Includes bibliographical references and index.

Fate, risk and security / Anthony Giddens -- Risk society revisited : theory, politics and research programmes / Ulrich Beck -- Risk and governmentality / Deborah Lupton -- Gambling as a sociological problem / David Downes ... [et al.] -- The pursuit of chance / Gerda Reith -- On some motifs in Baudelaire / Walter Benjamin -- Observations on gambling in a lower class setting / Irving Zola -- Entertainment or imprudence? An ethnography of female bingo players / R. Maclure ... [et al.] -- Playing with hope and despair : Bourdieu and the habitus of horse betting / Joan Allen -- Notes on a theory of gambling / Walter Benjamin -- The adventurer : 1911 / Georg Simmel -- Where the action is / Erving Goffman -- The experience of play / Gerda Reith -- Good losers / Frederick and Steven Barthelme -- State lotteries and the legitimation of inequality / David Nibert -- From the law of insurance to law of lottery : an exploration of the changing composition of the British state / Mike Neary and Graham Taylor -- The pathological gambler and the government of gambling / Alan F. Collins -- Busted flush : South Carolina's video-poker operators run a political machine / David Plotz.