Jogo compulsivo e festa trance: dinheiro, performance, mercado

Abstract

The thesis results from ethnographic work and reports two practices that occurred in Portugal: a) compulsive gambling as a disease and its continued definition through participation in a self-help group called Anonymous Families and b) the trance party, a place where electronic music dance is considered as the apex of participation. In spite of the contrast between these two practices, in both are to be found forms of construction of the places of occurrence -that of the meetings of the Anonymous and of the party -and forms of participation that are defined by intensity; in both, money comes to play an important role. Participation in the Anonymous is free, in the trance party there is a payment. Although both of them owe their efficiency to the repetition of a formula, a discussion is made about the use of money and the importance of the market, especially in the ambivalent definition of what a commodity isas are the cases of drugs such as ganzahere the Portuguese use of the latter term for cannabis only highlights the fact that the text is the result of ethnographic workand LSD -, the acid.