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Shared space, distant lives? Understanding family and intimacy at home through the lens of internet gambling
Author(s) -
Valentine Gill,
Hughes Kahryn
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00469.x
Subject(s) - secrecy , space (punctuation) , the internet , social psychology , psychology , through the lens metering , personal space , empirical research , family life , sociology , lens (geology) , internet privacy , gender studies , epistemology , law , political science , philosophy , world wide web , computer science , petroleum engineering , engineering , linguistics
This paper explores how space helps us to understand the ways that people relate to each other and manage the boundary between the personal and the social/familial by using original empirical material from a study of problem internet gamblers and their families. Here, we conceptualise intimacy in terms of the interiority of ‘family’ life, and as experienced particularly, though not exclusively, through the affective space of the home. The disclosure of an individual’s previously hidden problem gambling provides an important lens through which to understand the concepts of personal relationships, family and intimacy because it provides a rupture in ‘normal’ taken‐for‐granted domestic life in which individual family members are forced to reflect on: their relationships with the problem gambler and he/she with the family from whom they have concealed their gambling; the extent of their intimacy and togetherness (in terms of both space and time) in the light of the exposure of the gambler’s secrecy and lies; the degree of their responsibilities for, and emotional commitments to, each other; and how they might develop new ways of relating to each other in, and beyond, the home.