table here.

The Anthropology of Online Poker: A Polemical Prelude

Nothing can substitute the experience of the game, the psychological eye for the game and the ability to manipulate the opponents. Instead of hesitating and contemplating whether or not to dare, it is extremely important to just jump straight into the game.


"This is how you start playing online poker", From Nettipokeri.info,
(transl. from Finnish by JJ)

Online poker is a game for the young men living in the world dedicated to experience. As a cultural phenomenon it is an interesting mix of cyberspace, hard work, economics and nomadic culture. It is against and for protestant ethics. It is a Darwinist trip. It is about the Baudrillardian hyperreal and the everyday personal Realpolitik. It is a game that is work and pleasure, where men battle over glory.

The folklore of online poker has its geniuses, foxes and plain losers. Big players move big money for a living and luxury. Small players play to smuggle a little excitement in to the Everyday. The advertisement draws on and renews the heroics and the discourse of Man of the Game, not ignoring sex appeal. To play bravely in a dynamic and exciting environment keeps one's masculinity alive.

On the borderline of poker culture there is the counter-discourse using moral panic to limit the reckless of the cyberspace, to tame the characters shifting around the liminal spaces of welfare state, going against traditional values of work, responsibility and family.

From these polemical grounds I will start my next research project next fall, studying online poker culture with the tools of anthropology and funded by the Finnish Foundation for Gaming Research. I will write more about my research plan a bit later.


Pic above is an ad of Full Tilt Poker at Poker Magazines news site, the pic below is from Full Tilt Poker site.