Conclusion

Abstract The conclusion recaps the two uses that Bingo Capitalism has made of bingo—as practice and lens—to summarize its contribution to work on diverse economies, regulation, and gender. In its own right, bingo matters for our debates about gambling law and policy: indeed, we cannot understand the evolution of UK gambling law and policy without taking the game into account. Bingo reveals both the historical centrality of non-commercial, mutual aid gambling to UK law and policy debates, and the ongoing diversity of meanings attached to gambling in everyday life. In particular current bingo practices show the key role of workers—along with members and consumers—in reanimating gambling vernaculars, in the face of technologies and state definitional practices that seek to automate play. Bingo also brings women’s voices and experiences into gambling debates, and shows how gender is both shaped by, and constitutive of, state rules on everyday playful speculation. Using bingo as lens, the book has argued that the space for the coexistence of diverse economies has been reduced, with the mutual aid dimensions of political economy increasingly eclipsed by commercial and/or charitable dimensions. Given these findings, our accounts of political economy need to focus more on the gendered regulatory entanglements between capitalist and more-than-capitalist dimensions of everyday life.