'"Money for nothing"?: Understanding giving to beggars'

This article explores the nature of the begging encounter. It does this thr ough an investigation of people's attitudes towards, and experiences of, be ing approached by people begging. The data are derived from interviews with people who work in the centre of Edinburgh and are regularly involved in b egging encounters. The begging encounter is often a problematic one and we argue that this is, in part, because of the ambiguous nature of the interac tion. The nature of the giving involved is frequently unclear and quite unl ike other monetary interactions that we are normally involved in. Moral con siderations regarding how 'real' or 'genuine' beggars are became crucial wh en deciding to give or not. Ambivalence and contradiction were common chara cteristics of understandings of, and attitudes towards, those who beg.