Abstract

Analysing customers attending a Sicilian Bingo hall, the article identifies a subsidiary kind of sociability for those people who, due to traumatic events such as losing a job, the death of a spouse or divorce, have experienced a progressive estrangement from their usual social life, and the consequent weakening or loss of bonds of solidarity. The concepts of «consociation» and «disaffiliation» are the interpretative frames of analysis adopted by the author to examine the material collected from 30 semi-structured interviews with players selected from a larger sample of 160 frequent customers of the Bingo hall in the city of Marsala. The Bingo hall allows the creation of alternative forms of sociability which are here indicated by the author as «consociations among the disaffiliated», taking place almost daily through contact between players who share various interests, goals and rituals inside the space used for the game. The author describes a universe of meaning in which a collective challenge, "Alea", is celebrated at each «round of Bingo», which has its waiting times, its rituals as well as some specific beliefs shared only by the participants in the game. Inside the Bingo hall the players gradually realize opportunities to socialize that reconstitute the conditions of a shared social capital no longer present in the outside world.