Re-articulating the Moral Economy of Gambling
Mike Panasitti and Natasha Schull
In "Pleasure: A Political Issue," Frederick Jameson (1992) argues that most critiques
of the pleasurable activities found in capitalist society have equated pleasure with false
consciousness. By focusing on the machinations of a monolithic culture industry, this strain of
critical theory-epistemologically linked to elitism-has largely ignored the consideration of
cultural process and change so central to an understanding of capitalism itself.
Framing capitalist society's relationship to pleasure in processual terms reveals that
this relationship is subject to the nuances of historical context and is therefore bound to take
many forms and undergo multiple transformations. From this perspective, it becomes a pparent
that pleasure is the product of a diverse and changing collection of cultural values, institutions
and social actors, and not merely the reflection of a capitalist's will to power, or an instrument
of his interests.
The pleasure we are concemed with here is gambling. In particular, this paper
addresses gambling in the United States during the period between the turn of the century and
the present. By writing the social history of American gambling-a history marked by the
initial demonization of its pleasure, its subsequent regulation, and its consequent
redemption-we aim to document the process by which rules for the game of power and
pleasure vacillate, leading to the re-articulation of gambling's moral economy. In other words,
we seek to illuminate the ways in which the American population's relationship to gambling
has been governed and has evolved as a result of representational pmctices characteristic of
modem society.
Judgments: The Demonization of Gambling
Amongst the perils of modern city life painstakingly documented by Anthony
Comstock (New York Post Office Inspector and Secretary and Chief Special Agent of New
York Society for the Su ppression of Vice) in Traps for the Young (1884) are the evils of
gambling. A work of unabashed advocacy, the preface concludes with the following
imperative: "Let no man be henceforth indifferent. Read, reflect, act."
Gambling Traps. Their name is legion.. .The promise of getting something
for nothing without the slow plodding of daily toil, is one of Satan's most
fascinating snares. He sets his signboards along the avenues of honest trade
and commerce and seeks to turn aside all classes by the glittering
allurements of easy fortunes (Comstock 1884:56).
As a vigilante urban folk hero, Comstock's pastoral mission was to enforce the moral rectitude
of his burgeoning flock; the pursuit of financial gain in the absence of a work ethic represented
a grave threat to the population by undermining one of late 19th century America's most
cherished moral and practical principles.
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John Quinn, a reformed gambler and con man, wrote Fools of Fortune in 1890, which
follows a similar rhetorical vein. A massive tome combining confessionals testimonial and
autobiographical accounts with detailed historical studies of gambling, the book is presented as
a measure to expiate his former sins, to "extenuate twenty-five years of gaming and systematic
deception of fellow-men."
Of all the vices which have enslaved mankind, none can reckon among its
victims so many as gambling. Not even the baneful habit of drink has
blighted so many lives or desolated so many homes. Its fascination is
insidious and terrible, and its power is all the more to be dreaded in that it a
ppeals to a latent instinct in every human breast (1891:7).
Here, the sin of greed is naturalized and universalized; religion is represented as the most
efficacious civilizing force, one capable of identifying and repressing the manifestation of
man's original propensity to gamble.
While "Satan and Speculation" were inextricably linked in the cultural/moral
imagination of late 19th century American society, contemporary attacks on gambling were
not limited to scathing religious condemnations; Thorstein Veblen, an early American social
scientist, secularized the morality of the work ethic with a teleological theory critical of the
American leisure class. He argued that conspicuous consumption, leisure, and games of chance
were vestiges of an outdated and predatory Victorian aristocracy whose pecuniary standards
were incompatible with the demands of industrial capitalism. According to Veblen, the drive
of natural progress instilled in the industrial working class a thrifty, utilitarian rationality that
accommodated egalitarianism and was therefore socially adaptive. His "scientific" form of
advocacy posited that gambling was antithetical to modem adaptation:
The gambling propensity is [a] subsidiary trait of the barbarian
temperament.. .It is recognized to be a hindrance to the highest industrial
efficiency of the aggregate in any community where it prevails in an a
ppreciable degree (1979:276).
While perhaps for Veblen souls were not at stake, the human species itself was placed in
evolutionary jeopardy by gambling. Ultimately, the conclusions of this 19th century social
scientist were not so different from Comstock and Quinn's religiously influenced rhetoric.
Whether through Veblen's enlightened reason or through religious fulmination, the
interrelated prohibitive discourses that dominated official, public and published opinions on
gambling unmistakably derived from the same puritanism. Gambling, of course, persisted
despite such thought, especially thriving on the American western frontier where cultural
convention often remained (literally) at the geographical margins of prevailing American
values. Yet even here, legal stipulations reflecting institutional attitudes oftentimes confined
gambling to inconvenient spaces-to "sinks of iniquity," to use the words of a fellow English
martinet (Churchill 1905)-out of the public eye where only the informed and the truly
degenerate would care to seek it out.
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Juxtapositions: The Valuation of Gambling
The contrast of gambling's relationship to the American population between the 19th
and 20th centuries is marked; a crucial component of this transformation involved a shifting
and expansion of discursive boundaries-what could be said about gambling had qualitatively
and quantitatively changed. In 1975, Robert Broadbent, Chairman of the Board for the Las
Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, testified before the United States Commission on
the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling,1 a clearinghouse for diverse opinions,
statements, and views toward the activity:
...despite the national publicity Nevada receives as a gambling mecca, it
ranks only fifth in State gambling tax collections. This fact demonstrates that
all types of betting and gambling are readily accepted throughout the United
States, and are becoming an integral part of American life. Las Vegas, with
its entire gambling-entertainment product, is an important segment of the
growing entertainment market (U.S. Commission 1976:362).
The Commission's final report, Gambling in America, revealed that the activity was not an
aberration, but a widespread and multifaceted popular pastime. Yet, Broadbent's declaration of
gambling's social importance foreshadowed an even greater acceptance of the activity.
Today, the majority of work published about gambling is of a very different tone than
that of the 19th century. The prevailing discourse on gambling has shifted from disparaging
religious commentary and secular critiques extolling the social benefits of a Protestant work
ethic to tempered, pragmatic statements epitomized by, among other things, the economic
argumentation of image consultants for the gambling industry.
People want to gamble, and many have not had the opportunity to do so
before-that is, the product has not been available in a legal, socially
acceptable package before (Thompson and Comeau 1992:19).
Here, the market principles of supply and demand override considerations of morality.
Another set of voices that have been brought into this discursive game-notably
absent in the past due to paternalistic attitudes-are those of common individuals, the
gamblers themselves as choice-exercising consumers. In 1991 a New York Times reporter
questioned a mother leading her small son through the maze of slot machines on a casino floor
as to how often she frequented the "resort," in response, she claimed to visit the casino twice a
year and stated that: "We like gambling and this is a nice family place...Sometimes we bring
Grandma and Grandpa to take care of our boy" (Cohen 1991:D5).
What is presently known as the gaming industry has moved far afield of the baneful
19th century characterization of gambling and its spaces to become, if not the paragon of
omnipotent business, a fully legitimate operation subject to all the vicissitudes (and respect) of
other national industries. In the 1980's, Commercial gaming in the United States grew fifteen
percent per year, from $6 billion in 1980 to $21 billion in 1989 (Allen 1992:3), and finally to
$30 billion in 1992-more than was spent on books, movies, recorded music and attractions,
combined (Yoshihashi 1993).
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Currently, more than 100 sites on Indian Reservations in over 17 states offer
gambling. The political economy of American gambling has become globalized; in 1991 the
Mashantucket Pequots secured a 55 million dollar loan from a Malaysian company operating
hotels and casinos throughout Asia for purposes of building the Foxwoods casino-a project
whose revenues not only will allow them to "educate tribal children in their history and
language," but has assuaged the anxieties of Connecticut politicians hoping that as a result of
the project "southeastern Connecticut might be able to reinvent itself as military spending
collapses" (Johnson 1991).
Thus, despite the seeming opposition between 19th and 20th century discursive
formations of gambling, there remains an analogous relationship. The theme of salvation has
persisted as a residue of earlier discourse in the twentieth century. What is meant by salvation
has, of course, drastically changed over the course of a century; today, what is to be saved is
not so much the souls of misguided urban flocks as it is the stability of financially exhausted
states. Indeed, when faith is spoken of today in relation to gambling, what is implied is thefill
faith and credit of companies like Mirage Resorts. If allowed to enter states with faltering
economies such as Connecticut, these gambling corporations promise astronomical state
revenues. In the minds of policy makers whose states are reeling from recession, gambling and
social welfare are no longer diametrically opposed, but intimately tied. Unlike most other
industries, the casino/gaming industry has proven to be recession proof. Las Vegas, a city
organized around the business, leads the state in the creation of new jobs from 1987 to 1991
(Gabriel 1991).
The stark juxtapositions between 19th and late 20th century discussions about
gambling-produced in the same country but separated by a century-attest to the re-
articulation of a multitude of cultural characteristics by the probing of commodification into
formerly delicate cultural realms, thereby testing the limits of capital's unrelenting expansion
into and reconfiguration of cultural convention and taboo. What connects the stark historical
discontinuities presented here? The spectrum characterizing this collection of historically
isolated statements made about gambling and its relationship to the American population is the
malleable object of this anthropological interrogation. How did the expansion of what can be
said about gambling unfold? How is it that gambling can occupy such distinct positions in the
relational matrix known as society?
Las Vegas and the Origins of Legal Gambling
The history of gambling as an American cultural practice extends as far back as the
pre-independence colonies which were partially maintained with the revenue generated by
crown sponsored lotteries. Treatments of this history have primarily documented the change
and increase in games played, and one recent work has argued that gambling provides the
most direct, visible expression of the driving force in the history of a nation populated by,
romantically enough, "people of chance" (Findlay 1986).
Here we move away from approaches that seek either to provide an inventory or to
essentialize a national character, and begin our historical account with the watershed
legalization of casino gambling in America. This starting point is not arbitrary-the
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development of Las Vegas as the nation's first localized and visible gambling mecca provided
the reference point for future considerations of legalization and experiments in the social
legitimation of the activity.
At the turn of the century, national gambling restrictions gradually made inroads into
the American West. This was the case in Las Vegas during the early 1900s-a mining and
railroad town where, while not illegal, gambling was confined temporally and spatially by law.
In 1910 moralistic local and national pressures exerted themselves, and gambling was
outlawed in the region.
By the late 1920's, the moral fervor that had culminated in the criminalization of
Nevada's gambling had waned; while still illegal, gambling establishments flourished along
downtown Las Vegas' Fremont Street and the activity continued unabated behind closed
doors, on second floors, in back rooms and basements. This situation resulted in lost revenues
for local and state governments and the corruption of local law enforcement authorities who
were paid off to protect the illicit economy. Pragmatically minded politicians had repeatedly
tried to remedy this by reversing the 1910 ruling, yet had to wait until a more favorable
environment surfaced (Lillard 1942:324-326).
Ironically, it was the Great Depression that provided Las Vegas with the impetus
necessary to legalize the underground gambling economy. While most states struggled to keep
afloat during this period of extreme privation, Las Vegas became one of the first (indirect)
beneficiaries of New Deal largesse. In 1928 the Coolidge administration announced its plans
to harness the energy of the Colorado River by constructing an enornous dam located in
Boulder Canyon, a site approximately thirty miles from Las Vegas. Assuming that Las Vegas
would be the beneficiary of this statist project, local businessmen and politicians eagerly
awaited the influx of 5,000 construction workers, families, and their Federal paychecks into
the railroad town (Moehring 1989:14-1 8).
In 1929, after a visit to survey Las Vegas as a possible housing site for Dam workers,
Raymond Wilbur, Secretary of Interior of the new Hoover administration-whose moral
stance on minor vices had been hardened through futile attempts to enforce the Prohibition on
alcohol-shattered local expectations by scathingly denouncing the town, known for its laxity
in these matters. Asserting government's social role as an advocate of state-directed capitalist
utopianism, he declared: "it is the intention of the government that the bootlegger or other law
violator shall not interfere with the well-being of its workmen assigned to the task" (Moehring
1989:15).
To enforce moral probity and instill the seriousness of the New Deal in these federal
workers, the Hoover administration announced plans to create Boulder City and forego the
dangerous ramifications of Las Vegas' illicit environs. Wilbur admonished: "Instead of a
boisterous frontier town, it is hoped that here [in Boulder City] simple homes, gardens with
fruit and flowers, schools and playgrounds will make this a wholesome American community"
(Moehring 1989:15). The goal of keeping Boulder City's inhabitants morally upright
occasionally spilled into nearby Las Vegas; on one occasion it wa raided by a troop of
prohibition agents led by a Colonel George Seavers of San Francisco who declared, "We're
going to make this place safe for Hoover Dam workers" (Lillard 1942:320).
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Delivering a further insult to Las Vegas, the Federal Government decided to include a
Federally contracted general store stocked with retail goods as part of Boulder City's master
plan-this denied Las Vegas the chance to profit even from the workers' daily consumer needs
(Moehring 1989:17). Realizing, however, that Boulder City's stem administrators had
excluded from their plan spaces for diversionary activities such as those that existed in their
antipodal town, Las Vegas businessmen and politicians quickly mobilized to make the best
they could of these adverse conditions. In February 1931, the month before the dam contract
was awarded and construction crews arrived to build the government town, Nevada's
legislature legalized gambling (Moehring 1989:13-21; Elliott 1973:273-285).
Ironically, Las Vegas set out to capitalize on precisely those attributes of their city's
ethos that Wilbur had disparaged; although it did not help Las Vegas secure federal support,
the town's frontier boisterousness did cater to the American tourist's nostalgia for Westernism.
Not only would their entertainment offerings attract the workers of Boulder City, but the
casino operators also eventually captured the market of tourists who pilgrimage to witness the
latest icon of American modernity as manifested in the Dam-going as far as christening Las
Vegas as the "Gateway to the World's Greatest Engineering Project" (Findlay 1986:116-117).
However, although legal restrictions on casinos had been lifted, by no means did
gambling establishment owners consider themselves free to take advantage of this fact; there
persisted both a dominant moral discourse which attributed a pariah ethos to gambling, and an
accompanying public perception that complimented the official one. For instance, the
nationwide response to the legalization was unequivocally hostile. Newspapers across the
nation condemned the immorality of the state government and a cover story in the Chicago
Tribune "urged that Nevada's statehood be canceled" (Findlay 1986:43). Such vituperative
reactions also emanated from other western states that sought to distance themselves from
potential association.
The Dallas Morning News talked of flushed and shaken men, women, and
youths at the gambling tables: "These will Nevada gather in, to suck them
dry and fling away the husks of humanity, quite careless of whether they live
or die" (Findlay 1986:41).
Under such precarious conditions, the operators of gambling establishments and city
politicians did not openly promote the activity-they remained cautiously silent, and initially
gambling made only marginal contributions to economic growth. In effect, managers of Las
Vegas saloons and back rooms accepted the marginal (or immoral) status of the gambling
activities they offered and accommodated this status vis-A-vis dominant public and
govermental views:
During the first few years after gambling was legalized, the gaming-room
managers made almost no attempt to publicize their establishments. To most
of them, operating within the law was a completely new experience, and it
took th em some time to accustom themselves to the tremendous opportunity
it offered (Lewis 1953:130).
Whereas some might expect that an intractable capitalist logic alone was enough to drive
aggressive advertising campaigns once gambling was permitted by law, the situation did not
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represent such an immediate, simple adaptation with a purpose of greater profit. The existing
cultural field-a force that was to be reckoned with-included a public perception of casinos
as illegitimate:
Men who had long held forth behind locked doors in rooms discreetly
hidden away from the public gaze felt-understandably enough-an certain
uneasiness at finding themselves ensconced in ground-floor quarters facing
the busiest streets of town. The cautious habits formed during years of
secret, undercover operations were hard to break. Few could bring
themselves deliberately to court the public attention they had long been at
pains to avoid (Lewis 1953:130).
Thus it was a gradual process that led to changes in the traditionally cautious actions
of casino operators; they began to develop slowly the aggressive marketing tactics for which
Las Vegas is known today. As the city and what was to become its most important resource
became more visible and accessible to an increasingly affluent, pleasure seeking West Coast
populace, so did the many casino owners unwilling to comply with federal laws become
subjects of a different gaze-that of the federal government. The unabashed brightness and the
loud, inviting appeals of the strip were matched by the audacity of its operators with regard to
the Federal stipulations.
Although casino gaming had become more available to the consumer on various
levels, gambling activities and the casino entity itself were not officially legitimate with regard
to being sanctioned by political figures as an acceptable pastime for the masses. A paternalistic
circumscription remained manifest in continuing laws, the ethics of the allowable that hindered
the expansion of casinos into public life and discourse, and the treatnent of the casino as an
underprivileged financial entity within the mainstream economy-a pariah industry. We turn
now to see how this negative position was overcome through a process of economic
legitimation within the mainstream economy.
The Casino Incorporated: Achieving Economic Legitimacy
The influx of organized crime into Las Vegas may be attributed to various factors.
First, the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 had dispossessed many sophisticated crime syndicates
of a very profitable enterprise. Gambling, illegal in all states but Nevada, became the next
logical source of lucre for this collection of illicit entrepreneurs. The growth of underground
gambling in the Western part of the country was particularly rapid; with many sources of
competition in Los Angeles itself, tourism to Las Vegas remained at a steady, yet
unremarkable level. This situation changed drastically as a result of anti-vice crusades taken
up by many local governments in the late thirties.
Most significant for Las Vegas amongst these local initiatives was that led by Los
Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron in 1938 to close illegal gambling establishments in his city.
In addition, a federal crackdown on gambling ships anchored off the Southern California coast
between 1939 and 1942 prompted an exodus of professional gambling establishment operators
and their largely Hollywood based clientele into Las Vegas. The dranatic entance of
gangsters, including the infamous Bugsy Siegel, facilitated the construction of new strip
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casinos through the use of underworld ties to secure loans and financing from organized crime
at a time when other funds were unavailable.
The response of the Federal Government to these circumstances is interesting.
Prohibition, although a failed experiment in morality enforcement, provided a valuable lesson
to American lawmakers-namely, that centrally organized repression and support of
stigmatization were not effective law enforcement strategies.
Thus, while the measures taken against organized crime involved in gambling during
the 50's and 60's were not devoid of repressive and puritanical overtones, they were
considerably more restricted in their focus. The general population's morality was no longer
the primary source of concern; the government focused on the providers of the vice offered in
Las Vegas. This group was not only easier to keep under surveillance because of its small
membership, but were also easily located through their investments in fixed capital-the
casinos themselves.
As prohibitory measures against the general population were no longer viable,
regulation turned to this handful of operators. The Federal government set out to limit
organized crime's movements and used the media to depict them as subversive and different
from other entrepreneurs. The goal was to normalize them by subjecting them to a scopic
regime whose primary purpose was to regulate and discipline-not to eradicate. Eradication
was not possible, due to demand on a popular level and Las Vegas' position as a large and
profitable city. In sum, the overriding trend seems to be a transition from interdiction based on
moral grounds to legal regulation based on political, economic expediency. The period
between 1877 and 1977, 87 acts were passed with regard to amending or repealing acts
relating to gambling as well as introducing new ones-sixty five of these acts were passed
after 1951, registering an increased concern with legislating the operation of gambling
activities (Cross 1979:172).
It is interesting to compare the content and tone of these gambling related legal
measures with 19th century prohibitive discourses. There is a conspicuous lack of concern for
morality in legislative measures after the 1950's. They dwell on more mundane themes
pertaining to, amongst other things, the circulation of gambling devices, the monitoring of
movement by those in the gambling industry and most importantly, tax evasion. The
proliferation of legislation mainly served to strengthen existing laws intended to prevent the
influx of the gangster underworld into the casino industry. It was assumed that this would
prevent the practice of skimming, or not reporting income for purposes of tax evasion and
financing other illegal commerce. Ironically, the federal government's disapproving gaze led
to local political actions, that, while increasing restrictions, simultaneously paved the road for
a gambling expansion like never before, heralding a new treatment of this formerly suspect
entity within the realms of government and business.
The Paradox of Regulation: The Construction of a Corporate Ethos
In House of Cards-a title alluding to the fragile and precarious position of the Las
Vegas casino industry-Jerome Skolnick (1978), focusing primarily on the political and legal
dimensions of the Las Vegas casino industry's search for respectability, concentrates on the
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regulatory tactics that the Nevada legislature employed to placate the Federal government and
ensure the industry's continued growth. William Eadington summarizes the net effect of
intensified state controls and the concomitant demands of the industry.
It can be argued that the fundamental objective of Nevada regulatory control
over gaming has been to preserve the state's autonomy over gaming control
vis-a-vis the federal government in order to preserve the gaming industry's
strong influence over industry profitability and the direction of regulatory
policy in Nevada (1984:30)
Skolnick notes that the state
derives a sizable percentage of gross gaming revenue, which in turn,
provides an even more sizable percentage of the state budget: enterprises and
state officials sometimes act like real business partners, suggesting ways of
improving profits and actually being pleased when casinos are crowded,
fretful when they are not (1978:98).
He saw the crucial problem for Nevada and other states considering the legalization of casino
gambling as lying in the transformation of this profitable business into a respectable one.
The Kefauver Committee's nationwide hearings on organized crime in 1950 and
attorney general Robert Kennedy's similar crusade in 1961 catalyzed image polishing periods
for the casino industry; after the meeting between Nevada Governor Sawyer and the Kennedys
in Washington, Sawyer
met with the casino owners, and told them that Nevada now "stood alone,"
that Congress could be moved to end its gambling. Kennedy's interest thus
forced a new policy for the Las Vegas gamblers: "They might compete for
Dean Martin, Barbara Streisand, or Sinatra, but they knew they must now be
as close as oil companies, as well-knit as the farn lobby." Moreover, they
would have to become discreet, subtle, and self-disciplining businessmen
(Skolnick 1978:126).
The casino owners mobilized:
They suspected that they had pushed their luck too far. They were at war
with Congress, were loathed by the FBI, and were called hoods by the
nation's press. They feared that so much national hatred must have some
fall-out that they could be closed. That year they organized. They put aside
their rivalries, their inter-casino feuds, and formed the Nevada Resort
Association (Vogiotti, former director of the Nevada Resorts Association, in
Brock et al. 1992a:46-47).
Federal intervention forced the adoption of new practices, including the
implementation of substantial controls such as stringent licensing requirements, strict penalties
for operational irregularities, regular and unscheduled audits, the monitoring of intemal
gaming controls and security measures, and the systematic collection, analysis and publication
of information relating to the Nevada casino industry.
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Although these procedures would have been intolerable to other industries, Nevada
casinos welcomed the legal incursions and many expressed satisfaction that the industry was
the object of so much attention and sophisticated regulation. During the 1976 Commission
hearings one casino owner proudly summarized this position:
No business is controlled more effectively than gambling in Nevada. No
person in government or in any other business comes under closer scrutiny
than do the people in Nevada who apply for a gambling license (U.S.
Commission 1976:315).
State officials were now responsible for preventing immoral, criminal characters from
entering the industry. Indeed, the idea of responsibility is key; by deflecting the responsibility
of enforcing gambling's legal codes onto Nevada-which in turn displaced this onto the
gambling operations themselves-the Federal government relieved itself of this role.
Ironically, the casino industry was to derive considerable benefit from this downward
diffusion of responsibility. Despite the newfound freedom implied by this process, prior to
1970, casino
gambling growth was limited because of the difficulty of raising capital
through traditional financial sources like banks and insurance
companies.. .Nevada also effectively discouraged publicly traded
corporations from getting into gambling (Liggett 1989:24).
These financial limitations forced the industry to borrow from pariah lenders-most notably
Jimmy Hoffa and his Teamsters' Pension Funds, who by 1977 had 24 percent of their entire
investment portfolio in Las Vegas casinos-further tarnishing the image of the industry
(Eadington 1980:16).
Big business first infused a much needed dose of legitimacy into the Las Vegas
casino industry when business magnate Howard Hughes purchased six casinos in 1966, buying
out several disreputable owners with his public monies (Laxalt 1977:117-120; Skolnick
1978:134-140). He initiated what governor Paul Laxalt was later to refer to as "the Hughes
effect." In 1969, the Nevada legislature passed the groundbreaking Corporate Gaming Act,
ushering in a new era of public approval and unprecedented growth. The act made it possible
for corporations to purchase and build casinos without subjecting every stockholder to the
thorough background checks formerly required of each licensee by the State Gaming Control
Board and State Gaming Commission (Eadington 1980). The infusion of respected public
corporations promised to confer respectability upon Las Vegas itself, and eventually to
incorporate the casino industry into the legitimate economy.
No doubt due to a persistent ethos of economic illegitimacy, the rewards were slow to
come. William H. McElnea, Jr., president of Caesar's World, Inc. gave the following
testimony to the Commission 1975:
...the experience of Caesar's world with the financial community was [not]
successful at first. Several major investment banking houses declined to
co-manage the financing of the Caesars Palace purchase because they feared
involvement with the gambling industry. It has taken Caesars World a
number of years to educate members of the investment banking community
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to the nature of the hotel casino business. Within the past two years the
financial community has begun to accept the gambling business. Caesars
World has succeeded in instituting a relationship with one of the largest
investment banking firms in the country. Financial establishments have
begun to treat companies engaged in gambling as they treat all other
companies (U.S. Commission 1976:358).
This author portrays the casino corporations as educateing larger, ignorant economic entities
to enter into a mutually beneficial relationship. In 1975, this process was by no means
complete, and a voluntary show of openness on the part of casinos was a part of the struggle to
gain full legitimacy in the economic world:
Caesar's World is attempting to end the misunderstanding about the
operations of gambling establishments in Nevada, Particularly those
operated by public corporations. Its attitude always has been to encourage
government agencies, financial institutions, the press, and the public to delve
into its operations and learn what it stands for. But the goal of education
requires more than a willingness of those in the industry to open their
operations to inspection. It also requires a willingness by those who ought to
learn about the industry to spend the time and effort necessary to do so
(U.S. Commission 1976:359).
Again, the casino representative indignantly claims that the larger financial
community ought to learn what his misunderstood and persecuted industry really stands for.
Hilton's purchase of the Flamingo (which, although not owned at the time by a mobster, was
still emblematic of organized crime's infiltration of Las Vegas) epitomized the transition from
disrepute to legitimacy. This purchase also opened the eyes of other corporations: Hilton's
entrance into Las Vegas, for example, turned out to be a sound career move for the
corporation-to date more than seventy percent of the its profits come from Nevada alone
(Jefferson 1989).
Thus, changes in the casino industry may be attributed not only to external pressures
from the federal government, but also to the opening of the business to stockholders. For
purposes of appearing as acceptable as other businesses, casino executives were forced to
adopt standards imposed and expected by both consumers and the corporate world. For
instance, evolution in both heightened regulations and corporate laws has had a tremendous
effect of introducing detailed accounting rituals whose meticulousness reflects not only the
financial documentation of any legitimate corporation, but also the strict hierarchy and
concern with an impeccable image which the casino industry has had to adopt and uphold.
George Drews, a Harrah's executive, describes the elaborate accounting procedures and the
self-disciplining which a modern, managed corporation maintains.
In the computerized monthly. management report are 190 different profit and
loss centers.. .Each automatically sums to the next higher management
level.. .and so on to the top level of the company...The detailed
departmental reports for the entire company behind this summary are two
and one-half inches thick, and the computer is programmed to give each
manager an individual package for his own area of responsibility...In
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addition to the computer schedules, by the tenth of each month a
management financial white book is prepared. This goes to the finance
committee, the board of directors and our internal and outside auditors. It
starts with a written financial review or analysis of performance. Following
are month and year-to-date profit and loss statements down to earnings per
share for the month and year-to-date.. .appropriate relationships with prior
year and volume are made. A balance sheet, footnotes and funds flow or
change in financial statements are also presented. This monthly book is,
therefore, a complete and permanent record of the financial performance and
statistics. Perhaps the most important part of the financial picture (and this is
no doubt true of many other major casinos also) is not merely the availability
and timeliness of the reporting, but management's attitude toward and use of
the data. Management makes active and immediate use of this data whenever
indicated. Deviations in trends, changes from budget, out-of-line expenses,
changes in gross margins and hold percentages all must be explained in
detail by the responsible manager, and prompt remedial action is expected
where indicated (Drews 1976:167-169).
McElnea, as well, stresses the sophistication of such internal controls:
Public corporations have introduced numerous modern management and
financial techniques to the gambling industry. Caesars World has an
elaborate corporate security system designed to prevent illicit practices. It
hires only highly qualified individuals of high integrity (U.S. Commission
1976:359).
Although slow to spread in influence, the period in Las Vegas from 1980 to the
present has been clearly one dominated by corporate capital and its accompanying practices,
notably the rationalization of casino business through the standardization of many of its
economic procedures. Eadington noted that "the gaming industry was entering a corporate era,
where it would become more like other businesses and where its unsavory past would become
less important than its future potential" (1984:27). An enthusiastic member of the industry
remarked,
In the 1980's, gaming became a legitimate industry, national in scope;
corporate in nature. Having achieved respectability and acceptance,
prejudice and regulations that discouraged responsible, large scale financial
investment in gaming disappeared. The boom was on! (Liggett 1991:24).
Economic Legitimation within the Mainstream Economy
A process had unfolded whereby casino enterprises presented themselves as being
part of more palatable businesses and as a result benefited from the status or symbolic capital
of that greater entity. Conversely, the relationship of other legitimate corporations with the
gambling business conferred respectability by association. As Macomber advocated,
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Lobbying efforts need to take place with the government, law enforcement
agencies, bankers, Wall Street, and other influence groups. This needs to be
done by individual companies as well as on an industry-wide basis. The
effort needs to take place in existing gaming areas, proposed gaming areas,
and nationally (1984:90).
There is a crucial distinction between legalization and legitimation.
The legalization of gaming is an event that takes place at a specific moment
in time, as it did in New Jersey on November 8, 1976. But the legitimization
of gaming is something else. That happens over a period of time, when
gaming is assimilated into a community and a completely accepted by that
community. That will involve a resolution of all the opposing forces that are
created by gaming. Legitimization will arrive when the industry is
completely accepted by the institutional financiers-when you see Equitable
and Prudential making 25-year term loans for constructing casino/hotels
(Abt, et al. 1985:179).
Importantly, as Wynn notes (1980), not only did the process of legitimation implicate
the ranks of powerful state and business organizations, but it involved a concomitant and
interrelated process of public and cultural acceptance. A reconfiguration of historical
definitions of respectability was essential to the cultivation of an environment hospitable to the
economic growth of the gaming market. Macomber gives a succinct opinion of how this
pivotal transformation should occur:
...the casino industry needs to legitimate itself in the eyes of the public.. .If
the public could only be hypnotized to forget the early Nevada years and the
Hollywood characterization of casino operations, the perception of the
industry would no doubt be different...Of course, perception is often more
important than fact, and it is clearly [the public's perception of the industry]
that the industry must combat. The gaming industry must make an effort to
establish its image as at least neutral...As gaming continues its legitimation
and assimilates itself into the culture of today's society, the spread of casino
operations will undoubtedly accelerate (1984:89-90).
This statement resounds today, in the midst of a multiplication of profitable new casinos in
other states. Perception, it seems, has been successfully countered (or realigned) on both the
economic level and the public. Such a shift in attitude is manifest in the attention Las Vegas'
new image has received in media's popular coverage. In a recent The New York Times
Magazine article entitled "From Vice to Nice," Trip Gabriel writes,
Today many of the hotels are owned by squeaky-clean, image-obsessed
companies like Hilton and Holiday Inn. They are staffed by bean counters
and micro managers who live in the same suburbs and sport the same
dress-for-success suits as Jim Bingham, the stockbroker from Iowa
(1991:79)
NBC's David Brinkley claimed in a televised report on gambling,
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A business that used to be discussed in back rooms with somebody guarding
the door is now a matter of interest on Wall Street-the absolute center and
bastion of establishment in America. Gambling stocks are legal, they're hot
and they're public corporations of impeccable probity and rectitude. Their
books always open to government inspection. Now, men who would refuse
to wear silk ties and white-on-white shirts sit around and discuss what they
call the "gaming industry" (NBC 1980, recording).
Drews proudly notes that
Many people, including astute financial analysts and bankers who have
never been taken behind the casino floor, [are] astounded to find that the
business is run with some very sophisticated business methods (1976:159).
And Dan Rather of 48 Hours reflects,
there is a striking similarity between Wall street trading rooms and.. .modern
Las Vegas... involving rows of data banks and specialists.. .It's a corporate
game (48 Hours 1988).
The casino gaming industry continues to grow; companies that were born in Nevada,
once limited to operating within its confines, are expanding their businesses. Caesars World is
the primary contender in initiatives to build casinos in New Orleans' French Quarter and in the
Palm Springs area. The Hilton has floating casinos slated for Kansas City and New Orleans.
Mirage Resort, Inc. plans to enter the Connecticut area to compete with the Pequots'
Foxwoods casino, adding an additional 140 million in tax revenue to the state's coffers. Hilton
Hotels Inc., Circus Circus Enterprises Inc., and Caesars World Inc. are in the planning stages
of a joint venture to build a three million square foot, two billion dollar casino/entertainment
complex in Chicago. Casinos are now legally open in Nevada, Atlantic City, California (card
play only), Iowa and Illinois (restricted to boats), Connecticut and Colorado (Fenster 1992).
The perception of the gambling economy has for many come full circle-whereas in
1931 it was the bane of the country, with the statist project of Hoover Dam defined as its
moral and economic antipode, today gambling is a legitimate and efficacious alternative for
recession stricken states to remedy social ills caused by economic problems. This speaks to the
intensity of the incremental historical shift.
Las Vegas is drastically transforming its image. The city that was once
perceived as the moral sinkhole of the country.. .now feels, incredibly, like
an acme of wholesomeness. In part, this is due to an ambitious casino
industry bent on cleaning up its act to attract a larger, family crowd (Gabriel
1991:68).
The strategic, discursive processes of cultural legitimation2 which accompanied the
incremental move toward an increased presence of gambling in the American economy are
examined next. As both Wynn and Macomber stressed, the emergence of this discourse
enabled both the corporate transfonnation of the casino industry to succeed, enhancing its
profit seeking imperatives, and itself grew out of this economic re-populating of the casino
industry. In other words, the processes of corporatization and public legitimation were, as they
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are today, inter-dependent and mutually reinforcing phenomena. The gambling proponents'
co-optation of the political and economic spheres is both dependent on and necessary for
changing of the general population's perceptions of gambling activities. Dean Macomber,
former vice-president of casino administration at Bally's Park Place in Atlantic City, concisely
sums up what the industry sought in regards to economic and cultural legitimacy:
In all, industry must address the following areas: human resource
development and motivation; refinement of management as fair and
consistent; development of marketing as a creative, planned, and profit-
oriented process that is integrated into all aspects of a casino hotel operation;
completion of the corporate and casino cross-culturalization; and
legitimation of casino gaming throughout society (1984:82).
The Production of Gambling's Truth
William H. Briare, the mayor of Las Vegas in 1975, testified in front of the
Commission:
It is ironical, and interesting, to note the vast change in attitude toward
gambling that has occurred in recent years due to momentous changes
throughout the Nation' social and economic structure. The fact that
numerous sociologists, economists, and goverment officials are presently
reevaluating gambling reflects this change in values and, more significantly,
the economic plight of government entities. The economic aspects of
gambling no longer appear to outweigh all other considerations (U.S.
Commission 1976:326).
We locate our investigation of gambling's cultural redemption at the point in time when
discursive formations surrounding its constitution and value for Americans proliferated-a
period dominated not by religious moralizing, but by governmental and economic reasoning,
which incorporated and re-configured morality as an indispensable facet of their reasoning.
How did the limits and forms of speaking about gambling shift and grow? Which statements
were recognized as valid and which were excluded?
What makes gambling so interesting is that it has occupied such a malleable,
unstable, and ambiguous position in relation to so many loci and sites of investment of power,
particularly that of morality. Here we will attempt to examine the emergence, vacillations,
gradual shifts and reconfigurations of moral discourse on casinos establishment as a space of
leisure within society. By morality we do not mean a body of essential truth that arises from
transcendental principles, but rather a historically contingent and emergent construct-a
perception rather than fact-which shifts along with power relations. We stress that neither the
demonization and prohibition nor the positive valuing and encouragement of gambling is more
moral or humanitarian a process than the other. Indeed, the morally guided and socially
conscious anti-gambling discourses of the past were deeply implicated in the development of
capitalism and the regulation of the working class. Despite common functions, however, it is
informative to contrast the starkly divergent composition of past and present truths of
gambling.
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In England, at the turn of the century, Lieutenant Colonel Seton Churchill expressed a
view on gambling that represented, until recently, a dominant, but not always practiced, public
perspective in the United States:
Gambling is not only opposed to religion, it is anti-social. The gambler
produces no wealth, and further, his influence tends to unsettle others and
impair their powers of work. It is. therefore the duty, not of religious people
only, to wage war with this growing evil, but of every philanthropist, every
statesman, every legislator, every magistrate, every patriot (Churchill
1905:70).
Using this statement (and by implication, the context which made it possible) as a foil for our
analysis of a pro-gambling discourse, we ask: how do each of these social actors-the
philanthropist, the statesman, the legislator, the magistrate, and the patriot-today engage in a
dialogue with gambling?
Overwhelmingly, businesses and state governments have recently worked to publicly
represent the activity in a refashioned, positive light. This is not to say that discussions of
immorality and sinfulness have been repressed; rather, there has been a efflorescence of active,
strategic and public operations working to oppose and devalue this strain of discourse-it has
been a productive reworking, with actors investing in institutions of legalized gambling on
interdependent practical and cultural fronts.
The 1953 legislative motion, for instance, on the state's power to license entry into
the Nevada casino industry, in order to restrict the influx of gangsters to the market (which,
ironically, allowed the gambling industry to expand), was presented as a measure meant "to
better protect the public health, safety, morals, good order, and general welfare..." of
Nevada's inhabitants (Skolnick 1978:115). Here the strategy is to portray the expansion of
gambling in a moralistic light-it can "protect" citizens.
Frederic Jameson claims that the historical progression of capitalism has always
involved the concomitant and gradual anesthetization of the public at large to new cultural
forms purveyed. This habituation is achieved through the normalization of an ethos which was
previously regarded as "variously ugly, dissonant, obscure, scandalous, immoral, subversive,
and generally 'antisocial"' (1990:4). With regard to gambling this process is clearly exhibited
in the statements presented earlier by gambling proponents Wynn and Macomber.
As we have seen in the case of economic legitimation, the discourse generated around
formerly unofficial practices of gambling takes advantage of the existing discursive field as its
symbolic capital-drawing from it, synecdochically inserting itself within, synchronizing with
it. For instance, arguments developed by the industry and deployed for purposes of
legitimating its expansion and attracting additional clientele have been influenced and
buttressed by historically particular cultural/political circumstances within the United States. A
current example would be the latest campaign by casino image makers to receive G-ratings.
Catering to the family no -doubt coincides with the family values rhetoric that has emanated
from the White House over the last twelve years.
While the moralization and consequent spread of commercialized casino gambling
can be attributed to the strategic concatenations between moral and political discourses, we are
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not implying that these validating arguments were developed specifically for the purpose of
legitimating the casino industry. The complex of discourses which today contributes to the
proliferation of the gaming industry is largely the result of a piecemeal accrual of previously
disconnected rhetoric with diverse historical and institutional origins and which operate
according to their own dynamics. The arguments constructed in favor of widespread, legalized
gambling selectively appropriate their components from this wide-ranging body of nonetheless
interrelated discursive formations and constructs that have arisen for various historical reasons.
These strings of borrowed associations served to legitimize gambling.
In addition to actively producing re-configured norms of legitimacy, these rhetorical
appeals often work to lessen the shock of newly sanctioned institutions by conveying an
impression of harmony between these and existing cultural norms. In other words, the forming
system of statements establishes a compatible, conciliatory relationship with the body of past
statements so as to suppress contradictions that could potentially arise when, for example,
official legislating bodies disjunctively condone lotteries and casinos.
Discrepancies and paradoxes of changing policies are circumvented by crafting a
discursive presentation that accommodates previously scandalous or offensive activities within
the realm of legitimate practice. There is a mainstreaming of cultural elements which in the
past have been negatively associated for another set of political, social and economic reasons
(not, we emphasize, because such elements are naturally antagonistic-a truth to that effect
must be historically produced). For example, those who administer or invest public money in
casino enterprises- have replaced words of negative connotation with euphemisms; an industry
member writes: "It's no accident that the state authorities refer to 'gambling' as 'gaming.' The
implications are that gaming is 'recreational' and 'respectable"' (Crevelt 1988:48).
The myriad rhetorical motions of dominant spokespeople together managed to
trnsfonn prevailing public opinion and by extension, to re-direct the actions of Americans
(and even leaders of social reform) who originally may have declined to morally tolerate or
participate in gambling (Burnham 1993:230-231, 266). Burnham suggests that the effect of
the positive valuing of gambling and casino institutions was that over time, those who had
previously embodied the moral ethos of the nation came to appear as the social deviants, even
labeled as setting a bad example (1993:4). John P. Adams, for instance, notes that people
opposing governmental sanction of gambling have gradually been positioned as an anti-social
force by those who advocate the activity. As individuals:
...they resist a phenomenon that society has been conditioned to accept. "We
must fight those with self-serving interests-those who promote
anti-gambling," a state gambling official stated (1977:30).
Just as gambling has been linked to such negative things in the past, anti-gambling is posited
as embodying greed and self-interest. Bourdieu writes:
Strategies aimed at producing "regular" practices are one category, among
others, of officializing strategies, the object of which is to transmute
"egoistic", private, particular interests.. .into  disinterested, collective,
publicly avowable, legitimate interests.. .On that condition, they may
enjoy.. .the advantages accruing from.. .the symbolic profits secured by the
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approval socially conferred upon practice conforming to the official
representation of practices (1991:40).
As with the processes of gradual economic legitimation unfolding primarily through
the corporate colonization of the industry, the active strategies utilized in adapting the public
market to the pecuniary needs of casinos and state governments as capitalist entities should not
be seen as having an entirely conspiratorial, centrally organized, or monolithic force. Rather,
the incremental change in public perception of gambling should be addressed as emerging
from a set of individual actions that drew upon a variety of cultural means to achieve the ends
of their profit seeking logic (but which were dependent upon the cultural field in which they
operated for inspiration).
To frame our understanding of how the piecemeal process of gambling's positive
valuing (its officialization) was effected in strategic ways through the medium of public
rhetoric, we explore the relevant context as it has evolved. The content of the public discourse
which arose around gambling advocacy was not randomly comprised; not only was it
composed in dialogue with other discourses, but was also in a relationship of dependency with
a whole play of economic, political, and social change that provided the matrix in which the
discourse located itself and from which it emerged.
Thus, a moment within the flux of a larger process of continual adjustment is what
provided a ripe ground for the moral alignments discussed here-ones that would nurture the
blossoming casino industry-to take root and grow. Specifically, we look at the context
provided by the historically relative constructs of leisure time, the individual consumer and
liberalist free choice. How do casinos accommodate and how are they accommodated by these
evolving cultural notions?
Consuming Constructs: Leisure, Liberalism and the Individual
At the tun of the century, Lieutenant Colonel Churchill declared,
The nation which possesses the largest number of hard-working,
pain-staking people, and the fewest gamblers, must sooner or later assert its
superiority... Honest work is the discipline of life, and everything that tends
to unfit men to take their share in the duties of life, is a curse to a country
(1905:76).
This moral stance extends well into the twentieth century, where "unproductive" activities are
seen as appealing to desires for easy, immediate gratification and are thus regarded as
anti-social forces. This is opposed to pro-social actions and attitudes whose (modern) purpose
is to improve the social environment through the implementation of general (universal and
essential) ethical norms. In reference to American gambling, one only has to think back to
Secretary of Interior Wilbur's 1929 vilification of Las Vegas as a threat to the well being of
the Hoover Dam workers.
That one continues to encounter such an argument does not mean that it retains its
potency as a dominant tenet of social opinion makers, or, for that matter, of the middle and
working classes. We propose that this particular moral construct-of the incompatibility
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between national strength and leisure activities of the poor, especially gambling-currently
lacks resonance, and this corresponds to a historically relative loss of mooring in economic
realities. In liberal capitalist America, it is obvious that many deep-seated inequities exist, that
many people do not hold power because they have worked for it in the Protestant way.
For example, the idea that "only suckers work for their money" is grounded in a
reality that most powerful, wealthy people do not work for their money, but essentially gamble
(a Wall street broker does not produce, but rather, shifts money from hand to hand).3 Salient
models of success (and failure) in our society are held by gamblers. The Federal government's
recent actions to bail out the financially negligent Savings and Loans industry and the
bouncing of thousands of dollars worth of checks by State Representatives have made any
statements that reproach irresponsible financial speculation on behalf of the American public
unequivocally hypocritical.
Many contemporary social analysts argue that the United States' economy in the late
twentieth century is primarily controlled by people who gamble for a living. David Harvey
(1989), for example, calls the workings of contemporary capitalism-with its frenzied
speculation and untraceable flows of cash-the workings of a casino economy. According to
this argument, corporate executives are not so much interested in producing goods as they are
in producing money, or fictitious capital.4
In such a context, does the work ethic of Churchill's day become obsolete in public
discourse? In the words of gambling advocate Charles Bahmueller, in an argument prepared
for the Commission on the Review of National Policy Toward Gambling (U.S. Commission
1976):
A further weakness of the "work ethic" argument is that it is assumed that in
the late 20th century in the United States and other industrialized countries it
is somehow necessary for the state to shore up the work ethic. Such
arguments befit the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the need to create
work discipline was a legitimate concern in building the economic base for
industrialized society. But there is far less need to intensify the work ethic or
to be overly fear of it once the economic base has been firnly established
(1976:752).
The shift away from the representation of (working and middle class) gambling as a "curse to
a country" lies in a simultaneous reconfiguration of what constitutes the political subjectivity
of American citizens; the well-being of the present economy (and thus the superiority of the
nation) demands not that people work harder, but rather is measured by how much they
consume. Thus, what contributes to making a discursive reorientation possible lies within a
changed economic context. Gambling as a form of consumption is no longer targeted as the
evil which threatens the predominance of our country, because, one can argue, it simply does
not.
According to Harvey, the 1960's heralded the creation of a "throwaway society"
whose "primary effect.. .has been to emphasize the values and virtues of instantaneity... and of
disposability." Disposable income has acquired literal significance for the average middle and
working class citizen. In accordance with Jameson, Harvey argues that this effect has
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permeated more than the consumption of commodities itself: this throwaway society not only
disposes of commodities, it has also been able to "throw away values, lifestyles, stable
relationships, and attachments to things, buildings, places, people, and received ways of doing
and being" (Harvey 1989:286).
What is not explicit in Harvey's account is that in the context of such a prodigal
system, disposing of one thing-either a commodity or a set of ideas-implies acquiring
another to substitute for it. A number of problems arise: if the work ethic is discursively
portrayed as obsolete-if it is disposed of-does a leisure ethic replace it? What would such
an ethic look like? Whereas for Churchill "honest work is the discipline of life," does
Bahmueller's rhetoric imply that a type of "leisure discipline" is what must be intensified as a
"legitimate concern to building the economic base?" By extension, is it a moral stance of
anti-gambling that is now seen as what threatens to "unfit men to take their share in the duties
of life" -that is, those obligations of consumption, of leisure? Such questions provoke the
following discussion, where we address how the definition of what "curses" a country, is
inverted in a public discourse that revolves around the construct of leisure, adapting this
construct to a political-economic context of consumer culture.
Indeed, consumer culture provides the general backdrop for all of the legitimating
operations and expressions on the part of casino advocates, institutions and processes
examined in this paper; the values and meanings of gambling as they have been configured
and re-configured in the public discourse considered here are one example.
Leisure and Gambling
Leisure time as an escape from the daily discipline of work has acquired value as a
commodity that is necessary to living a full life-leisure in its many forms is today seen as a
universal need. One's own time is a time when one exercises personal freedom in choosing
what one wants to engage in. Baudrillard has explored the implications of this recipe for
leisure, arguing in Consumer Society that needs are "nothing but the most advanced form of
the rational systematization of productive forces at the individual level" (1988:43). Here, he
does not equate the exploitation of industrial workers to those of a post-industrial consumer;
rather, he suggests that the practice of consumption is in many instances analogous to the
practice of production. Consumers produce-their products are not material commodities but
their very own consumer subjectivities. The "individual producer-consumer is in a novel sense
not just an enterprise, but the entrepreneur of himself or herself' (Gordon 1991:44). The
conditions of consumer self-production are as much characterized by discipline, imposed
rhythms, and the imperative to meet quantitative and qualitative standards as are those of the
work place.
The pursuit and consumption of leisure activities is intimately tied to the efforts of
becoming a meaningful, well-balanced and normal person in modern society. Leisure time is
meant to be used wisely, reasonably, and (most ironically) productively. Nowhere is this better
illustrated than the standardization of corporate vacations where business is mixed with
pleasure. The conventional dichotomy between work and leisure is therefore blurred under late
capitalism, and we are faced with a most counterintuitive overlapping of pleasurable business
and business-like pleasure.
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Late 20th century leisure is not carnival-esque in the Rabelaisian sense of subverting
social structures. Quite to the contrary, it is constrained and institutionalized not just as a
citizen's "right or enjoyment, but as the citizen's duty.. .one is obliged to be happy, to be in
love, to be adulating/adulated, seducing/seduced, participating, euphoric, and dynamic"
(Baudrillard 1988:48). It would appear, then, that the duties of life to which Churchill referred
at the turn of the century have arrived at a new meaning today-that is, one's obligation to the
state is equated with an obligation to the self-the duty to fulfill ones own needs (for pleasure,
excitement, and fun) through the avenue of consumptive leisure, such as gambling. Leisure
and the importance attributed to it provided valuable material to draw upon in order to concoct
a pro-gambling discourse.
Leisure is often portrayed as being an active engagement-an activity as opposed to
a time to do nothing since this would be considered boring. It is a time to expend oneself and
of course, to spend oneself-free time is by no means free. Gambling fits nicely into this
concept of leisure:
there was a whole mass movement that involved seeking sensational
commercialized amusement during leisure time... in the late twentieth
century, with the rise of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas package, gambling
contributed heavily to forming ideas of what entertainment and leisure
activities and aspirations ought to consist of in American society (Burnham
1993:275-6).
In The Business of Risk, the authors write,
Commercial gambling is entering the American social structure and
assuming a place alongside sports, theme amusement parks, television,
packaged vacations, and so on as a major leisure-activity industry (Abt, et al.
1985:148).
When gambling is successfully subsumed under the mantle of, and itself contributes
to the definition of, leisure, it too acquires value, as do its characteristics. Bahmueller uses this
discursive tactic. Quoting Friedman and Savage, "even a small probability of a large reward
may have more utility than either a much larger probability of small loss or the certainty, if the
risk be rejected, of staying at the same income level" (1976: 755), Bahmueller continues:
there is a chance of his or her removal from the necessity of labor; and for
the worst-off segments of society this means the chance to escape sometimes
dreary existence, a life suffused with constant worry over money. The dream
of escape, it may be argued, has value. If one wants to buy a little fantasy, a
little hope, a few dreams of a better tomorrow-however slim the likelihood
of their becoming reality-why deprive him of it?.. .The hope provided by
some forms of gambling is still quite real and therefore of value even though
in the aggregate it cannot be fulfilled (1976:755-756).5
The idea that miserable workers and exploited people deserved some gratification, however
flawed, was one attitude that lent to the positive-valuing of gambling and the diversification of
a pro-social label. This view stands in marked contrast to that of Churchill:
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The sudden loss, or equally the sudden gain, of gambling has a most
injurious effect on the working man, producing an amount of excitement
incompatible with steady painstaking labor.. .Excitement unduly indulged,
brings about its own penalty, in making everything ordinary appear dull,
insipid, and uninteresting... [the worker's] thoughts will be directed into a
new and exciting channel, and he would find great difficulty in contenting
himself with the old routine of work (1905:77).
Beyond disputing the moral correctness of either position, working class gambling habits did
in fact threaten to upset Taylorian work rhythms in Churchill's day. It is also a fact that today
certain corporations rely more upon inciting consumption than on disciplining work forces.
That is, to advocate this indulgence does not at all contradict principles of social stability or
threaten the base of the economy as it is composed today. In fact, Bahmueller notes that
some students of gambling believe that [gambling] may be an emotional aid
to some, helping them to orient themselves to the problems and conflicts
involved by the intrusions of chance, risk, and uncertainty (1976:754-5).
Thus, gambling is even seen as an educative measure-a type of social training that
can prepare the unfortunate to compete on the free market. When articulated in this fashion,
gambling accrues not only measurable value, but therapeutic value. For instance, Igor
Kusyszen, after establishing his credibility as a university professor with a Ph.D. in
psychology and was also called upon to participate in the Commission, claims in a popular
gambling magazine,
...people continue to gamble. Why? Because it is healthy. Why? Because it
satisfies basic human needs. What are these needs? (1).. .There is the need to
know and to understand, curiosity in other words. (2) The need for
excitement, for emotional arousal. (3) The need to exercise decision-making
powers, the need to solve problems.. .Another important need which is
activated in gambling is hope. People don't gamble to win money. People
gamble with the hope of winning the bet and with some fear of losing it.
Gambling provides for the experiencing of a wide range of human
emotions-joy, ecstasy, euphoria, enthusiasm, disappointment, frustration,
sorrow, regret, pride, and courage. Gambling also provides an escape from
our worries. It releases us from our pain and socially-inflicted anxieties. It
allows us to dream. It allows us to be our own bosses. It gives us a sense of
confidence in our actions and provides us with a feeling of freedom
(1974:14).
Erving Goffman's oft-cited analysis (1967) of the contemporary need for
action-consequential activity-to confront the "primordial bases of fatefulness" and
alleviating the monotony and anonymous tendencies of modem life is exemplary of the
academic arguments that are frequently drawn upon to buttress the process of legitimation.6
Risk, chance, hope, fantasy-to circumscribe the availability of an activity that has
been articulated as such a benefit-laden product is to fail to operate from another set of
legitimized discursive truths-those constitutional tenets that ensure every American the right
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to pursue happiness (presented as pleasure). If gambling is allowed to exist on the free market,
the line goes, we will all be better off Here, consumer welfare is measured-as with other
commodity markets-in terms of access to goods. Gambling is presented as having potential
utility for society in general. Frederic Stocker, an economic professor, describes this argument:
If gambling is simply an ordinary consumer product, consumers individually
and collectively are clearly better off if allowed to spend their money on [it]
than they would be if prohibited by law from gratifying their penchant to
gamble. Consumer welfare, in other words, is increased (1977:34).
Within a liberal democratic discourse, then, anti-gambling becomes deprivation,
patemalism, and regulation of that crucial entity-leisure time-conceived of as belonging to
each person, their rightful property as individuals.
Liberalism, the Individual and Gambling
The laissez faire government depends upon the conduct of individuals who
are parts of a population and subjects of particular, personal interests.. .This
individual being, the subject of particular interests, represents a new figure
of social and political subjectivity, the prototype of "economic man," who
will become the correlate and instrument of a new art of government
(Burchell 1991:127).
Under liberalism, the primary forces shaping social subjectivity are an individual's
self interest and the economic rationality utilized to realize this interest. Liberalism posits "the
subject's liberty as the locus of governing's efficiency.. .neo-liberalism's ambition is to
implicate the individual citizen into a market game" (Gordon 1991:36). The body of
individualizing discourses and techniques that have been emphasized around the individual as
owner of specific rights (a subject of interest) revolves upon "an area currently given highest
moral value; the capacity to exercise choice" (Strathern 1992:193):
Interest, then, functions as the principle of a personal choice which is
unconditionally subjective or private.. .it makes the individual an isolated
atom of preference-motivated choice and action. It is an immediately and
absolutely subjective form of the individual will.. .(Burchell 1991:130).
The individual-consumer is "reconceived as a person in terms of 'personal' criteria,
of which the ability to exercise choice became crucial" (Stratiern 1992:124). The "positing of
the fundamental human faculty of choice" (Gordon 1991:43) is a strategic element of
liberalism, leisure as consumption, and of gambling discourse:
Through all of these strategies and arguments on behalf of [gambling].. .ran
a theme that provided a rational argument for partisans; behavior in the area
of the attractive vices was strictly a matter of personal freedom, like any
taste or style.. .Spokespersons of [gambling] attempted to cast the world
in personal terms, not only their own individual freedom but personal
actions of other people.. .Those proponents of [gambling] who assumed the
mantle of righteousness emphasized ethics, standards, and morals in terms of
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the individual... [they] cited and praised anyone who argued for individual
liberty (Burnham 1993:283-287).
Liberal govemment is, therefore, privatized government-it radiates from individuals who
remain free to pursue happiness as long as the resultant actions do not infringe upon another
individual's capacity to exercise choice and thereby act in his or her self s best interest. These
principles are frequently invoked by members of the gambling industry. Engaging in gambling
has been discursively portrayed as a rational decision by a responsible person; the constructs
of free will, personal choice and responsibility being produced in the cultural field were
harnessed to the needs of business interests, posited in such a way as to raise the construct of
the individual to an almost holy level. Anti-gambling is depicted as violating this sacred unit.
"Both consumers and providers of services.. .reacted with indignation to the suggestion that
gamblers were mindless victims" (Burnham 1993:285).
Corporate casinos, capitalizing on the notion of the individual, often present
themselves as discrete, individual entities and thus deserving of the same rights to choice and
freedom as people:
Super-private, super-individualistic, [corporations] seem only larger versions
of the private individual. There is, we might say, no perceived change of
scale (of different orders or domains) between the individual person and
private company, only a magnification or diminution along the same scale of
virtues (Strathern 1992:141-142).7
The privatization of government within the individual is starkly divergent from the
organizing principles of pastoral figures such as Anthony Comstock and Seton Churchill, who
are characterized by their propensity to act in others best interests. Within a government of
liberalism, such advocates of social morality are governmental obstacles and are attacked as
strident paternalists. When motions that emphasize common values and protective measures
are put forward in opposition to gambling, the discursive properties of free will lead to the
logical implication that personal choice should not be dictated by the condescending
legislature of a paternalistic government.
Such rhetoric forges an alliance with the masses, arguing from a morally righteous
position that equal access to legalized gambling must be enacted in defense of common
persons' constitutional right to choose how to spend their ieisure time. For example, when
psychologists protest that more legalized gambling will result in a higher instance of
compulsive gambling (and thus debt, crime, and so on), advocates of the exercise of personal
judgment and responsibility
warn against what [they] called the "new paternalism" of health advise and
regulation, appealing to the liberties of both those in business enterprise and
consumers (Burnham 1993:286).8
Posing the debate in such terms operates as does Bordieu's officializing
strategy-egoistic, self-serving concerns are conflated with collective interest. Christo Anton,
executive director of the Maine State Lottery Commission, testified at the Commission
hearing: "[we] believe that the fairest way of deciding the people's will is by referendum, and
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that the Federal Government should not disenfranchise those who saw fit to vote for lottery in
their various States" (U.S. Commission 1976).
Those who object to the social ramifications of institutions such as the lottery,
accusing it of being a regressive tax, encounter a discourse which treats the lottery as a
purchase, "a form of discretionary spending-beyond the realm and responsibility of the state"
(Kaplan 1990:294). Again, leisure time is not discursively considered to be the concern of
society, but rather the property of the individual, and not to be meddled with.
The mood around gambling and the individual, clearly reinforced by the
de-regulatory, neo-liberalist Reaganite dogma of the 1980's, is characterized by a prevailing
attitude that "rules embodying moral standards [are] not appropriate for social action"
(Burnham 1993:284)-enacting morals into laws is labeled as an imposition of subjective,
cultural and narrow-minded views on citizens-a violation of individuality as it has been
defined.
The situation is radically different in other capitalist democracies; Eadington's
contrast of the United States with the regulative policies and accompanying rationales in Great
Britain illuminates the particularity of the discourse crafted though corporate America's
rhetoric. In general, English policy regards advertising's stimulation of the gambler not as
expansive of individuals' choice and convenience, but rather as having a diminishing effect on
the capacity to choose (if one wants to gamble, it is assumed, one will seek the activity out;
advertising is seen as creating needs rather than responding to some innate demand).9 In the
States, however, maximizing exploitation of the consumer goes hand in hand with the
assumption that individuals are rational and thus responsible for their own choices;
...whereas homo economicus originally meant that subject the springs of
whose activity must remain forever untouchable by government, the
American neo-liberal homo economicus is manipulatable man, man who is
perpetually responsive to modifications in his environment. Economic
government here joins hands with behaviorism (Gordon 1991:43).
Writing in Thatcher's more recent England, Marilyn Strathern notes that
the individual does not just follow convention or have it imposed but "does"
convention, that is, shows his or her capacity for morality, and thus makes
explicit the fact that moral behavior is contingent on the capacity for choice.
But what the choice should be between, the norms and canons of behavior,
no longer need lie in institutions outside the individual. The person is his or
her own reference point, a position that requires no negotiation or bargaining
wit others, least of all with a collective will (1992:162).
Bahmueller's narrative grounds the rhetorical utilization of the construct of democracy and
choice within the discourse of gambling.10
In a democratic society it does not seem appropriate that government,
Federal or State, direct the use of leisure time. No doubt some critics would
call many leisure activities wastes of time, and perhaps much leisure in
America could be better spent; but forbidding what some find wasteful and
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others pleasurable in a democracy is seldom a matter of public policy but
something left instead to private debate and choice...it would seem contrary
to democratic practice for the Federal government, in the absence of
overwhelming reasons to the contrary, to attempt within its own limited
authority to countermand such choices [i.e. to gamble]; and opponents
should be prepared to answer why these small springs of hope ought to be
plugged up (1976:751,756).
One of the most potent arguments gambling advocates garnered from the evolving
field of resonant constructs surrounding choice and individual responsibility was revealed in
the term victimless crime, coined in the late twentieth century. The label was applied to "bad
habits" such as drinking, swearing, and gambling, implying such acts were "only socially
opprobrious, rather than seriously harmful" (Skolnick 1978:30)-they suffered from being
thought of in the public eye as deviant, and if any harm were incurred by them, it would only
affect the acting individual and would have no negative impact on the general public. This
rationalization for removing social sanctions from acts such as gambling professed that
persons who suffered were at fault for not exercising proper judgment and rationality-for
choosing to abuse what was mere relaxation and entertainment for responsible individuals.
Skolnick notes that an "aspect of the victimless crime is its commercial potential as a
legitimate business enterprise. The classic victim crimes enjoy no such potential" (1978:31).
The victimless crime construct thereby absolved those in the gambling business from social
responsibility, and placed individual responsibility on those who chose to consume what the
businesses offered them; gambling advocates "blame the victim, a tactic well known by that
name: those stupid enough to believe advertising should be cheated" (Burnham 1993:271).
This reasoning constituted a strategy that succeeded in gaining not only active supporters but
also tolerance on the part of those who came not to care what others did: it was their choice.
Burnham notes a further ramification of the cultural stress on the individual and
her/his will.
Particularly in the late twentieth century, a secular version of an individual
moral outlook, the so-called therapeutic view, was also markedly serviceable
for merchandisers.. .socially disruptive behavior.. .became an individual
illness of maladaptation. . .(1993:285).
Problems manifest in society were not to be regarded as social ills but rather as individuals'
disease-reatable through therapy and consequently not a concern to the realm of policy
making when thus deflected:
Large numbers of ordinary citizens gambled repeatedly for recreation. This
social condition created by states in their efforts to generate revenue without
taxation also allowed the argument that if most people could control their
gamblinig behavior, those who could not must be suffering from a behavior
disorder, perhaps even a disease (Abt et al. 1991:664).
Harrah's Employee Task Force, mobilized to confront the potential profit-threat of
compulsive gambling, displayed this attitude:
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It is important to point out that most customers and employees of Harrah's
casinos are normal adults enjoying recreation.. .Again, it should be
emphasized that the vast majority.. .are responsible adults (Sherman
1991:674,677).
In 1980, when allowed into the DSM-III-R manual by the American Psychiatric Association
as a Disorder of Impulse Control, "the disease model has been accepted as a legitimate
explanation for inappropriate gambling" (Rosencrance 1989:147).
A further strategic rationalization on the part of those who sought to legitimate the
industry they advocated was to fund and actively encourage self-help groups. The Hanrah's
Task Force was proud to contribute a founding grant to the Nevada Council on Compulsive
Gambling in 1989 "to allow the group to establish its first ever office in Las Vegas and create
the first toll-free telephone referral number for problem gamblers in the state of Nevada
(Sherman 1991:675) thereby not only maintaining what can be seen as an actual extremity to
the apparatus that sustains the casino entity,1 l but in the process, conferring upon themselves a
fiurther ethos of civic virtue as demonstrated by their philanthropic actions.
The new base for pro-gambling self-righteousness, then, lay in the idea that
individual standards, and not those of the community were to be the basis for judging conduct.
The discursively formed notion that pre-existing, natural standards embodied in the individual
should inform legislative and economic changes in policy was a powerful means of deflecting
attention from and obscuring the processes actively undertaken by government and business to
bestow a positive moral ethos upon a legalized, expanding gambling industry at both the state
and corporate levels. Rather than characterizing the purpose of such re-articulations as being to
incite and direct behavior, they were seen as ultimately responsive to the real voice of
consumer demand-ofjustice.
But policy makers found more practically grounded sites of rhetorical investment
upon which to rationalize the increased legalization of the lottery and gambling industry as the
right thing to do. A New Jersey State Senator stated,
For those with little education and few skills, poor credit and scant hope of
salary advancement, playing the numbers may be the only non criminal
opportunity they have to get some bread to supplement a disgracefully low
wage.. .(Bahmueller 1976:756).
Here a politician has presented himself as the white knight to his constituents-providing to
them deserved opportunities to become rich through gambling. Through characterizing the
industry he supports not only as commercially innocuous but as civically virtuous, he himself
comes to sound like a social reformer, a friend to the people. In the 1970's, Burnham notes,
it became acceptable for someone to go into business to make money on
such habits, as well as to "argue from high moral ground and even self
righteously, not only invoking 'fieedom' but particularly the family..."
(1993:270).
That is, not only did advocates portray themselves as responsive to the fimdamental
desires or needs of Americans to choose their rightful mode of leisure time; eventually, an
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argument became that casinos were too important an industry to undermine, and that such a
motion would incur great social costs. Within the discursive formation, casinos not only cater
to the construct of the individual, but ironically, also become socially beneficial, community
oriented philanthropic projects. Residual emphases on democratic common good are not
contradictory to a process that operates by drawing on any culturally resonant themes available
for its utilization. For instance,
emphasizing creation of jobs becomes the ultimate reply to those whose
work ethic has caused them to oppose gambling on the bases of principal.
Gambling is described as a producer of jobs rather than a parasite sapping
the resources of those who work (Adams 1977:28).
In the Commission hearings, testimonies repeatedly referred to jobs-as well as the
types of people who benefited from these jobs-as legitimating forces for the industry. A
casino owner claims,
Many men and women use the gambling industry as a means of financing
their education. Judges, nuclear scientists, doctor and lawyers have worked
as gambling employees to pay their college tuition (Nelson in U.S.
Commission 1976:315).
Kenny Guinn, Superintendent of Schools in Las Vegas' Clark County stated, "Many of the
teachers have paid for their education by working in casino. Many work during the summer
vacation as keno runners" (U.S. Commission 1976). The fact that such (perhaps extraneous)
references are invoked during these proceedings attests to their resonance as symbolic capital
within the discursive formation of pro-gambling.
Additionally, a virtuous ethos is attributed to casinos through highly publicized
philanthropic endeavors. In 1950, McDonald wrote:
The gambling establishments...in order to impress public opinion, are the
largest contributors to every civic endeavor, from the community chest to
the erection and maintenance of churches. One establishment spends
120,000 per year for scholarships for high school students who want to
attend the University of Nevada (McDonald in Sanders 1973:98).
In 1986, several members of Nevada's gaming industry formed the Nevada Gaming
Foundation for Educational Excellence, which aids schools, students going to college, and
teachers: "the list of contributors to the foundation reads like a who's-who of the casino-hotel
industry" (Legato 1986:22-23).
A self-congratulatory tone is evident throughout the gaming business. The president
of the National Association of Off Track Betting conveyed a positive image at the Gaming
Conference:
We're not in the gambling business. We're in the public revenue business.
We're in the anti-crime business. Ours is a marvelous, wonderful industry,
and we can do a real job for government (Adams 1977:29).
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The notion that casinos help the public by providing regulated versions of gambling activities
once offered by less visible, less accessible crime groups is exploited to its fullest in the
following testimony by Charles Carella, executive director of the New Jersey State Lottery
Commission:
New Jersey envisions lotteries not only as revenue-raising devices but as a
method of combating organized crime by legalizing one of its major sources
of income. It believes that present Federal restrictions severely hamper this
effort.. .positive action must be taken to reassure the public that it is legal to
purchase a lottery ticket (U.S. Commission 1976:36).
Regarding the 1976 Atlantic City pro-legalization, Abt, Smith, and Christiansen wrote:
Issues.. .do not become social issues unless they are so identified-and the
manager of the campaign, a California political consultant named Sanford
Weiner, carefully framed the debate to shift the discussion from the possibly
adverse effects of casinos to the economic benefits of legalization
(1985: 145).
Among the benefits he stressed were funds for the elderly, diminution of crime, and the
revitalization of a depressed community. 12
Indeed, the argument that the availability of gambling activities provides a convenient
source of revenue is a time honored incentive for further legitimating its expansion. This has
proven to be the most politically effective "cover" for legalization. By
augmenting existing funds with "painless" and "voluntary" gambling taxes
such measures acquire universal political, and popular, appeal: no one likes
involuntary taxes (Abt, et. al. 1985:157).13
Gerald Patronite, Executive Director of the Ohio Lottery, subtly coaxes approval for legalized
gaming.
When money runs out then taxes increase, and this endangers the life of
politicians. Politicians don't like to tax. The last thing a politician wants to
do is tax his constituents in a democracy (Adams 1977:28).
Bahmueller concurs, "Democratic principles call for legalization where majorities approve;
illegality is impractical because it leads to bad public consequences and to loss of revenue"
(1976:767-768).
Voting for casinos becomes a respectable thing to do-a vote for the casinos
was a vote to restore a city...Who could vote no on the referendum
question? Obviously only those who wanted to impose their narrow personal
morals on the whole population and did not care for their community.
Public-spirited persons would vote for the casino! It was the patriotic thing
to do! (Adams 1977:26-27)
Again, we see an emphasis on public-spiritedness that is oddly parallel to that of Churchill and
Comstock, although gambling is cast in a patriotic rather than demonic role.
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The state of Nevada levies no personal income taxes on residents-the casinos pay it
all. The situation becomes one in which it is easy to construct an argument that what is good
for casinos is good for the constituents of the State of Nevada. This claim is one that is
reinforced by the incredible growth of the city and the jobs available there. Today few
newspapers would be inclined, or bold enough, to place the words "repeal Nevada's
statehood" on their front pages. If anything, Las Vegas has become an icon to imitate rather
than an eyesore to nationally despise.
In this paper we have attempted to chart the process by which a pariah industry whose
product was pleasure worked to overcome its illegitimate status and become an acceptable
entity on both economic and moral fronts in American society. Essential to this incremental
shift, was the close relationship between the new image attained on the state and business
levels, and the changed public perception of gambling-they are recursive, re-producing each
other. Advocates for gambling's expansion culled a broad range of legitimating factors from
the greater field, all of which converged upon the space of this argument, upon the gambling
industry as a positive entity.
By presenting the historically contingent progression of the gambling industry's
arguments for expansion we aimed to open these cultural artifacts to close scrutiny and careful
dissection. In the 1970's, for a range of reasons, discursive strategies sought to re-articulate the
moral economy of gambling by crafting a truth that was dependent upon the larger matrix of
overlapping constructs of consumption, leisure, liberalism, choice and the individual-subject.
A particularly striking incremental process that implicated each of these elements was
the downward diffusion of moral responsibility which transpired. It appears that federal
government, claiming to relinquish a paternalistic role, handed such responsibility over to the
states, who in turn displaced this onto prominent figures in the gambling industry. Casino
owners, exercising responsibility for their own actions under an evolving liberal-democratic
jargon of legal and economic subjecthood, then placed this responsibility upon individual
consumers, representing them as freely choosing, rational units fully accountable for their own
actions.
Here, notions of free will, choice and the precedence of the individual subject, whose
economic self-interest is posited as that which ultimately drives the whole game, work to
distribute responsibility in a manner that is revealed to be a multi-leveled deflection of
accountability, motivated by a series of institutional self-interests which ultimately converge
upon (and profit from) an atomistic, self-governing citizen.
Of course, this process of governmental privatization whereby moral responsibility is
displaced onto the individual is not a perfectly linear trickle down effect; rather, discursive
forces are exerted simultaneously from a variety of institutions and are reproduced in the
public perception of modern political, economic subjecthood. We have attempted to elucidate
how these forces played themselves out through representations of the activity of gambling.
The intention of this case study was to provide a lens through which it was possible to evaluate
larger themes in contemporary society.
Morality, as we have seen through our examination of gambling, is rendered
irrelevant as a social concern when conflated with the responsibility of personal choice. The
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"individual person comes to contain within him or herself the knowledge for right acting, and
this becomes his or her own source of morality" (Strathern 1992:158). This dual process of
moral privatization and its social abnegation are significant. Not withstanding historical
examples of corruption with respect to the "social concerns" of paternalistic governing,
perhaps we should more carefully consider our hasty acceptance of the liberalist alternative of
self-interest-presented as naturally free of other interests.
What concrete basis do we have for assuming that a historically produced and
govemed construct of choice is any more purely representative of an individual's best interest
than a government's actions? There is no reason why a mode of governing that operates by
encouraging us to govern ourselves does not act in its own interests, and thus should not be
exempt from suspicion. Clearly, if we were to accept without question that the bestowal of a
responsibility to freely choose is naturally liberating, we would have learned little from our
study of the historically emergent re-articulation of such responsibility, revealed not to have
essential properties but rather to be culturally constituted in different ways at distinct points in
time and space.
Notes
1. Heretofore abbreviated as Commission in the text and as U.S. Commission in references.
2. By cultural legitimation we are referring to a process whereby shared meanings and
values are actively produced, maintained, altered.
Culture is made up of rules of interpretation and symbols in which these rules
may be carried and embodied. Once such rules are historically established, they
become available for normal, everyday understanding... (Fjellman 1992:26).
3. Readers wary of such a statement might be interested in a quote from the early 1880's:
American gambling, however, presents some distinctively characteristic
features. In the first place it is mainly conducted on the floor of the exchange,
rather than in public gaming rooms. Tle Stock and Produce Exchanges are
sapping the very vitals of the country's morality. For "stakes" are substituted
"margins;" for "winnings" read "profits;" while the designation of "players" is
changed into the more euphonious appellation of "speculators." With these
changes in nomenclature, the game is the same in principle; the same in the
method of its manipulation; the same in its demoralizing results (Quinn
1883:185-86).
4. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate the aforementioned position, we
acknowledge that the views expressed by analysts such as Harvey, if not entirely accurate,
are accepted by many, and that their circulation is perpetuated by the heavy attention this
country's academics and media give them. While not necessarily valid, such notions do
hold meaning for many Americans and lead to the formation of opinions, moral positions,
and practices, and therefore generate palpable consequences.
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5. Bahmueller's argument included the appeal that gambling's hope-value should be allotted
to those whose real hope was slim: "Whatever the current mythology may be, it is a matter
of fact that the vast majority of today's poor, unless social policy provides for a massive
redistribution of wealth, cannot hope to escape the foul conditions of much of urban
America, however hard they work" (1976.756).
6. Indeed, the academic and pseudo-scientific literature addressing gambling has been part
and parcel of the re-articulation of gambling, especially as it relates to leisure and its
social role. However, the studies of gambling are as wide-ranging as the political agendas.
Veblen disparaged it from an social evolutionary standpoint, arguing that it stunted
industrial society; marxists have similarly criticized it, arguing that gambling is integral to
the perpetuation of the capitalist order-another opiate of the masses. Yet the major
sociological-functional positions of the 1970's were laudatory.
7.  In "Corporations and Free Speech," Mark Tuschnet asserts that positing the corporation as
person has been a much-utilized strategy in recent years for conferring constitutional
rights of individuals upon corporate bodies (1982).
8.  Additionally, casinos have argued that to deny compulsive individuals access to their
facilities would be to participate in non-value-maximizing behavior (sacrificing profits to
fulfill other objectives). In turn, the property's stock's market value would drop-the firm
would become a target for takeover by those who recognize the undervalued stock,
pathological gamblers. Thus, unless a casino concentrates on bottom line performance,
stockholders (and the revenue-receiving public) will suffer (Eadington 1989:178). Indeed,
some argue that the money problem gamblers lose is "going to governments, to pay wages
and to pay for other goods and services. In other words, many people are benefiting from
their gambling" (Bybee 1988:302).
9.  In Britain, casinos are thought to be parasitic and damaging to local populations: if judged
appropriate, they are required to protect individuals from themselves by banning their
entry; broad appeals are proscribed and advertising prohibited; signage is severely
limited; one can only play when a member of a club, and must wait 48 hours after signing
up  to  play-this is intended  to  prevent impulse  gambling; there is no
potentially-impairing alcohol permitted; no entertainment to provide ulterior motives for
membership; no credit extended to players; no paycheck cashing (Eadington
1989:180-182).
10. In the 1940's, although no doubt scoffed at in his day, Lillard anticipated what was later to
become a dominant and legitimate view.
The Nevada cities do not prohibit "indulgences" that belong in the Western
towns of tradition. Law frees the individual instead of repressing him. The
Puritan is out of power, the democrat in power. It is assumed that men are
fundamentally good, that pleasure is justifiable, that necessity is no crime
(1942:319).
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11.    The Ohio Council on Compulsive Gambling came out in favor of the casino
gambling initiative for Lorain, Ohio, in 1990, since it would have meant
increased funds for its treatnent programs (Rose 1991:66).
Clearly, an organization such as this one reproduces the idea of individual
disease-helping themselves is their ultimate initiative. An attorney and consultant for
casinos calls for problem gamblers, researchers, and therapists to recognize that
individuals need to take responsibility for their own actions because there is movement
attempting to make society, corporations, or government responsible for everyffiing
negative and relieve individuals of responsibility. 'Failure to resist impulses to gamble
means to me that the problem-and the solution-is found within the individual" Gaming
entities should direct more of their charitable contribution budget to this area. Not because
they are to blame for the problem, but because it is a problem that affects people
important to them-customers and their employees (Bybee 1988:301-307).
12. The authors continue: "Usually even this tactic is not required: the economic and political
power for Big Gambling give it considerable ability to set news media agendas." They
relate how a carefully and brilliantly executed campaign p ae d the voting public that
the industry's failure to live up to projections was due to over-regulation (Abt, et. al.
1985:146).
13. In a maneuver that is "too subtle to constitute a defect within the generally imprecise
nature of legislative discourse," States receive an additional benefit by taxing such
sumptuary taxation on the grounds of discouraging immoral behavior (Abt, et al. 1985:
158).
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