Outbursts, Discipline, and Wake-Up Calls: Gendered Emotionalities in Men’s Gambling

Abstract

Within gambling debates and research, emotions are associated with irrationality, loss of control, and problem gambling. Simultaneously, they have a complex relationship to masculine positions, which are said to be connected to both stoicism and aggressivity. Using interviews with Swedish men gamblers and feminist and critical theorisations of emotions, this article discusses experiences, negotiations, and performances of emotions within men’s gambling. The article demonstrates that emotions and control were entangled themes in the research, but discussed as separate by the interviewees, who used emotion work in order to navigate their own experiences in relation to larger discourses about gender, health, and ‘sovereignty’ in relation to gambling. The article expands feminist research about gender and emotions by providing in-depth, detailed discussions about men’s emotionalities. It also contributes to gambling research by integrating problematising perspectives on emotions and to research about the production of gendered emotionalities under capitalism.