Gambling with communities

In this chapter we draw attention to spoken and unspoken aspects of government policy found in the disadvantaging of community forms of gambling. Much of the rhetoric presented by government claims to be about protecting communities from gambling, but we argue that this language is at odds with the realities of policy and of practice. Such rhetoric foreshadowed the recent Review of Gaming, but the outcomes to date are not designed to redress the balance. These outcomes include a moratorium on casino licences securing the existing monopoly, increased surveillance on gaming machines run by clubs and pubs by the Department of Internal Affairs, and a bizarre effort to check Internet-based gambling in New Zealand

Everyday gambling in New Zealand

There is a sizeable body of statistics on gambling in New Zealand which points albeit unintentionally - to the everyday status of this activity. Max Abbott and Rachel Volberg, two leading figures in the rapidly growing discipline of gambling studies, note that in 15 short years there have been no less than seven surveys on gambling in New Zealand (not including a large number of university theses). These include three assessments of people's participation in gambling by the Department of Internal Affairs, plus two surveys funded by the department focusing on problem gambling. To these can be added one conducted by a regional health authority, North Health, under contract to the Committee on Problem Gambling Management and one conducted on behalf of the Casino Control Authority. This much research on gambling should suggest to the reader that there is something about gambling that piques the interest of government bureaucrats and agencies. Here the frequency of the phrase `problem gambling' is the giveaway. In this section we will review some of the findings of this research and cover its more pathological rationale later

Textual Economies and the Presentation of Statistical Material: Charts, Tables and Texts in 19th Century Public Education

De caractère exploratoire, cet article examine la place des représentations graphiques dans les pratiques de production du savoir au moyen de la notion d’« économie textuelle ». Pendant le 19e siècle, les organismes de l’État canadien génèrent de gigantesques quantités d’informations statistiques. Pourtant, ni les documents ni les rapports officiels n’adoptent des techniques de représentation graphique. Cet article étudie les stratégies discursives et textuelles qu’utilisent les fonctionnaires pour mettre à profit les informations statistiques en l’absence de telles techniques.This exploratory article develops the notion of textual economy, to investigate the place of statistical representations in practices of knowledge production. Nineteenth century Canadian state agencies generated massive quantities of statistical information. Yet, techniques of graphic representation were largely absent from official state papers and reports. The article investigates the discursive and textual strategies adopted by state servants to draw on statistical information in the absence of graphic representation

Le redécoupage du Bas-Canada dans les années 1830 : Un essai sur la « gouvernementalité » coloniale

Dans l’historiographie, la commission Gosford est généralement présentée comme une tentative ratée de conciliation des factions politiques au Bas-Canada ou comme une manoeuvre dilatoire d’une administration britannique indécise. En examinant le débat sur la représentation politique menée par les associations constitutionnelles de Montréal et de Québec, de même que les analyses des membres de la Commission sur la situation politique bas-canadienne, cet article met en évidence un déplacement de la mentalité du gouvernement colonial d’une logique mercantiliste vers une logique libérale. Celle-ci se révèle suffisamment souple pour satisfaire les tenants de conceptions d’équité contradictoires au sujet de la représentation politique.The Gosford Commission has been seen by historians largely as a failed attempt at the conciliation of Lower Canadian political factions, or as a delaying tactic on the part of an indecisive English administration. This essay argues that an investigation of the debate over political representation led by the Constitutional Associations of Montreal and Quebec, as well as of the analyses of the political situation of Lower Canada by members of the commission, reveals a shift in the mentality of colonial government away from a logic of mercantilism towards a liberal political logic. Liberalism is shown to have been able to accommodate quite contradictory notions of equity in matters of political representation

The Playground in Nineteenth-Century Ontario: Theory and Practice

This article examines the pedagogical theory read and subscribed to by Ontario school authorities in the nineteenth century. It points to the functions the play ground was intended to perform in the process of schooling and indicates the role some of the playground's accoutrements were intended to serve. Because it does not discuss actual playgrounds, or the activities of and reactions of students to the plans of educational reformers, it is necessarily partial. However, an understanding of what school reformers intended the playground to be may tell us something of the forces shaping real playgrounds and the reactions of participants to them. The article situates the playground and playground activities and decorations in the contradictory pedagogical objectives of pleasure and subordination pursued by school reformers in Ontario. Résumé Cet article examine les principes pédagogiques présentés dans les ouvrages que lisaient les dirigeants de l'enseignement ontarien au XIXe siècle, principes auxquels ceux-ci souscrivaient. Il fait ressortir les rôles dévolus au terrain de jeu dans le processus de scolarisation et précise l'usage auquel étaient destinés certains équipements de terrain de jeu. L'étude est nécessairement partielle, parce qu'elle n'examine aucun terrain de jeu en particulier, ni les activités des élèves, ni leurs réactions face aux plans des réformateurs de l'éducation. Toutefois, la com-préhension du rôle que ces réformateurs réservaient au terrain de jeu peut nous aider à comprendre les forces qui ont modelé les terrains de jeu dans la réalité et les réactions des participants. L'article situe le terrain de jeu, les activités qui s'y déroulaient et les décorations qu'on y trouvait dans le cadre des objectifs pédagogiques contradictoires déplaisir et de subordination poursuivis par les réformateurs de l'enseignement ontarien