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Courtship, sex, and money. The economics of courtesan houses in 19th and 20th-century Shanghai
Defined by researchers as “a silent epidemic” the gambling phenomenon is a social problem that is having negative impact on individuals, families and communities. Among these effects are seen a dismantling of community networks, weakening of family and social ties, psychiatric co-morbidity, suicides and lately more homelessness. Youth, women, elderly, deprived citizens and native communities constitute the social groups that seem to suffer more from gambling accessibility when compared to others. Without pretending to cover all these aspects, we intend, from a social critical perspective, to highlight some of the major psychosocial stakes of the gambling phenomenon. After a brief historical overview underlining the social construction of gambling as a pathology, we will address issues such as the social and ethical contradictions of governments when managing gambling and the heated debate around the disease model of addiction versus a multifactorial approach to this phenomenon. Finally, we propose markers for empowerment while comparing the disease model and the harm reduction one. We hope that these markers can contribute to transfer some power to individuals and their social networks, activate the therapeutic processes and advance the debate on the complex issues that gambling represents in our society.
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