Preliminary Programme

Harness racing is widespread in Sweden. About 10,000 races take place every year. Meetings are held all over the country, in the big cities as well as on the countryside. About a fourth of the population take part in the betting, which is a common phenomenon in all classes. Among visitors at the races middle-class as well as working-class people are represented. Even among people directly involved in the sport different classes are visible. However, they play different roles within it.

In this paper culture and social relations within harness racing is studied. It mainly focuses on people directly involved in the sport. Class, gender, ethnicity and generations are the crucial categories it deals with. Examples of raised questions are: Who are the horse-owners? Who are the trainers? Who are the drivers? Who are the stable-lads? How are social relations between and within the groups expressed and how is that expressed in the creating of a particular harness racing culture? What kind of role does the focus on the horse have for the social relations and creating of the culture? Such issues are studied in a historical perspective for the period 1950-2000. The paper also compares mid and North Sweden with the south. In the north harness racing has it roots among peasants and small owners of forest while in south Sweden and the larger cities it has it roots among big estate-holders and businessmen. Here harness racing historically is much more linked to the import of exclusive horses from America or France while in North Sweden many races still are limited to the particular type of horses, which are used within forestry.

The results of the study are mainly built upon oral history testimonies. (Show less)

In Sweden horseriding is an activity connected to schoolgirls. They do heavy work in stables privately owned or owned by the council. The same work is done by grown-up men in racing-stables. How come? The purpose of the paper is to analyse gender relations in horseracing and compare it with gender relations in other horsesport activities. (Show less)

Drawing on previous research by Carl Chinn, Mark Clapson, David Dixon, M. J. Huggins, David Itzkowitz, and Ross McKibbin (among others ), this paper will adopt a historical perspective spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the image of the British bookmaker.
Although the colourful image of the racecourse bookie will not be neglected, prominence will be given to urban betting. The period of prohibition (from the banning of “list houses” in the 1850s until the legalisation of betting shops in the early 1960s) forms the bulk of the corpus.
The corpus will include iconographical, journalistic and literary descriptions of bookmakers, as well as excerpts from prohibitionist literature such as the Bulletin of the National Anti-Gambling League. The complex (and porous) boundary between a purportedly “scientific”, fact-based observation and the mere perpetuation of clichés will be investigated. This cross-fertilisation of fact and fiction, in which physical and sartorial details abounded, provided a direct source of inspiration for the graphic artist (especially, but not exclusively, press cartoonists), as an in-depth study (mainly based on the resources of the Canterbury cartoon centre) will attempt to demonstrate.
This paper will also seek to identify the elements of change and continuity in the representation of the bookmaker. Certain recurrent details, beyond the implicit social and moral messages they convey, suggest that they have almost come to signify the identity of the bookmaker (the chequered suit, for instance). But if the image of the gaudy parasite is ever-present, representations often diverge from the initial condemnation of the bookmaker. As the century of prohibition unfolds its pattern of failure, condemnation increasingly gives way to an amused tolerance, and, at times, tacit support, for the “street-bookie”. Press cartoons, but also film characters, provide ample evidence of this fluctuation between two perceptions: the “villain” and the “decent feller”.
Fictional and graphic representations of bookmakers provide therefore a useful means for the observation of public attitudes towards gambling, and betting on horses in particular, in Britain. Equally significant is the reference to bookmakers as a frequent device in political satire. Racing metaphors, already part and parcel of the political lexicon in English, are regularly used by British cartoonists, who can rely on the familiarity of their readers with horse-racing. The depiction of a public figure (from Lloyd George to Callaghan) as a bookmaker (or a punter on the racecourse or in the street) is readily interpreted. Such visibility is ambivalent, for it reflects both the popularity of horse-racing in Britain and the persistent image of the bookmaker as an icon of cunning and deceit.

Dr Emmanuel Roudaut , Lecturer in British Studies
Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut-Cambrésis, FLLASH
PHD,Université de Lille 3, 1997, "Les controverses sur le jeu dans la société britannique: le cas des paris sportifs (1890-1961)" (Show less)