Professor Rebecca Cassidy

I am a social anthropologist working on fruit, particularly apples and orchards.

Staff details

Professor Rebecca Cassidy

Position

Professor

Department

Anthropology

Email

r.cassidy (@gold.ac.uk)

I'm currently working on a project about growing fruit, supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. In the past I have worked on horseracing, and gambling. I'm interested in multispecies relationships, political ecology, uncertainty, gender, kinship, class, inequality, public anthropology and policy.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD, Social Anthropology, Edinburgh University 1999
  • MPhil, Social Anthropology, Cambridge University 1995
  • BA Social Anthropology, Cambridge University 1994

Research interests

I’m interested in ideas about what is ‘natural’ and how they are curated, refined, reproduced, whether that is through the bodies and pedigrees of elite animals and fruits, or through ‘self-help’ leaflets for so-called ‘problem gamblers’. In my work I ask how particular ways of thinking about the world become powerful.

My most recent book, Vicious Games (Pluto 2020) explored the gambling industry's affinity with capitalism and is based on over a decade of fieldwork with gambling businesses around the world. I’ve also co-written a report about conflicts of interest in gambling research called Fair Game (2014). A lot of gambling research has focused on the consumption of gambling by individuals who are represented as vulnerable or flawed in some shared way. My approach has been to focus instead on the production of dangerous products and flawed policies by corporations and governments.

My work in gambling developed from my interest in horseracing. I’ve written two monographs, Sport of Kings (2002) and Horse People (2007), about thoroughbred breeding and racing in Newmarket and Kentucky. Using fieldwork on studs and race tracks I’ve shown how horseracing and thoroughbred breeding depend on inequalities of class and gender that are naturalised in the day to day lives of racehorses, stable workers, jockeys and trainers.

I’ve also edited collections of essays, with Molly Mullin, on the idea of domestication (Where the Wild Things are Now, 2007) with Claire Loussouarn and Andrea Pisac on new approaches to gambling research (Qualitative Research in Gambling, 2013) and about horseracing (Cassidy 2013).

Featured publications

2020: Vicious Games: capitalism and gambling
Gambling is everywhere, on our TVs and phones, on billboards on our streets, and emblazoned across the chests of idolised sports stars. Why has gambling suddenly expanded? How was it transformed from

2007: Where the Wild Things Are Now: Domestication Reconsidered (Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series) (edited with Molly Mullin.)
Domestication has often seemed a matter of the distant past, a series of distinct events involving humans and other species that took place long ago. Today, as genetic manipulation continues to break

2002: The Sport of Kings: Kinship, class and thoroughbred breeding in Newmarket.
An ethnography of the British racing industry based upon two years of participant observation in Newmarket, the international headquarters of flat racing.

2014: Fair Game: producing gambling research (co-written with Claire Loussouarn and Andrea Pisac)
The Goldsmiths Report uses quotes from 109 stakeholders (including researchers, industry members and policy users) to explore the relationship between gambling research; and the politics of gambling l

2013: Qualitative Research in Gambling: Exploring the Production and Consumption of Risk (edited with Claire Loussouarn and Andrea Pisac)
Gambling is both a multi-billion dollar international industry and a ubiquitous social and cultural phenomenon. It is also undergoing significant change, with new products and technologies, regulatory

Grants and awards

2020: Fruitful lives: an anthropology of apples
Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship

2010: GAMSOC: gambling in Europe
ERC starting grant

Publications and research outputs

Book

Edited Book

Book Section

Article

Report

Professional projects

My work on gambling has informed public debate about gambling policy in the UK and been widely reported in the media including The Daily Mail, Guardian, The New Statesman, The New York Times, Nature, and The New Scientist. Fair Game was referred to in the House of Commons briefing paper on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. Findings from a paper on the volume, frequency and duration of gambling adverts during broadcasts of English Premier League football were quoted extensively by members during a debate about children and gambling in the House of Lords. The same paper was used by the Labour Party to launch a review of gambling and changes in policy including the creation of a mandatory levy to fund research and a ban on gambling advertising on footballer’s shirts.

Media engagements

2014: Interview, Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4
Interview about masculinity in betting shops

2013: Interview, Voice of Russia
Interview, Counting the cost of gambling

2002: Interview, Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4
Interview about horseracing

Conferences and talks

2017: Talk at International Gambling Conference, Auckland
Interview about violence in betting shops

2011: Talk at Falling Walls conference, Berlin