RACING FROM ALIENATION: HORSE BETTING AS A “SAFETY VALVE” AMONGST ELDERLY CHINESE PUNTERS AT THE SINGAPORE TURF CLUB

Abstract

This thesis examines horse betting by elderly punters at the Turf Club and attempts to understand the function of the Turf Club as a site of horse betting in the lives of these elderly punters. By situating the Turf Club within Devereux’s (1949) “safety valve” theory, this thesis argues that the Turf Club acts as a “safety valve” for the alienation that elderly punters experience in their everyday lives. Drawing from Seeman’s typology (1959), this alienation can be understood as powerlessness and self-estrangement, and informal interviews with the punters reflect this to be a product of their transition into old age. As they switch to retirement and their children start to have their own families, they are relegated to the peripheries of society where they are now impotent in the economic world and unimportant in their family lives. These retirees therefore turn to the Turf Club which acts as a “safety valve” by being a “liminal space” (Turner 1967) where the punters are afforded an in-between space that gives them illusions of control through the knowledge and mastery of horse betting. This ‘liminal space’ further anchors them in a “communitas” (Turner 1967) that allows them to partake in horse betting inconspicuously but also maintain a loose network of friends through which they can fulfil their social needs.