Analysis Of Stereotypes And Community: Social Club Bingo
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Social Club Bingo: Stereotypes and Community
Introduction
An Ethnography is a qualitative research strategy in which events and experience are analysed through their meanings, in order to gain a cultural interpretation within cultural constructions (Hoey, 2014).
This ethnography is an investigation into the culture of a local Social Club game of Bingo. The report will discuss the strong sense of community within the Social Club and highlight the loyalty and patriotic nature of the individuals who attend.
Bingo is a traditional form of gambling (Gambling Commission, 2014), it is a game of chance where each player receives a random set of numbers. The player marks off the numbers in the set against the numbers announced by the caller. A player…show more content… It was evident at the Social Club that the average player was a female between the ages of 60 – 70 years old however; it would be prejudiced to make the judgment that they had nothing better to do. Irrespective of this, there was still a strong male presence in the Club, in general. They just seemed to move to another room once the bingo started, and return once it ended.
The stereotypical bingo player is an elderly woman who smokes, and there's a reason for that – a lot of bingo players are elderly women who smoke. (Bingo! The Documentary, 1999) I tested this theory throughout the evening and noticed that there were very few individuals who got up to go outside to smoke and only 1 person in the room who was using an e-cigarette. I got up to go outside a couple of times to count how many people were outside smoking and the highest number was three people at one time. This does not necessarily contradict the stereotype as this could have been affected by different factors such as the ‘smoking area’ being directly on the front street, there was no where to sit and no shelter from the rain, this may have been different if there was a designated place to smoke or garden. This also could have been affected by the bingo; people may not have wanted to leave to smoke a cigarette whilst…show more content… The Bingo Community could be described as anti-social, everyone must be silent, during the game, there is no interaction at all but that is not how the avid bingo players see it, for them it is a way to socialise, it is a night out.
The group I was studying all met around 30 years ago on a Sunday evening, playing bingo in this exact establishment. They have been going to Bingo together on a Sunday evening ever since. All of the ladies are retired, they spend their time reminiscing and catching up with old friends and each time will embrace them in conversation as they pass as though they had not spoken in years, even though they had only last spoken to them the Sunday before. After years of playing with the same regulars, the bingo evenings at Saltwell Social Club are somewhat of a ‘family’ affair (Dodds,