Gambling Cultures (Culture)

GAMBLING CULTURES From bingo in the United Kingdom, to rdslots in Las Vegas and Sydney, and ‘jambo’ in Cameroon, gambling is a feature of societies across the world. Gambling Cultures explores the complex relationship between cash and culture as gambling emerges as a global phenomenon. Traditional accounts of gambling’s pleasures and dangers talk in terms of addiction, compulsion, greed, profit and play. By contrast, this work focuses on modern gambling as it has emerged as a commercial industry, analyses the ambiguous relationship between morality and risk taking and looks at the contradictory stance of governments. Providing a range of case studies from Africa, Australia, the USA and Europe, Gambling Cultures offers a unique, comparative framework for the historical and cultural analysis of contemporary gambling practices. Contributors: Vicki Abt, Gabrielle A.Brenner, Mark Dickerson, Rachael Dixey, David Dixon, John Dombrink, William R.Eadington, Sytze Kingma, Martial Lipeb, David Miers, Wendy Selby, Jean-Michel Servet, James F.Smith, Michael Walker, Peter Williams. Editor: Jan McMillen is Chairperson of the Australian Institute of Gambling Research and lectures in public policy at the Queensland University of Technology.

CULTURE: POLICIES AND POLITICS Series editors: Tony Bennett, Jennifer Craik, Ian Hunter, Colin Mercer and Dugald Williamson

What are the relations between cultural policies and cultural politics? Too often, none at all. In the history of cultural studies so far, there has been no shortage of discussion of cultural politics. Only rarely, however, have such discussions taken account of the policy instruments through which cultural activities and institutions are funded and regulated in the mundane politics of bureaucratic and corporate life. Culture: Policies and Politics addresses this imbalance. The books in this series interrogate the role of culture in the organization of social relations of power, including those of class, nation, ethnicity and gender. They also explore the ways in which political agendas in these areas are related to, and shaped by, policy processes and outcomes. In its commitment to the need for a fuller and clearer policy calculus in the cultural sphere, Culture: Policies and Politics aims to promote a significant transformation in the political ambit and orientation of cultural studies and related fields. ROCK AND POPULAR MUSIC: politics, policies, institutions Edited by: Tony Bennett, Simon Frith, Lawrence Grossberg, John Shepherd, Graeme Turner BIRTH OF THE MUSEUM: History, Theory, Politics Tony Bennett FILM POLICY Edited by: Albert Moran

GAMBLING CULTURES Studies in history and interpretation

Edited by Jan McMillen

London and New York

First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an International Thomson Publishing company This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1996 Collection and editorial material, Jan McMillen; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-99350-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN - (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-06820-7 (Print Edition)

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7 8

9

10

List of illustrations

vii

List of contributors

viii

INTRODUCTION Jan McMillen UNDERSTANDING GAMBLING: HISTORY, CONCEPTS AND THEORIES Jan McMillen GAMBLING AND THE LEGALISATION OF VICE: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, PUBLIC HEALTH AND PUBLIC POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES John Dombrink SOCIAL EVIL OR SOCIAL GOOD? LOTTERIES AND STATE REGULATION IN AUSTRALIA AND THE UNITED STATES Wendy Selby ILLEGAL BETTING IN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALIA: CONTRASTS IN CONTROL STRATEGIES AND CULTURES David Dixon WHEN IT’S BAD IT’S BETTER: CONFLICTING IMAGES OF GAMBLING IN AMERICAN CULTURE James F.Smith REPRESENTATIONS OF GAMBLING IN AUSTRALIAN POPULAR CULTURE Peter Williams BINGO IN BRITAIN: AN ANALYSIS OF GENDER AND CLASS Rachael Dixey WHY ‘SLOTS’ EQUALS ‘GRIND’ IN ANY LANGUAGE: THE CROSSCULTURAL POPULARITY OF THE SLOT MACHINE Mark Dickerson GAMBLING IN CAMEROON AND SENEGAL: A RESPONSE TO CRISIS? Gabrielle A.Brenner, Martial Lipeb and Jean-Michel Servet THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE EXPANSION AND GROWTH OF COMMERCIAL GAMBLING IN THE UNITED STATES Vicki Abt

1 6

40

60

79

93

107

125 140

153

164

11 A SIGN OF THE TIMES: THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF GAMING IN THE NETHERLANDS Sytze Kingma 12 THE MEDICALISATION OF GAMBLING AS AN ‘ADDICTION’ Michael Walker 13 ETHICAL AND POLICY CONSIDERATIONS IN THE SPREAD OF COMMERCIAL GAMBLING William R.Eadington 14 FROM GLAMOUR TO GRIND: THE GLOBALISATION OF CASINOS Jan McMillen 15 OBJECTIVES AND SYSTEMS IN THE REGULATION OF COMMERCIAL GAMBLING David Miers Index

182

204 222

240 263

285

ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES

11.1

Distribution of casinos in the Netherlands, 1990

184

11.2

Gaming legislation in the Netherlands

189

TABLES

8.1

Frequency of gambling by form by adults in one Australian state (NSW) where all three forms had been available for at least ten years(%)

8.2

Average stake of adult gamblers in one Australian state (NSW) 144 on lottery, slots and off-course betting (A$)

8.3

Gambling characteristics of low/medium-, high-frequency and problem slots players

147

9.1

Preferred gambling type, Senegal(%)

155

9.2

Age distribution: lottery players and the total Cameroonian population

157

9.3

Age distribution: lottery players and the total Senegalese population

158

11.1 Consumer expenditures on legal gambling (million guilders)

142

187

12.1 Comparison of the DSM IIIR criteria for substance dependence 205 and pathological gambling 15.1 Commercial gambling outlets in the European Community

266

CONTRIBUTORS Vicki Abt has written extensively on the management of gambling and is co-author of The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America (University of Kansas Press, 1985). Dr Abt is a board member on the National Council of Problem Gambling and has been a book review editor for the Journal of Gambling Studies. She is Professor of Sociology at Penn State University, and is currently writing a book on the role of the media on changing definitions of deviance. Gabrielle A.Brenner is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Business School of the University of Montreal. She has published widely on gambling, including her book with R.Brenner, Gambling and Speculation (Cambridge University Press, 1990). She has done consulting work for a number of organisations, including the World Bank, UNIDO and CIDA. Mark Dickerson is Executive Director of the Australian Institute for Gambling Research and Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur. He has conducted a sequence of studies exploring the psychological processes of problem gambling. More recently he has conducted multidisciplinary research into the social impacts of gaming machines, and advised governments on related policy issues. Rachael Dixey is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Health and Social Care, Leeds Metropolitan University, England. She is currently researching women’s leisure and health. David Dixon is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales in Sydney. He is the author of From Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking, Anti-gambling and the Law (Clarendon Press, 1991) and Law in Policing: Legal Regulation and Policing Practices (Clarendon Press, forthcoming), and is editor of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology. John Dombrink is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. He has published numerous articles on the criminal law and vice, including several on gambling, and is author of The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos (University of Nevada, 1990, with William N. Thompson). He is currently working on an analysis of the legalisation of physician-assisted suicide in the United States. William R.Eadington is Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commerical Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has written over fifty articles and edited five books that deal with various aspects of gambling and public policy. Dr Eadington has organised the International Conferences on Gambling and Risk-taking since 1974 which provide a forum for researchers in the field from several continents. He has also served as a consultant to private and public sector gambling organisations. Sytze Kingma is a sociologist with a general interest in consumer culture. He is a Research Fellow at the Universities of Tilburg and Amsterdam. He also teaches

sociology at the Tilburg Academy of Architecture and manages Pleasure Watch, a research and consultancy agency. Martial Lipeb lectures in management at the ESSEC of Douala (Cameroon), and is the editor of the Cameroon Review of Management. His field of interest includes savings in the informal sector—especially the phenomena of rotative savings and loans associations—and the role of lotteries in the African context. Jan McMillen lectures in public policy in the Faculty of Business, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She has published widely on gambling development and casino policy, and has been appointed to independent gaming commissions in Victoria and Queensland. She also chairs the Australian Institute for Gambling Research based at the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur. David Miers is a Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Professional Legal Studies, Cardiff Law School, UK. He has many years’ experience analysing the regulation of commerical gambling markets, in particular in Great Britain. His most recent work concerns the regulation and implementation of the new National Lottery. In 1990 he was appointed Specialist Adviser to the parliamentary Home Affairs Committee to assist in its review of the regulation of betting, gaming and lotteries. More recently he has acted as a consultant to the Home Office on gambling issues. Wendy Selby is a Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests include the impact of public policy on women, particularly health policy. Jean-Michel Servet is Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economic Sciences and of Management at the University of Lumière-Lyon, where he heads the graduate program of Money, Finance and Banking. He has worked in West Africa since 1970, and currently works on the study of comparative monetary systems as well as the different theories of money and savings. He is also co-editor of the Complete Economic Works of Auguste and Leon Walras. James F.Smith, co-author of The Business of Risk (1985), is Professor of English and American Studies at Penn State, Abington—Ogontz Campus. His research interests include gambling, popular culture studies, and the post-Second World War baby boom generation. Michael Walker is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sydney. He is the author of The Psychology of Gambling (Pergamon Press, 1992). Peter Williams researches relations of culture and power in Australia since the 1940s, and lives in the La Trobe Valley, Victoria, Australia.

INTRODUCTION Jan McMillen

Gambling in one form or another has been a feature of all cultures, but it has been legalised and commercialised on a grand scale only since the 1960s. Fuelled by growing middle-class affluence and the liberalisation of social values in western industrialised nations, commercial interests have seen gambling as a new opportunity for profitable investment. Governments have been spurred to legalise gambling by the prospect of additional revenues and the need to control the spread of existing illegal activities. Popular gambling practices have been reorganised to conform to commercial criteria and new forms of gambling have been introduced to entice new players. In the case of horseracing and casino games, traditional gambling cultures have been incorporated into broad policies of economic development, notably the expansion of mass tourism and entertainment industries. While gambling has always attracted attention from observers intrigued by the universality and diversity of society and culture, until the 1970s articles on gambling were published mostly in peripheral journals as if it was not a serious subject for scholarly analysis. Since the proliferation of commercial gambling in Britain and the United States during the 1970s, however, the study of gambling has begun to emerge as a legitimate academic concern. The organisation of regular international gambling conferences by Bill Eadington at the University of Nevada-Reno has been the catalyst for the establishment of a number of national associations (in the United States, Australia, Britain and Europe), each with the goal of encouraging gambling research and analysis. These symposia are indicative of a mounting concern with the economic, social and cultural aspects of gambling development, and have yielded a growing body of literature about the complex character and dynamics of modern gambling. This book focuses on modern gambling from a variety of approaches. It examines the phenomenon of gambling both as a pervasive and diverse cultural expression and as a growing field of political and commercial activity. The book as a whole has an international focus which addresses the symbiotic and changing place of modern gambling in contemporary societies. There are many different forms of gambling, each with its own mix of institutions and relations. Some chapters emphasise a comparative approach between different types of gambling and between nations; others reveal both the diversity and the international character of contemporary gambling cultures. As well as exploring gambling in different social contexts, the various authors adopt different disciplinary approaches which encompass social history and cultural analysis, political economy, philosophy, feminist theory, social psychology and law. The individual chapters offer a sampling of the variety of current gambling research, providing a range of explanations of the ways that contemporary gambling and the policies which shape them have come to be enmeshed in social and cultural life. Although the collection of readings is far from comprehensive, its eclecticism reflects the

Gambling cultures

2

diversity of the modern gambling phenomenon and suggests lines of inquiry which could lead to still more fruitful research in the future. Despite these differences, I have tried to bring a measure of coherence to the book by formulating guidelines to authors and questions directed to socio-cultural aspects of gambling development. The fact that some authors have given more attention to political, economic and legal concerns than others reflects the issues being debated today and the increasingly critical state of thinking within the heterogeneous community of gambling specialists. At the risk of over-simplification, the very character of modern gambling is being challenged, both in economic assumptions of the merits of growth and in its social, political and human aspects as well. The fundamental aim of the book is to set gambling in the wider context of development and to pose questions which fall within the general considerations of policymakers. Every chapter focuses to some extent on the relationship between gambling policy and the socio-cultural environment, underlining the prominence of cultural factors in the practice and organisation of modern gambling. Several of the chapters also discuss this theme in the wider context of the new global order—that is, the rapid spread of (frequently American) commercialised gambling-practices and technology across national boundaries—which is increasingly coming to compete with traditional cultures and social practices in shaping the policy agenda. The authors express divergent views on these matters, but one theme which continually emerges is the importance of culture in gambling politics. The first chapter sets the scene by considering theoretical developments in gambling studies, focusing on the historical relationship between explanations for gambling, changing socio-cultural values and national gambling policies. Jan McMillen examines the various theoretical and empirical understandings of gambling by exploring the diverse and changing explanations of gambling in different countries. The chapter begins with a critical review of theories of gambling, examining contributions by historians, sociologists and policy analysts for their relevance for a general understanding of gambling as a set of social relations, popular practices and policies. The point is made that the varied and shifting national perspectives on gambling have reflected changing moral attitudes and specific political-economic contexts as much as the divergent and narrow disciplinary viewpoints of practising researchers. Set against a background of policy changes which have opened the way for more legal gambling, the next three chapters examine the transformation of gambling in various historical and geographical contexts. They focus on how modern gambling policies have been formed and the historical factors which have contributed to the changing relationship between gambling and different cultures. The complex system of legal statutes and enforcement mechanisms which regulate gambling is an important element in conveying a particular image of how a society should be organised and managed. In Chapter 2, John Dombrink examines the varied and contradictory process whereby gambling in the United States has come to be treated differently from other social ‘vices’ subject to official prohibition and sanction, and is now defined as a legitimate leisure activity. In Chapter 3, Wendy Selby continues the comparative theme by exploring the significance of public morality, national culture and policy priorities in the different histories of the lottery in Australia and the United States. In a similar way, David Dixon in Chapter 4 contrasts the different social control policies of British and Australian law

Introduction

3

enforcement agencies to deal with persistent illegal betting. Controls over gambling are applied selectively and unequally across society, sometimes reinforcing existing patterns and in others changing them. Issues common to these three studies include the ambiguous relation between public and private aspects of gambling, the complexity of moral debates and the diversity of interests around gambling issues, political struggles of the Church and other oppositional interests, and the significant and contradictory role of the state. The next four chapters present case studies which give a more specific focus to some of the general cultural concerns raised in earlier chapters. The emphasis here is on different forms of gambling as distinct cultural practices. By stressing the importance of cultural and non-material aspects of gambling, these chapters provide insights into the deeply entrenched popularity of gambling in different societies. In various ways, they distinguish between gambling under capitalism and gambling in other socio-cultural systems, exploring the implications of bringing informal and traditional aspects of gambling into the area of economic activity. In Chapter 5, James F.Smith examines the historical relationship between gambling and popular culture in the United States, and contends that by turning acts of spontaneous play into commercial transactions, the new culture of gambling has diminished its social value. Chapter 6 presents Peter Williams’s literary analysis of gambling as a consistent theme in the writings of Frank Hardy, one of Australia’s most notable writers and staunch defender of the working class. Hardy’s populist portrayal of gambling is seen as a representation of the political struggle by society’s ‘battlers’ to challenge economic uncertainty and the authority of the powerful. From a sociological perspective, in Chapter 7 Rachael Dixey explores the positive contribution of bingo to the lives of working-class women in a British community. Dixey explains the popularity of bingo in the context of broad social changes which occurred in British cities in the 1960s, arguing that bingo provided working-class women with valuable social interaction and stability when traditional social structures were being dismantled. Chapter 8 presents a psychological explanation by Mark Dickerson of the appeal of machine gaming for players. His research into regular players in New South Wales clubs seeks to identify the psycho-social factors which differentiate most players from those who develop a problem with their gambling. The next three chapters illuminate the relationship between modern commercial gambling policies, cultural practices and social structure. This section of the book raises questions about the political-economic aspects of modern gambling practices, highlighting the location of gambling in the structure and culture of contemporary society. Each chapter examines how commercial gambling and state policy can foster inequalities, national chauvinism and specific values within popular culture. In Chapter 9 Gabrielle Brenner and her colleagues discuss their studies of gambling behaviour in two African countries, Cameroon and Senegal, where lotteries are a growing source of government revenue. While the state has legalised lotteries to alleviate its economic problems, this research shows that the players, mostly young educated men, are attracted by games that offer prizes big enough to allow them to better themselves economically. In Chapter 10 Vicki Abt’s critical analysis of the rapid expansion of commercial gambling in the United States also considers the pressures which have prompted state governments to reverse their opposition to gambling, highlighting the implications for traditional American social values. In her view, the emphasis on consumerism and immediate wealth in the promotion of commercialised gambling has eroded the culture of

Gambling cultures

4

play in gambling, and conflicts with the productive ethos which has generated the material benefits of American society. In a different context, Chapter 11 presents Sytze Kingma’s analysis of the historical relationship between legalised gambling and the cultural underpinnings of the Netherlands. He makes the important point that a transformation of traditional forms of gambling often accompanies increasing commercialisation but does not necessarily lead to degeneration of the local or regional culture. The final group of chapters raises questions about the future directions of gambling policies from a variety of theoretical perspectives. In Chapter 12 Michael Walker offers a critical perspective on the tendency in some countries to continue to see ‘excessive’ gambling by some individuals as a medical problem. To the extent that definitions of problem gambling reflect the existing socio-cultural situation, the policy response is likely to represent and reinforce the views and interests of the more powerful groups. Walker challenges the adoption of the medical model of gambling ‘addiction’ which has been institutionalised in the United States and often accepted by researchers in other nations. In Chapter 13 William Eadington discusses the social ambiguities and moral dilemmas which have been associated with the legalisation of gambling in various nations. Although many of these concerns have been eased by changes in social values and the effects of government policy, so that gambling is increasingly accepted as a mainstream leisure activity, some old problems persist and new ethical issues have emerged which continue to challenge policy-makers. In Chapter 14, from a political perspective, Jan McMillen discusses the rapid expansion of legalised casinos around the world since the 1970s and considers the extent to which the basic culture and socio-political structure of each country conditions casino policies. Within the general trend to globalisation and transnational investment by casino corporations, she examines the means at the disposal of destination countries to ensure that casinos contribute to national goals and are compatible with the local culture. Chapter 15 examines these trends from a legal viewpoint. David Miers’ analysis of the various regulatory regimes which have evolved to control gambling development compares the underlying principles and characteristics of national regulatory systems, identifying factors which can result in the erosion of those control objectives. It is important to note that there have been significant changes to gambling developments and policies since these chapters were written. Debates about the sociocultural status of gambling, changes to the character and capacity of regulatory regimes, and the aggressive commercial pursuit of new gambling markets continue to reshape modern gambling at both national and global levels. In summary, the book points to the merits of an interdisciplinary understanding of gambling in contemporary societies. However, most of the analyses originate from western industrialised (often predominantly Protestant) countries; there are some obvious and important omissions from this collection. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to locate anyone to write a suitable chapter on gambling in, for example, Asia. Given the centrality of gambling to many Asian cultures and the emerging importance of Asia as a potential market, this is a major gap in the overall picture of gambling culture and policies. A comparative analysis of the social and cultural implications of gambling policies in countries with different religious traditions (Islam, Confucianism) and belief

Introduction

5

systems also would be illuminating. Nor is there much reference in this volume to the difference between gambling in countries which pursue a broadly socialist policy and those which do not. Apart from some state involvement in lotteries, in most of the countries discussed in the following chapters the private sector has been given a predominant role in gambling development. The studies offered here are only beginning to touch on the issues. In the field of gambling studies, as in any other, it will take time for a substantial body of knowledge and theoretical discourse to develop. This book represents one step in the attempt to analyse gambling in the light of different cultures and different theories. I hope the information and ideas raised here will serve as a stimulus to more coordinated and comprehensive explanations of gambling in the future.

1 UNDERSTANDING GAMBLING History, concepts and theories Jan McMillen

Gambling is one of the few social activities that occurs in nearly all cultures and in every period of time: in this respect it can be said to be virtually a universal phenomenon in human societies (Wykes 1964; France 1974). Chinese gambling, for example, can be traced back more than 4,000 years. Excavations at Ur (2000 BC), Crete (1800 BC), Egypt (1600 BC) and India (1000 BC) have unearthed dice and gaming boards; betting on horse-racing was common among the Hittites (4000 BC). Archaeological records show that for over 2,000 years many ancient Asian and Arabian societies have tossed tokens or coins to guide decisions; similar games were popular with the Greeks and Roman legions. Gaming was so popular with soldiers during the Crusades that in order to maintain discipline King Richard I forbade gambling among soldiers below the rank of knight. Governments and philanthropists long ago recognised the potential of popular gambling to generate extra revenues for public works. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne, state lotteries raised funds for London’s water supply, to pay the salaries of civil servants, and to finance the colonisation of America. In North America throughout the eighteenth century, lotteries were an accepted means of financing public projects such as bridges and roads, churches and universities. Despite its apparent universality, the concept of gambling has no intrinsic meaning; rather, its meaning always depends on the socio-historical context in which it occurs. The perception and experience of gambling vary significantly—in its history, its organisation and its meanings—according to different types of gambling, the various groups involved, and the particular society within which the gambling takes place. As it is understood in modern societies, gambling commonly refers to risk-taking activities which can be found in almost every aspect of social life, from personal relationships to international politics. In contemporary academic research, however, ‘objective’ criteria are used to distinguish gambling from other risk-taking social behaviours. The convention is to define gambling narrowly in terms of financial transactions—the staking of money, or an item of economic value, on the uncertain outcome of a future event. It is significant that this definition excludes both informal private gambling, where money is merely circulated among players without generating a profit, and investment in the stock market, where speculation is for long-term financial or commercial gain through industrial activity (Abt et al. 1985:37; Huizinga 1949:52–3). Although this narrowly economic definition has currency in twentieth-century capitalism, gambling has different components and meanings in other socio-historical contexts. In pre-capitalist societies, such as Bali, China, Africa and Australian Aboriginal communities, gambling traditionally has been

Understanding gambling

7

primarily for socially defined ends, often organised around religious or communal activities with little direct economic significance (Altman 1985; Geertz 1972; Maclean 1984). In capitalist societies, gambling activity increasingly takes place in circumstances which allow an individual, group or organisation to extract a profit from the transaction. Yet until recently gambling has been subjected to considerable intellectual and political disapproval with strong moral overtones. There has been a long history of British and European states submitting gambling to a variety of regulations under the guise of preventing exploitation, public nuisance controls and the eradication of ‘vice’ (Miers 1980; Wykes 1964). Even when public lotteries were used to fund popular and prestigious causes, such as the establishment of the British Museum and north American universities, inadequate government supervision and the discovery of frauds and widespread cheating frequently caused a public outcry which fostered an anti-gambling response by governments. Analytical definitions of gambling are particularly sensitive to such shifts in social conditions and ideologies of control. Periodic reformulations of the relation between gambling and society have been related to culturally and historically accepted definitions of what gambling is, influenced by fluctuating conceptions of morality which reflect prevailing social and political-economic conditions. Understandings of gambling are determined more by the perspectives and purposes of the analyst than by the inherent nature of the subject. All commentaries on gambling, even the most determinedly ‘objective’, proceed from a particular historically and socially determined point of view.

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS A central theme of this chapter is that studies of gambling, while entrenched in specific disciplinary traditions, have reflected the more general historical development of social science theories and the sensitivity of theorists to contemporary social issues. Within the broad intellectual developments of the post-war period emerged what has come to be understood as ‘gambling studies’ (Caldwell et al. 1985; Campbell and Lowman 1989; Eadington 1976, 1982d, 1986b; Eadington and Cornelius 1991; Frey and Eadington 1984; McMillen 1985; Walker 1987). This encompasses a fragmented and diverse body of work which includes behavioural studies of gamblers, the investigation of ‘problem’ gambling, mathematical analysis of different forms of wagering, economic analysis of gambling patterns and studies of gambling policy and the law. Many of the assumptions underlying different explanations for gambling derive from the particular disciplinary or theoretical perspective of the researcher. Differences in approach and subject matter also stem from the divergent origins of national philosophies and the changing national-cultural contexts of gambling itself. Even so, it is possible to recognise structural correlates and common trends in scholarship related to the changing status of gambling in society. Whenever gambling is being analysed, fundamental questions are raised about the actual and potential relationship between gambling, the state and civil society, both in general and in particular nation states. In American gambling studies, for instance, analysis has shifted since the 1970s from a focus on the dysfunctional and immoral aspects of gambling which prevailed in the prohibition

Gambling cultures

8

climate of pre-war years (Devereux 1968a; Frey 1984; Rosecrance 1988a:12–52, 58–62; Skolnick 1978:3–34) to a more recent emphasis on economic and legal-administrative factors associated with the smooth operation of a newly legal industry (Aronson and Miller 1980; Eadington 1976, 1982b, 1990, 1991; Dombrink and Thompson 1986; Lehne 1986; Rose 1987; Rosecrance 1988a: 63–7; Skolnick 1978, 1979b; Weinstein and Deitch 1974). The British state has taken a less moralistic but more regulated approach to most forms of public gambling, and the British analytical preoccupation with political and legal processes has been reflected in contributions from public administration, criminology and the history of law (Dixon 1980a, 1983, 1984, 1989; Miers and Dixon 1979; Hood 1972, 1976:169–207; Miers 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987). In turn, prevailing assumptions and knowledge about gambling have had important implications for policy outcomes. Either directly or indirectly, public morality and the type of information available about gambling at any specific time have been important factors in the state’s policy approach. The ostensibly neutral data and explanations which have resulted from academic research and government reports have provided normative and often ethnocentric accounts which variously endorse or condemn particular gambling practices and their effects. The understanding of gambling produced by researchers has informed policy decisions about the further expansion of gambling facilities or the type of legislation or regulation that is required. This chapter will discuss the divergent and changing explanations of gambling, situating different types of gambling analysis within their particular historical-national contexts and underlying philosophies. It will argue that explanations of gambling have been dominated by normative and culturally specific theories of liberal social science. The liberal and individualistic assumptions of these theories pose conceptual and methodological problems which limit their capacity to explain the emergence and nature of modern commercial gambling. When social scientists have investigated gambling, the emphasis in most studies has been on the empirical observation of individual behaviour rather than a broader understanding of the changing gambling phenomenon. A core theme of this critique is that liberal theories fail to recognise that contemporary gambling is not governed primarily by the actions of individuals, but is conditioned by capitalist social relations and political-economic forces, of which individuals are an integral part. Moreover, with an analytical emphasis on individual behaviour and motivations, many analysts have defined gambling in terms of generalised, abstract concepts such as ‘rational behaviour’ and ‘leisure’. Such perspectives make a number of covert assumptions about common, defining characteristics of gambling which do not stand up to historical scrutiny of its diverse forms and locations. Legal gambling shows marked variations in its composition, when and how it is introduced, whose interests it furthers and in its effects. Although often presented in terms of increasing public ‘access’ to gambling, legalised gambling is as oppressive of some activities as it is liberating. The ‘freedom’ to gamble is not universal or evenly distributed. Discriminations are embedded in institutions and routinised in commercial activities and administrative procedures, so that a distinction between legal and illegal gambling is rendered normal. Similar criticisms can be made regarding the overgeneralised explanations of gambling. Even those analysts who do acknowledge the close relation between gambling, culture and the nation state frequently do not take into account the heterogeneous character of the state and the lack of socio-cultural homogeneity. Analysis of the nature

Understanding gambling

9

and extent of modern gambling in capitalism requires examination of the profoundly contingent and selective content of government policies and commercial activities. From this perspective, research questions about the post-war global expansion of legalised gambling should probe the complex social relations lying beneath the surface data of legal gambling, rather than, as in conventional sociology, concentrating on what gambling means for participants (Goffman 1967; Caldwell 1974, 1985a; Rosecrance 1985, 1987), or as in liberal economics and political science, being content to merely identify what contributions gambling has made to economic development or successful government (Alchin 1989; Cabot and Schuetz 1991; Eadington and Hattori 1976; Gruen 1976; Haig 1976; Hood 1972, 1976:169–207; Johnson 1976, 1985; Lehne 1986; Suits 1977, 1979). It will be argued that conventional theories of gambling have diverted attention from the fact that contemporary gambling, whether legal or illegal, is as much an expression of capital-state relations and political-legal decisions as of individual behaviour. Gambling receives much of its definition from the institutions of state (Parliament, political parties, agencies of administration and law enforcement) and capital (private gambling corporations, marketing agencies) through which it is organised, regulated and experienced. From the vast range of possible ways that gambling could be conducted, state activities give certain forms of gambling an official seal of approval, and suppress, marginalise and erode others. An understanding of the changes and growth of modern gambling therefore must consider the role of the state in determining what types of gambling are available. Furthermore, gambling has become an important component of modern leisure industries, run as a business for profit by both private and public enterprises. The individualism of many liberal approaches to gambling analysis diverts attention from the historically specific system of power in capitalist society which produces and reproduces gambling and structures behaviour in the interests of profit. In summary, this chapter raises theoretical and empirical issues concerning the relation between gambling practices, policies and theories in different socio-historical contexts. It will examine: 1 the growth of legal gambling as a specific socio-historical phenomenon, with specific attention to the historical diversity of practices and trends in gambling policies; 2 the diverse and changing range of theories which have been applied to gambling in its various manifestations. The chapter proposes that gambling is best explained by investigating the interaction between political, industrial and socio-cultural forms in contemporary capitalism. The discussion is divided into four sections. The first section opens with a critique of negative explanations of gambling which have frequently been made by psychologists, economists and sociologists. Many past and present theorists have perceived gambling in a pejorative sense as a psychological, social and moral problem. This section will consider debates over gambling and social order, particularly the sociological view of gambling as deviant behaviour. Such perspectives on gambling have been compatible with the prevailing policies of constraint and prohibition in the major theoretical nations (Britain, the United States). The second section will discuss the post-war theoretical shift to a more liberal view which attempts to explain the social persistence and political liberalisation of gambling.

Gambling cultures

10

The main focus will be to summarise and critically evaluate the most influential post-war contributions to a general theory of gambling. This discussion begins by examining the shift in the focus of gambling analysis from deviance to leisure within liberal social science in the United States, Britain and Australia. While acknowledging the contributions of these studies to gambling policy and understanding, it will be argued that analysis needs to depart from the sociological conventions of associating gambling primarily with the leisure experience of individuals, and of using the concept in a universal sense devoid of politics. The third section will centre on the relevance of the public choice explanation of gambling policy which has dominated US explanations for the post-war evolution of commercial casinos and lotteries. This raises theoretical and empirical issues of the complicated relation between the contemporary gambling industry and state regulation. Finally, the chapter will conclude by considering critical contributions from within radical criminology and the history of law which explore the ambivalent character of modern forces of gambling control, whether concerned with liberalisation or with regulation. Gambling studies from Britain, Canada and the United States have exposed the dialectical relationship between the state and the private sphere in the production of social order. Their insights into the interactions between politics, law and public morality reveal both the complexity and the ubiquity of legalised gambling.

GAMBLING AND SOCIETY: CONVENTIONAL VIEWS Many analysts share several core—but problematic—assumptions about relations between gambling and society. With few exceptions, post-war accounts of gambling have been retarded by three interrelated influences on the approach and subject matter of gambling analysis. First, conservative moral forces have exerted subtle but powerful influences over academic inquiry. Historical-theoretical assumptions about relations between morality and legality, work and leisure, production and consumption, politics and economics, the past and the present, have combined to produce a conservative approach to gambling analysis which tends to legitimate the prevailing state of affairs. Second, the post-war dominance of the positivist tradition which assumes the existence of value-free facts has produced an unreflective approach which is blind to the sociopolitical construction of gambling illegality and legality. Third, most theories and explanations of gambling behaviour have been produced in isolation from histories of gambling politics and social relations. Changes in gambling legalisation are viewed merely as unproblematic sign-posts along the road to modern gambling practices (Blakey and Kurland 1978; Cornell Law School 1977; Cornish 1978). Rarely has contemporary gambling been examined with the objective of providing an account of the sociohistorical specificity of policy development or an adequate general explanation of the growing commercialisation of the industry (Dessant 1976; Herman 1976:115). In the absence of a theoretically informed critique of such changes, the narrow focus of gambling studies restricts the extent to which they explain the phenomenon. Several interrelated criticisms may be made of conventional gambling studies. In general, they

Understanding gambling

11

1 treat gambling as a universal constant, without adequate differentiation between various forms or considering the variable moral and political forces underlying their construction; 2 reflect liberal ideologies specific to the socio-historical development of capitalism, notably individualism and economic rationality. Changing conceptions of gambling have been linked to prevailing political and cultural norms and to disciplinary concerns for social order; 3 implicitly or explicitly have seen gambling as a ‘problem’ of social control and administration. Even in Australia, where gambling has been widely accepted, debates about the morality and legality of gambling often emphasise that it has potentially disruptive social tendencies; 4 adopt an economistic stance which prescribes analytical separation of economic and political realms and a conception of culture as a reflection of the economic base. This is most clearly manifest in the sociological conceptualisation of gambling as leisure, a social activity analytically distinct from the realm of work and production; 5 assume an ahistorical or static conception of gambling which does not account for the dynamics of gambling structures and processes; 6 adopt a positivistic approach to gambling research which apprehends the appearance of the social and political-economic relations in gambling as if they are natural; 7 suffer from empirical ethnocentrism, aggravated by the absence of an explicit comparative perspective of different political-cultural contexts; and 8 are unable to accommodate a dialectical conception of gambling relations—between competing classes, between capital and the state or between national and global dimensions. Conventional approaches to gambling analysis have constructed two distinct yet interrelated methodological tendencies—functionalism and positivism. Most studies generally have either implicitly or explicitly entailed a functionalist perspective (Newman 1972:11). With an emphasis on social harmony, this sort of interpretation concentrates on the functional and dysfunctional consequences of gambling in society, the role of gambling in reinforcing and enhancing social values and the ways that gambling has evolved or adapted to wider changes in the nature of other social institutions such as work, the family and public attitudes. Social theories of gambling reach their most sophisticated form in the sociology of gambling behaviour and social administration. While the social administration approach takes the distributional and developmental aspects of gambling participation as its major concerns, the sociology of gambling has traditionally looked more broadly at the social functions of gambling. That is, it has accepted (usually without question) the structural and political-economic aspects of gambling, concentrating on the content of gambling behaviour. The negative view: gambling as a social problem Many studies to some extent or other have continued to endorse the negative assumptions and legal sanctions towards gambling which prevailed in most western countries in the pre-war period. By and large, they pose the issue with three broad themes.

Gambling cultures

12

1 It is assumed that the primary determinant of gambling participation is individual choice, so that patterns of legalised gambling have little to do with the social environment in which they occur. A fundamental reason for this is the general perception that gambling is essentially an aspect of ‘play’ (Caillois 1961; Huizinga 1949). 2 Gambling can be distinguished from other forms of ‘playful’ or leisure activity in moral or ethical terms; it is assumed to be, at least potentially, a social ‘problem’ which needs to be controlled (Dielman 1979; Newman 1975). The negative and pejorative way gambling is presented, and acceptance of the state’s claim to authority and resources to determine the nature and extent of gambling in the community, rest on common ideas of its possible harmful implications. The genesis of the widespread condemnation of gambling is complex; but if one agency is more responsible than any other, it has been the strength of Protestantism in western capitalist societies (Weber 1976 [1904–5]; Rosecrance 1988a:32–7; Miers 1980). This approach derives from the notion, widely held during the period of post-war industrial reconstruction, that gambling is primarily an attempt by the gambler to make ‘easy money’ (Turner 1965) and thus is a denial of the work ethic and a threat to production. For example, the conceptual distinction historically made between gambling and stock market speculation or insurance investment rests on normative perceptions of gambling as devoid of useful economic functions (Paton 1946). This conception is reinforced by the a priori assumptions of economic studies which have perceived gambling as selfdefeating irrational behaviour leading to financial problems at a personal and social level (Rosett 1965; Rubner 1966; Cowan 1974), and of social science theories which considered gambling as destructive of the individual (Simmel 1920; Freud 1928; Bergler 1957; Oldman 1978) and of society (Bloch 1957; Herman 1967, 1976; Peterson 1951). Psychologists and psychiatrists have played a key role in arguing that a proportion of gamblers are unable to resist impulses to gamble and consequently compromise, disrupt and damage personal, family and work relations (Dickerson 1984; Halliday and Fuller 1974; Lesieur 1984; Lesieur and Custer 1984; Lesieur and Puig 1987). 3 Gambling and its consequences are examined within an implicit ethical framework which reflects prevailing legal definitions and discriminations. Political and legal interpretations of gambling and its supposedly disruptive social effects have permeated the analysis of gambling at every level. The conceptual connection between social science, rationalisation and social control in contemporary policy has produced a ‘social engineering’ approach which conceptualises gambling in terms of predetermined notions of legality and illegality, deviance and ‘normal’ behaviour. Underlying this view of gambling is an explicit endorsement of the liberal state as the proper mechanism of control. It is accepted as self-evident that state intervention to restrict certain forms of gambling is essential for the common good. This is aptly illustrated by sociological studies which present gambling as deviance or crime. Significantly, sociological studies of gambling increased during the 1960s and 1970s in Britain and the United States when it appeared to thrive in defiance of legal prohibitions. As sociology sought to establish itself as an independent and objective discipline, it demarcated a distinct object of knowledge—the gambler—thus separating the study of gambling from the workings and theory of social relations. Using aspects of ‘control

Understanding gambling

13

theory’ (Downes and Rock 1982), a structural link between gambling and socioeconomic conditions has been constructed through a variety of factors which indicate a decline in rational behaviour or moral standards—for instance, the erosion of positive social influences such as religion. Particularly in the United States, gambling studies have argued that gambling remains outside and in opposition to dominant values (Devereux 1968a; Grichting 1986; Rosecrance 1988a:58–63). As a threat to the equilibrium of society, gambling therefore must be constrained. Even radical sociologists who suggested that gambling may be in some respects rational with socially beneficial effects for working-class groups accepted, at least implicitly, the legal premise that gambling is a vice which if unconstrained has fundamentally harmful effects for society in general (Zola 1967 [1963]). A great deal of American research in this field has attempted to discover what people in ‘deviant’ minority groups (the poor, ethnic communities, prisoners) get out of gambling (Polsky 1971; Light 1977a, 1977b; McCall 1963). The answer initially was found in the fatalism and recklessness of these individuals and their socio-cultural predispositions, such as the ‘culture of poverty’ or the institutional climate of prisons. This negative psychologistic approach to gambling as deviance contrasts sharply with conventional interpretations of other leisure-related activities, which have been overwhelmingly positive with important beneficial consequences for individuals and society. Because these analysts accepted without question the legal restrictions and moral condemnation of gambling, they have not considered that gambling may be beneficial to individuals and society in the same way. Furthermore, by explaining gambling by reference to the intrinsic characteristics of gamblers themselves, these studies exclude any consideration of the character of law, of politics or socio-economic relations. Accepted definitions of legality also have meant that social science has stressed the criminal behaviour associated with illegal gambling. In America, strong moral and legal condemnation of gambling has been exacerbated by the traditional involvement of criminals, particularly in casinos (Albanese 1985; Chambliss 1978; Dombrink 1981; Dombrink and Thompson 1986; King 1969; Reuter 1983, 1984; Reuter and Rubenstein 1981). Some psychologists and medical practitioners have drawn a direct association between crime and ‘pathological’ gambling which presents a further threat to public morality (Brown 1987; Lesieur 1987; Blaszczynski et al. 1989). With the expansion of legalised gambling in the 1980s, however, the conceptual distinction between ‘social’ recreational gamblers and so-called ‘pathological’ or ‘compulsive’ gamblers is less certain, with no agreement about either the nature or the extent of the problem (Rosecrance 1985b, 1988a:106–21). In other nations, these analytical ambiguities and policy discriminations have taken different cultural forms. In Britain, legal constraints have reflected a view that gaming is a more likely source of criminal activity and greater potential threat to public morality than betting, especially among the working class (Dixon 1989; Miers 1980). In Australia, where unusually liberal laws have made a variety of gambling forms relatively respectable (McMillen and Eadington 1986; O’Hara 1988), it has been less common for gambling to be conceptualised as deviant or criminal behaviour. However, the possible involvement of criminals and political corruption associated with gambling and the possible disruptive social effects of ‘excessive’ gambling and criminal infiltration remain central themes for analysis and policy. Despite

Gambling cultures

14

its legal status, gambling is considered to be a marginal social phenomenon, a problem of control and technical administration. Underlying this common negative perception of gambling is a particular view of the relationship between gambling, society and the state; namely, the belief that the state provides the only viable or legitimate means for mediating between people and gambling operations. Deviancy theory was notable for the insight that ‘deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions’ (Becker 1963:5). On this interpretation it would seem to follow that the concept of ‘the state’ which devised rules and sanctions would be at the core of the study of gambling. However, Becker’s influential critique, which pointed sociology towards the problematic operation of control institutions and macro-structural analysis, has had little impact on gambling studies. Sociological studies tend to understate the central role of the state in the creation of gambling deviance and to view the state’s role in the definition of gambling behaviour as devoid of moral choice and political decision. By definition, state intervention conventionally is seen in the liberal sense as neutral and necessary to sustain the preconditions of social order and conformity—the central concerns being gamblers’ behaviour and the precise mode of regulation. As Matza suggests, the ‘lofty subject’ of the state, ‘unrelated to so seamy a matter as deviation’ (1969:143), has been implicitly earmarked as the domain of political science. Even so, the work of deviancy theorists is important for gambling analysis because it heralds the more critical concern for the aetiology of illegality and problems of the state which became the concern of radical criminology in the 1970s and of British gambling studies in the 1980s. Positive perspectives: gambling as leisure What can be called a liberal sociological analysis of gambling gained strength in the years following the Second World War, presenting a more positive explanation of gambling as a legitimate leisure activity (Devereux 1968a, 1968b; Downes et al. 1976). In the post-war period, opportunities for the ‘affluent worker’ (Goldthorpe et al. 1969) to participate in organised gambling increased dramatically in several countries. With increased legalisation and respectability, gambling was no longer seen simply as a social pathology which would lead inevitably to moral decay and crime. From a functionalist perspective, it began to be investigated both as an instrumental activity directed to an economic end (‘winning’ defined primarily in terms of economic success) and as an expressive social activity enjoyed as an end in itself (the intrinsic social and personal rewards of ‘playing the game’). Long before, Veblen had suggested that members of affluent social groups in the nineteenth century were able to display their social superiority and wealth through conspicuous consumption of leisure activities such as gambling (Veblen 1953 [1899]). Post-war economists agreed that gamblers are capable of making logical choices to improve their wealth and socio-economic position (Friedman and Savage 1946; Gruen 1976). Economic explanations of gambling motivations have been inconsistent, however, some research showing that gambling participation is more typical of Veblen’s high-status ‘leisure class’, others that gambling is primarily a working-class activity (Pryor 1976). Sociologists have usually dealt with issues such as the social content of gambling situations—ethnographic studies of gambling settings, for example, or the nature of what

Understanding gambling

15

they term ‘gambling careers’. The most illuminating work within the post-war liberal sociology of gambling has been interactionist in its approach, concentrating on the immediate social relationships between individuals in the gambling context. The traditional focus by the sociology of deviance on ‘nuts, sluts and perverts’ permitted the flourishing of sympathy with social ‘outsiders’ and hostility to social control (Becker 1968). Even where gambling is considered as being apart from ‘normal’ behaviour, interactionist studies have considered the possibility of positive consequences and meanings of gambling from the player’s viewpoint. The central theoretical formulation which has provided the sociological basis for a more positive perspective on gambling was developed by Erving Goffman (1967). At one level Goffman ‘lifts gambling out of the moral abyss into which successive generations of commentators and reformers have consigned it and renders possible a consideration of its meaning which is freed from a priori associations of a negative kind’ (Downes et al. 1976:17). Rather than deviant behaviour, he argued that gambling provides players with an opportunity to demonstrate strength of character and commitment to valued social codes such as risk-taking, courage and honesty. At the same time, his analysis contains an implicit recognition that gambling contributes to the moral and political regulation of society by reaffirming conventional values. While gambling provides a substitute for challenges removed from ordinary life, it also is given an added civilising function as a beneficial agency of socialisation and social control. The major theoretical contribution of sociological studies has been a more positive conception of gambling incorporated into the realm of leisure. From this perspective, gambling is enjoyed and participated in for its own sake; hence, the majority of studies have been mainly concerned with questions about who gambles and why they gamble in particular ways (Scimecca 1971). Many studies have directed a psychologically orientated focus exclusively on the motivations and behaviours of individuals involved in the gambling process. From this broad view, participation in gambling is regarded as an institutionalised leisure activity compensating for the dysfunctional and unfulfilling aspects of contemporary society. Gambling, like leisure, is defined in terms of ‘play’ or ‘free time’, and juxtaposed to work and other activities with recognisable social obligations. Leisure activities such as gambling are considered to be an essential component in the maintenance and equilibrium of the social structure, an issue only because of the debilitating nature of modern work, which, it is argued, stifles creativity (Parker 1976; Goldthorpe et al. 1969). From this view, gambling, although often distinguished from other legitimate leisure activities by its illegality and social stigma, is normal and thoroughly integrated with other practices and institutions of the society within which it occurs. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, sociologists have suggested that gambling functions both as recuperative ‘adult play’ or as an escapist ‘safety valve’ from the burden of work (Herman 1967; Devereux 1968a); as ‘deviant adaptations’ to anomie (Martinez 1983) or to alienation (Downes et al. 1976:72–5); as an integral element of working-class culture which seeks to overcome lack of success and security (Dennis et al. 1956; Herman 1976; Zola 1967 [1963]); as an outlet for gamblers to test chance and skill (Oldman 1974; Campbell 1976); and as an effective opportunity for self-realisation and creativity lacking in the workplace (Goffman 1967; Bloch 1957; Smith and Preston 1984). The attraction of contemporary gambling and the commitment of regular gamblers

Gambling cultures

16

even in the face of consistent losses have been explained predominantly in terms of the rewards gained from social interaction and group association (D’Angelo 1985; Hayano 1982; Martinez 1983; Rosecrance 1985a, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1987, 1988a:53–87). Relatively few studies have recognised that for some players gambling constitutes work. These studies have examined the subcultural careers of professional gamblers whose disciplined and calculated approach embodies conventional cultural norms of economic gain and the development of specialised skills (Hayano 1984; Herman 1967; Rosecrance 1988b; Thorp 1962; Woung 1980). For many, the post-war understanding of gambling as ‘leisure’, rather than simply as vice or crime, seems to be a triumph of liberalism and humanity. Compared to pre-war attitudes and prohibitions, no doubt it is. But even among liberal sociologists in the United States, gambling has relatively low prestige; and persistent claims by psychologists and medical practitioners of its supposedly endemic dysfunctional tendencies have not made it any more convincing as a legitimate social activity. Clear sociological evidence for a positive social effect of gambling is still lacking (Abt et al. 1985:207; Rosecrance 1987:157). In marked contrast to the US and British experience, the pervasiveness of popular gambling in Australia is celebrated as an important part of the national culture. The characteristics of Australian gambling are such that many social scientists and popular commentators have claimed that Australia has developed a distinctive gambling culture (Ward 1958; Caldwell 1974; Hardy 1958; Inglis 1985; O’Hara n.d. 1988; Charlton 1987). More significantly, gambling has been seen as a positive force, reflecting the egalitarianism and hope of Australian society (Caldwell 1974; Lynch 1990; O’Hara 1988). Australian gambling policies have taken particular directions which reveal interesting comparisons with gambling policies in other nations. Few western societies have legalised gambling to the extent that it has been in Australia. Unlike Britain and the United States, where the fear of individual excess and threats to public order had prompted severe restrictions on most forms of gambling, in Australia gambling has been tolerated as an ‘instinct’ and a ‘natural propensity of workers’.1 This cultural attitude to gambling as the ‘right’ of every citizen has been reflected directly and indirectly in public and official statements since the nineteenth century. What has not been so well recognised is that gambling is also an essentially political issue, not least because Australian gambling has been characterised by an unusually high level of government involvement (McMillen and Eadington 1986; McMillen and Lafferty 1991; McMillen 1986a, 1986b, 1987–88, 1990, 1993; O’Hara 1988; Painter 1990, 1991). The cultural acceptance of gambling has emerged within a constantly changing political-legal framework which is the product of heated debates and conflicts over the specific nature of gambling policies. In Australia, in much the same way as the state assumed responsibility for protecting other valued aspects of social life such as health, education and recreation (Capling and Galligan 1992:20–69; Encel 1970:55–66), the legalisation of gambling and its administration by government agencies have meant it has been widely accepted as a legitimate activity from an early period. The state rhetoric which has legitimated the high level of legal gambling in Australia has been in keeping with prevailing views on morality and emphasised the state’s paramount concern for social priorities. While Australian governments have legalised

Understanding gambling

17

popular gambling to an unusual extent, and undoubtedly benefit from the revenues which are generated, they also have been concerned with the social disorder associated with illegal gambling, prevention of criminal exploitation and the use of gambling revenues for welfare services. Yet too often, analyses of Australian gambling which have celebrated and romanticised gambling as a ‘national pastime’ have avoided a close and critical examination of the historical links between gambling and powerful economic groups, political institutions and the nature of capitalist society in general (McMillen 1993). A recent interdisciplinary extension of the positive approach to gambling analysis has explored the link between changing public attitudes and the commercial and political processes generating policy change. In a landmark analysis of the gambling industry in the United States, Abt et al. (1985) have comprehensively traced the development of legal gambling into a powerful socio-economic force which has profound implications for the values and institutions of contemporary American society as well as important practical policy consequences. Whereas previous studies had shown that in its material causes and in the values it evoked, gambling relates to issues central to social order, this study is more alive to an interpretation of politics, law and socio-cultural change than earlier gambling analyses. In a theoretical break with the ‘sociology of the gambler’, Abt et al. have operated with a more holistic notion of the aetiology of gambling than the conventional, individualistic picture of the ‘irrational’ or ‘immoral’ gambler. By exploring the historical connection between the development of commercial gambling, cultural values and institutional conflicts, they reveal the social and moral ambiguities about gambling which persist in contemporary American society. They show that the legalisation of commercial gambling in America has been a contested process, paralleled by complex social and economic changes which ultimately benefit powerful business interests and the state. Abt et al. have made an important contribution to the understanding of contemporary gambling as a profitable and legitimate business which has an intimate and compatible relationship with American society and core institutions. Gambling in its various forms has become a highly organised and business-like enterprise, the focus of commercial competition and policy disputes. They argue that the erosion of cultural norms that had prohibited gambling permitted this form of entertainment to enter mainstream America. Historically, the impetus occurred at a time of general cultural re-evaluation, as it became clear that economic and state resources and opportunities were limited. In their view, the irony is that the mechanism responsible for this change, the revenue imperative, has rapidly transformed gambling and its social meanings. The very qualities that gave gambling a unique social value—excitement, safe risk, escape—have been changed into yet another set of rote behaviours that serve institutional purposes rather than social needs (Abt et al. 1985:202). This analysis has asked important questions about the objectives and effects of the growth of the gambling industry, but it repeats many of the functionalist assumptions common to liberal gambling studies. For example, they retain the culturalist notion of gambling as a leisure activity which mirrors and reinforces core social values. They propose that while the new gambling policy is the outcome of a changing but ubiquitous cultural consensus, these new values threaten social stability. The successes of capitalism paradoxically erode the traditional impulses which created them: ‘Gambling thus

Gambling cultures

18

exemplifies a reversal of American values: the ethic of saving, of self-denial and capital accumulation, has been replaced by an ideology of hedonistic consumerism’ (Abt et al. 1985:22). Heavily influenced by the American ideology of ‘free enterprise’ and a liberal suspicion of state intervention in the market, the critical thrust is directed towards the role of the state in gambling policy. Like American deviancy theorists, Abt et al. support the view that state intervention is necessary to correct malign tendencies which may appear in gambling relations. As gambling has become increasingly complex and differentiated, the state has a positive but limited role as guardian of public welfare. In this they share liberal assumptions which have characterised American and British social science; their conceptualisation of the state is narrowly defined as the institutional mediator of competing demands and market forces, responsible for sustaining the preconditions of a more crime-free, orderly and integrated society. However, they are sceptical of the capacity for the state to act in an impartial and altruistic way in gambling administration: ‘government is an interested party—both because of its extraordinary claim on gambling revenues and because it directly operates lotteries and off-track betting’ (Abt et al. 1985:217). They view with concern the increasingly central, active role of governments in American gambling administration, and consequently their influence over the nature of contemporary gambling, particularly the proliferation of state lotteries which began to appear in the United States in the late 1970s (Abt et al. 1985:218). Their view is that contemporary gambling will operate most effectively through a market economy and a pluralist polity. Whatever commercial ambitions individual gambling proprietors may have, in order to compete with other enterprises and to attract gamblers they must provide a high standard of integrity and service. Thus the profit motive is seen to be an adequate mechanism to constrain commercial excesses. Within the market, the picture presented is one of rational negotiation and fundamental harmony, expressing the interests of American commerce. Positive perspectives: social administration A number of official studies also have extended the analysis of gambling beyond the cultural or psychological world of the gambler. As part of the expansion of legalised gambling in the 1970s, in Britain and the United States an increasing number of large empirical studies of current gambling practices and institutions began to inform gambling policy (Campbell 1976; Commission of the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling 1976 [Morin Commission]; Downes et al. 1976; Kallick-Kaufman 1979; Royal Commission on Gambling 1978 [Rothschild Report]; Tec 1965; Weinstein and Deitch 1974). Many of these studies are tinged with a liberal concern for the injustice of social inequalities, investigating whether legalised gambling has had harmful effects on society. Others have attempted to integrate empirical knowledge about gambling with middlerange theories to investigate how its very nature and development are influenced by social and environmental factors. Significantly, most of these studies began to assert that gambling is related to features of the socio-economic structure within which it occurs. The research reorientation to large-scale empirical studies of gambling patterns was a product of changing political and social conditions in Britain and the United States in the 1970s. With policy shifts from gambling suppression to increased legalisation, academic

Understanding gambling

19

contributions increasingly were sought for policy formation. The revised liberal approach to gambling research and the methods of positivist sociology were compatible with contemporary policies of gambling expansion. Many of these studies had a strong institutional base, and were often made possible by state sponsorship or financial support to conduct research into the extent of gambling in the community. Underlying the institutional sponsorship of much of this gambling research was the state’s responsibility for crime control and the mitigation of dysfunctional features of the social structure through social and welfare policies. The state became involved in gambling research only after indications of the persistence, perhaps even of growth, of a wide spectrum of illegal gambling. There were, for example, persistent doubts about the prevailing philosophy of gambling prohibition, of directing public money at problems without demonstrable social gains (Morin Commission 1976; Downes et al. 1976; Kallick-Kaufman 1979; Rothschild Report 1978). The accelerated commercial promotion of betting and new post-war developments such as commercial casinos further boosted academic interest in gambling as a topic of inquiry.2 These empirical studies have been dominated by the domain assumptions and methods of positivism, expressed procedurally in an emphasis on the importance of quantifiable concepts and propositions in theory and research. Survey methods, recommended as the best means for systematically assembling hard data on gambling, have been seen to satisfy the disciplinary requirements of policy rationalisation and development in the field of gambling research. Yet, in the search for quantifiable data, survey methods examine only those social variables which are associated with gambling, arbitrarily defined in terms of official definitions (Reuter 1979). The most that such an approach can achieve, however rigorous and thorough, is to shed some light on empirical regularities in gambling participation; it does not provide an understanding of the historical origins of those regularities. Numerous detailed and somewhat inconclusive studies have outlined gambling patterns in terms of the natural, constitutional propensities of gamblers, such as sex, age, race, occupation, status and class (Adler 1966; Blascovich et al. 1976; Dowie 1975; Downton 1969; Kaplan and Maher 1970; Oldman 1974; Scimecca 1971). The tendency for the overwhelming majority of contemporary definitions to equate gambling with leisure also accounts for many of the analytical difficulties encountered by researchers. The sociological account of British gambling by Downes et al. is especially helpful in clarifying the methodological preoccupations which characterise the positivist approach. Questions of gambling provision and organisation were not considered; it was assumed that the primary motivation remained with the individual. Downes and his colleagues tested a number of theoretical propositions about gambling (anomie, alienation, workingclass culture, functionalism, decision-making, risk-taking, work-centred leisure or homecentredness). They reported that none of the theories alone could conclusively be substantiated as adequate explanations for participation in gambling. Rather, the social system itself is considered to be the main determining influence in gambling practice and institutions. The emergence and definition of gambling as a social problem was related primarily to the existence in society of opposing values of leisure and consumption, on the one hand, and work and production on the other (Downes et al. 1976:42). This contrasts with surveys in the United States which have shown that ‘the factors that most

Gambling cultures

20

consistently differentiate gamblers from non-gamblers are the degree of an individual’s exposure to gambling and the availability of that activity’ (Kallick-Kaufman 1979:24). Though sufficient for some policy purposes, these are very superficial views of gambling. Even when the same definition of gambling is shared between nations or across historical periods, the research procedures which apply the formal definition may embody different operational definitions. To this extent, positivist data on gambling can be conceived of as social products, rather than objective facts. The focus on individuals, in theoretical assumptions and in the neglect of collectivities, avoids conceptions of power and structure. Studies which insulate gambling from society and the state do not examine or explain why certain forms of gambling are more prevalent at certain times than others; nor do they explicate the structural factors and power relationships which influence, and are influenced by, the nature and direction of gambling development. They therefore underestimate the sources and nature of control over the gamblers and institutions they study. Contextual factors, such as the emergence of transnational gambling corporations and the state’s varied and contradictory role in the transition of gambling from illegality to legality, are rarely brought into the discussion. Inevitably, the explanations which result provide no more than descriptive and normative accounts of the prevalence of gambling and its latent social ‘functions’. They neglect to convey the dynamic and contested interdependence between gambling relations and the sociocultural context, thus preventing a systematic examination of shifting relationships and broader historical processes which are major mechanisms of change. Omission of the political and historical dimensions of gambling has produced a conception of gambling which postulates that it serves a sui generis function (leisure) for a society devoid of structural or cultural differences and conflicts. Yet gambling is open to subtle forms of social constraint and determination which contradict this definition. Although it has received little attention from researchers, studies of women’s experience of gambling, for example, have shown how it is structured by their subordinate position in capitalist society (Summers 1975:69–77; Dixey 1984). Just as they do in so many other areas, the economic, physical, social and ideological conditions of capitalist society constrain women’s gambling activities in ways that are significantly more restrictive than in the case of men. Gambling also is funda-mentally subject to the direct effect of systems of legitimation and power. The analytical importance of this lies in the fact that gambling, more than most other forms of leisure activities, is defined by state action and legislation which specify what is allowed and what is not. Positivist studies of gambling are not concerned merely with universally agreed practices, but with what is legally defined as legitimate or unacceptable behaviour. This is not to say that the research agenda of positivism (and its many variants) is worthless or theoretically unimportant. Social surveys and trend indicators are indispensable in social and policy analysis, providing statistical information about the composition, incidence and development of gambling patterns which is otherwise unavailable. Many of these studies have provided some valuable and insightful knowledge which confirms that gambling does have integrating qualities. However, the survey method confines itself to the measurement of gambling as it is found in contemporary capitalist society, without examining the vital questions of how these gambling relations have been produced and reproduced. Collectively, the diversity of positivist studies of gambling reveals that there is no general agreement about the social

Understanding gambling

21

constitution of gambling. Although games differ in their structural characteristics and their relevance for players (Abt et al. 1985:35–113) and in the historical forces which are particular to their development, the more precise structural qualities, cultural meanings and determinants of different forms of gambling have seldom been given serious consideration. Researchers do not ask, for instance, how the interplay of socio-cultural interests have combined, historically and materially, to produce discri-mination, sexism and racism in gambling, or why questions of power, profit and government capacity in gambling are (or are not) seen as social issues. In summary, conventional explanations of gambling have been restricted by analytical models which focus on gamblers rather than on gambling as a specific socially determined phenomenon. Conventional sociology, within a functionalist framework, makes certain theoretical statements about the social as opposed to the purely psychological aspects of gambling. But it does so ahistorically and within a theoretical context which accepts the status quo and discourages development of a radical critique. The positivist approach has provided valuable data on, for example, social differences in gambling participation or in gambling facilities, but it cannot, because of its atheoretical and static methodalogy, provide adequate explanations of the creation and sustaining of such differences. Such gambling studies on the whole have not reflected on the historical course of gambling development, its contemporary structural and ideological character, or its likely future direction. Social historians have pointed to the tendency of gambling to periodisation (Bolen 1976; Chafetz 1960; Dixon 1984, 1987, 1989; Hill 1987; Lemon 1972; McCoy 1980; McKibbin 1979; O’Hara n.d. 1986; Vamplew 1976). Accounts from several countries suggest that the nature, extent and intensity of gambling in any society fluctuate, with cyclical alternation between waves of extended gambling and phases of repression or social reform. In seeking to explain these periodic shifts in gambling, many historians also make primary reference to interrelations between leisure and the social system. Like sociologists, many place a functionalist emphasis on the conditioning of internalisable norms and values, relinquishing explanation of the degree of complementarity or tensions between issues of popular culture and collective agency on the one hand, and issues of social structure and conditioning specific to the social formation on the other. Very few of these studies have recognised that legal gambling is organised along business lines with organisational characteristics and commercial objectives similar to other industries. Most ignore the fact that gambling is commercially stimulated by public and private enterprises to the extent that it has become a major transnational industry operating within a complex system of nation states and cultural globalisation. Theoretical barriers inhibit a holistic account of the broad interrelations involved in gambling developments such as the recent incorporation of legalised commercial casinos into mass tourism (Eadington 1982c; McMillen 1991, 1993). Questions of why so much gambling is now organised on commercial principles or why traditional gambling cultures are being colonised by a global gambling culture are conspicuously absent. These issues form the basis for theoretical developments which are beginning to emerge from a more interdisciplinary and critical framework. Before turning to these, however, it is necessary to look at other contributions from the 1980s which offer systematic critiques of the nature and practice of modern gambling. What follows is a

Gambling cultures

22

brief outline of the development of the theory and practice of liberal policy studies and radical critiques of contemporary gambling in America and Britain, placed in their social and economic context. Analysis of gambling administration and the history of law have moved away from the positivistic approach and taken explanations of gambling relations considerably further, particularly with regard to the role of the state. Yet as analysts have moved from concepts like deviance and leisure, some analytical problems are solved but others are created. Gambling and policy analysis By the 1970s gambling was at the crossroads in many capitalist nations. In Britain, Canada and the United States, public lotteries were legalised for the first time since the nineteenth century and casinos acquired greater commercial importance and public respectability under new regulatory regimes. This period was most notable for the emergence of gaming (lotteries, casinos) as a major force exerting political and cultural influences over economic policy (Eadington 1982a, 1989; McMillen 1987, 1993; Miers 1981, 1983, 1989). The general trend towards legalisation and commercialisation of gambling encouraged research from a range of new theoretical perspectives. By the late 1970s and 1980s, the dominance of deviancy studies and positivism in gambling research was challenged from two quarters: economic and policy analysis in the United States and a more critical analysis of gambling law and the state in Britain and Canada. The rapid expansion of legalised commercial gambling in countries where it previously had been prohibited raised questions about policy and strategies of social regulation. As gambling acquired legitimacy and new forms were legalised, there was a shift in the nature of state regulation. The dramatic reversal of anti-gambling policies in these and other nations coincided with changing conceptions of gambling and renewed interest in its regulatory and administrative aspects. Theoretical interpretations shifted to a wider ‘macro’ focus on policy issues related to revenue collection (Abt et al. 1985:223–56; Rubner 1966; Suits 1977, 1979), to gambling law (Rose 1979–80; Rose 1986) and to the administration of gambling institutions and control agencies (Abt et al. 1985:211–22; Cabot and Schuetz 1991; Eadington 1984, 1990; Hood 1976:169–207; Lehne 1986; Kozlowski 1985; Newman 1972; Ransom 1991; Skolnick 1978; Weinstein and Deitch 1974). There are important linkages which exist between legal, political and economic theories which have emerged about contemporary legalised gambling. Different methodologies conceal these similarities. Thus economists often view government influence over gambling as a ‘public good’ with government as the market for supply and demand (Self 1989:92); their concern is with predicting and measuring the allocation of costs and benefits. Political scientists focus primarily on the institutions and processes of government policy-making, while legal analysts concentrate on the making and interpretation of gambling laws and the respective powers of government vis-à-vis citizens or, in federations, different levels of governments. It is significant that in Britain, Canada and the United States the boundaries between these different disciplines have become blurred as analysts have moved into one another’s traditional domains. In Britain, Miers and Dixon make considerable use of social, political and economic insights in their particular interpretations of gambling law.

Understanding gambling

23

Similar interdisciplinarity also has enriched the recent contributions of Canadian criminologists. In the United States, there has been a resurgence of studies which are both political and economic in character. In particular, public choice theory has been increasingly influential in the analysis of institutions involved in US casino policy. Taking its inspiration from neo-classical models of competitive markets, this approach is wedded to notions of consumer choice, competition between gambling providers and a limited role for government.3 As with other developments in social science, the priority of economic and policy studies in the United States and the versatility of state-centred critical criminology in Britain and Canada in the 1980s are as much a product of different social and political conditions in these countries as they are of separate intellectual traditions (Garland 1985:59–66; Young 1988). These theories also embody significant, and competing value judgements in their normative conclusions about the direction and effects of gambling policy. At one (mainly British and Canadian) extreme, a systematic interventionist state role is seen as necessary to rectify the various inefficiencies and injustices of pure market systems. At the other (predominantly American) extreme, it is assumed that state intervention should be minor, because resource allocation is best left to the operation of ‘free’ market mechanisms. In Britain and Canada, from the viewpoint of government and public opinion, gambling (and particularly the casino industry) continued to be seen primarily as a serious problem of crime and control (Campbell 1987; Campbell and Ponting 1984; Cornish 1978:213–28; Dixon 1980a, 1980b, 1982, 1983, 1987; Miers 1980, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1991). By contrast, in the United States, with the expansion of commercial casinos and state lotteries in the late 1970s, the context was set for the growth of economic and policy analysis which attempt to identify and respond to the problems and demands of the market. While there are variants on this approach, the most recent trend within gambling studies in the United States has been to depict gambling as a ‘democratised’ institution, an important product of the ‘post-industrial’ era of mass consumption which has required the intervention of state bureaucracies in the interests of rationalisation and consumer choice. Public choice analysis The public choice perspective which predominantly informs explanations of US casinos as a particular form of contemporary gambling closely reflects the political ideology of liberalism and economic growth behind the setting up of the casino industry. The earliest studies of American casinos explained casino development in terms of the deviancy model. The expansion of legal casinos in the United States during the 1970s was described as ‘the legalisation of deviance’ (Skolnick 1978:24–34), reflecting a conventional interpretation of the historical control of American casino gambling by ‘organised criminals’. However, during the 1970s commercial investment by respectable publicly traded corporations gave casinos a legitimacy lacking in other forms of gambling (Eadington and Hattori 1976; Eadington 1982a), a changing view recognised by social scientists who began to analyse casino gambling as an expanding new industry, albeit one subject to an unusual degree of state regulation. Gambling studies which emerged and flourished in the United States during the 1980s have been dominated by the study of commercial policies and practices, interest-group

Gambling cultures

24

politics, government-business relations, decision-making and change. This approach is distinguished by its policy orientation and also by its willingness to use insights from a range of disciplines in order to solve particular technical problems. Research demonstrates more concern for empirical detail of management strategies, policy-making and state organisations than other approaches to gambling analysis. Informed by a philosophical acceptance of market liberalism and the methodology and axioms of economics, specialist industry publications and business analysts apply marketing and management theories to the expanding and increasingly competitive American gambling industry (Eadington and Cornelius 1991b; Gaming and Wagering Business; Macomber 1984). From a similar perspective, public choice theory explains political decisions to expand legalised gambling and the dynamics of gambling policies in terms of state economic imperatives. The expansion of legal gambling is seen primarily as a rational, self-interested state response to upward trends in public expenditure. Compelled by pluralist politics to respond to pressure groups with costly spending programmes, governments have used gambling as a source of ‘invisible taxation’ both to secure an adequate revenue base and to obscure the pressures on public expenditures. Research questions are typically posed in terms such as the effects of legalisation on gambling patterns, what share of American gambling revenues should return to the state, and what proportion of this should be spent on the local community as opposed to the whole jurisdiction. Economic studies premised on the centrality of markets and consumer sovereignty have emphasised issues of profit maximisation, price competition and responses to market forces (Johnson 1976, 1985). Similarly, the problems to which most American casino studies have addressed themselves are usually connected with the functioning or malfunctioning of economic and regulatory policies. A great deal of the American literature on the contribution of casinos to economic development is devoted to narrowly defined cost-benefit analyses, particularly in terms of technical issues such as tourist flow predictions, factors determining casino location, and regional impacts of casino expenditures (Ebel 1990; Shonkwiler 1993); some analyses also include more imprecise comments on the socio-cultural effects of casino gambling (Abt et al. 1985:191–210). Other contributions have been within a public law framework, focusing on the issue of challenges to individual rights (Rose 1987, 1986), attempts to decriminalise illegal gambling (Dombrink and Thompson 1986; Thompson and Dombrink 1989) and constitutional tensions related to Indian gaming (Eadington 1990). Some analysts have been more concerned with the normative implications of constitutional conditions without which market exchange would not work, including the use of federal powers to provide public goods such as protection against organised crime and state guarantees of autonomy for American Indians (Cohen 1993; Rose 1986b, 1986c). Other analysts have suggested that state intervention has been the source of regulatory problems which have impeded commercial development (Cabot and Schuetz 1991; Lowenhar et al. 1991; Ransom 1991). The preference of US analysts for this view has been a major influence in the formulation and direction of casino policy. The trend to laissez-faire developments in Nevada, for example, reflects the concern of economists and policy-makers about the distorting effects of government regulation on the market and on governments themselves. The more interventionist regulatory regime in New Jersey is explained as a rational response by government to avoid the worse prospect of federal intervention to

Understanding gambling

25

ensure honest operations. The emphasis is on state decentralisation to avoid excessive concentration of power, and on individual rights and constitutional rules to control and limit the use of government power. In a number of areas (casino development, management strategies, regulatory objectives), scholars have played distinct roles in the actual creation and implementation of policy itself, creating an organic link between state policy and the study of that policy. The development of gambling research centres in Nevada universities following the expansion of the casino industry during the 1960s and 1970s is a clear reflection of the symbiotic relationship between academic study and casino development and policy. The contribution of American casino policy studies, especially that of the foremost and most prolific exponent, William R.Eadington, is important both for a proper understanding of the expansive nature of commercial casinos and because it marks a notable generation of interest in gambling from the perspective of mainstream American political and economic thought. Like those of many of his American contemporaries, Eadington’s analysis is built on an implicit advocacy of commercialisation, reflecting the pro-market philosophy of Nevada’s laissez-faire approach to casino development. More significantly, it involves a limited conception of state functions as the restriction of corporate misconduct and the bolstering of public morality. It therefore is firmly located within the notions of liberalism and capitalism which dominate American society. However, he is very much alive to the social and symbolic as well as the instrumental aspects of casino policies. Eadington investigates the legitimation and dramatic growth of the American casino industry and identifies the historical factors underlying the patterns of casino development which have emerged (Eadington 1982a, 1982b, 1987–88, 1989). In Eadington’s view, casinos and the regulatory agencies of the state are interconnected realms which cannot be considered in isolation from a broader analysis of the social context. For example, he is sensitive to the varied effects that different social and political circumstances can have on casino policies as well as the potential social costs of casino developments in terms of crime, moral and urban deterioration and ‘pathological’ gambling. Because adverse community impacts have the capacity to undermine the principles of social justice as well as to erode economic benefits, the potential for such problems justifies the exercise of a limited degree of coercion by the state. In this regard, Lehne’s analysis of New Jersey casino developments can be seen as an important advance within casino analysis, in that he is concerned primarily with both the processes and the content of casino policies (Lehne 1986). Lehne is one of the growing number of American analysts who recognise that problems can occur with a shift in political and economic power when casinos become a major political, social and economic force within a region.4 He attempts a detailed evaluation of the specific institutional arrangements and organisational dynamics of New Jersey’s control agencies as they attempt to balance competing public concerns with the drive for economic development. More than this, Lehne is concerned with the broader significance of the interdependent relationship between casinos and state agencies for power relations and policy implementation. One important contribution from Lehne’s research has been a more grounded understanding of the internal workings of the state’s institutions for gambling policy and legislative change. Focusing on the composition and practices of casino regulatory agencies, he shows that the casino policy process is shaped less by considerations of electoral representation and public demand than by the different

Gambling cultures

26

conceptions of rationality and public interest held by commercial and government organisations themselves. In general, US proponents of the public choice approach to gambling policy take the liberal view that state intervention is accepted as compatible and necessary to a competitive market economy, but only in so far as it remains unobtrusive and does not extend into the activities of individuals or the commercial activities of the casino corporations themselves. Irrespective of the particular disciplinary position taken, state intervention in casino development is advocated in limited terms as the necessary precondition for safeguarding the core of the ‘free-enterprise’ system and the rights of property, and to secure popular allegiance. The question thus becomes what are the most technically efficient ways in which the state can deal with the high social and crime risks of gambling activity? Questions are not asked of how the state balances the often contradictory requirements for public welfare and capital accumulation, and if this involves the subordination or the incorporation of citizens and their cultural practices. Such tensions span more than economics and politics to involve other aspects of social relations. There are other important questions of conceptualisation to be reconsidered. In public choice studies, the large commercial casinos which have been introduced to Nevada and Atlantic City are taken as an adequate analytical starting point, rather than as a complex historical product which itself requires examination. The specific commercial form of casino gambling is represented as natural, and therefore not modifiable. Because they remain within the liberal perspective, they have not developed the categories for a critical account of private ownership or of capital-state relations or of the variable socially determined uses to which casinos are put. The political effects of such thinking are to express both the typical viewpoint of American social science and the dominance of economic forces. In the absence of historical theoretical categories and a systematic methodology which explores beneath the surface data of state-endorsed commercialisation, public choice analysis merely confirms the apparent necessity of existing social relations. But for all its liberal and capitalist assumptions, this research reveals a network of economic and socio-cultural processes interplaying with political choice. Some of its advocates (Eadington, Lehne, Abt et al.) operate with a more ethical notion of the emergence of the casino industry than the standard view of the abstract rational economic actor in American social science. While sociology and the positivist school have contributed towards an understanding of patterns of gambling behaviour, the liberal public policy approach has helped explain the relationship between gambling, the state and social and legal order which was ignored by most analysts for decades. Through an understanding of institutional processes it can contribute to the development of a more critical understanding of commercial gambling and social welfare. Information concerning historical differences in gambling policies and practices, the different utilisation of gambling facilities and state resources by different social groups, and regional differences in gambling patterns are all important in building up a picture of the characteristics of gambling under capitalism. In summary, while there is increased awareness of the dissensus and instabilities in gambling policies and the extended role of the state in seeking to deal with social turbulence, most of this research suffers from a common deficiency: despite the

Understanding gambling

27

contemporary concern for the processes and practices, functions and outcomes of stateregulated gambling systems, there is little consideration of the political or ideological implications of state involvement in what is essentially a profitable economic enterprise. As Lehne’s study shows, the increasing involvement in gambling of large, transnational corporations, often operating through government bureaucracies, has turned private interests into policy objectives. But policy studies have confined their investigations to identifying possible organisational obstructions to the achievement of possible policy outcomes, while sociologists and economists have concentrated mainly on revealing those outcomes. In neither case is there critical confrontation of the power behind the state machinery, or how or where it is directed. Yet the law, as the branch of the state which openly specialises in the social control of organised gambling, unabashedly claims its right to make political and economic as well as moral judgements. Criminology and the history of law A recent strand in the explanations of legalised gambling is the appearance of a critical analysis of gambling which explicitly recognises the complexity of its political-legal aspects. Of particular note has been the emergence of challenging and sophisticated explanations for gambling policy drawing upon substantive developments in criminology and legal history. Since the 1970s, the study of gaming law in Britain has been transformed within the realist tradition to examine the gap between legal theory and practice. Similar developments have occurred in Canada and the United States with the advance of critical criminology. These theoretical explanations of gambling policies returned to the criminology agenda during the 1970s when crime and law and order were important public issues, precipitating a decade of theoretical and political controversies about state-defined conceptions of crime (Young 1988). In Britain, for example, confidence in old liberal notions of self-adjusting social equilibrium was dwindling with the growing involvement of the state in facilitating economic development and controlling disorder. In Britain as in the United States, the political emphasis on social control went hand-in-hand with support for positivist social science to differentiate problems for gambling policy. Many commentators with social democratic ideals opposed the institutional links of establishment social science with the repressive strategies of the Home Office, forcing overt recognition of the increasingly interventionist role of the state in sustaining social order. Importantly, this theoretical reorientation sensitised criminologists to the analytical neglect of relationships of state agencies with socio-economic interests and of crimes of ‘the powerful’ more generally (Box 1983). A small number of Canadian and US criminologists have attempted to distinguish between different facets of state activity, such as tensions between the state’s general functions in preserving social order and creating the necessary conditions for accumulation and the specific use of state power to promote particular social and economic interests (Campbell 1987; Campbell and Ponting 1984; Chambliss 1976; Cressey 1969; Dombrink 1981; Kornblum 1976; Osborne and Campbell 1988; Reuter and Rubenstein 1978; Skolnick 1978, 1979a, 1979b). This issue became crucial as more and more Canadian provinces and American states legalised gambling, despite the long history of anti-gambling moralism. Dombrink, for example, drawing on O’Connor’s

Gambling cultures

28

understanding of the varied and often contradictory functions of the state (O’Connor 1973), suggests that legalisation of gambling has appealed to American authorities for several reasons. The primary attraction is that gambling provides significant tax revenues which have helped to ease the worsening fiscal crisis of the state. However, the state also acts to facilitate the accumulation of wealth by private sector interests in the gambling industry. The state’s role in legalising gambling legitimates the ‘free enterprise’ system to those who are not its prime beneficiaries, and thus helps to maintain the conditions necessary for social harmony. To the extent to which gambling contributes to these fundamental functions of the state (revenue allocation, accumulation and legitimation), it will appeal to policy-makers who may resist attempts by the anti-gambling lobby and regulatory agencies to restrict legalised gambling. These studies also make the important point that governments are constrained and complex forums for competing ideas, rather than the autonomous and single-minded organisations assumed from a paradigm of economics and public choice. They stress the importance of structural and local cultural factors to show how the power politics of casino development have been played out within a distinctive socio-cultural framework and how the limited institutional powers and contradictory economic choices available to the state have defined and restricted policy options. This emphasis on the way competing values, interests and resources are shaped by structural arrangements can be seen as giving a more complete understanding of the complexity and unpredictability of the gambling policy process. Significantly, there also emerged in Britain in the 1980s a conception of gambling, social order and control which is more alive to a critical interpretation than most American policy studies. These studies developed out of debates within criminology and the history of law which have altered the tone and conceptual structure of gambling analysis by examining in detail the structures, ideologies and interrelationships between the public and private. The British socio-political climate is more sympathetic to theoretical critique than America, producing a critical legal history which offers an alternative competing paradigm critical of the endemic problems of gambling policies. In British gambling studies, the illuminating historical works of Dixon and Miers have developed a theoretically informed analysis of the often contradictory aspects of the state and law. Dixon’s analysis of the 1906 Street Betting Act starts from the recognition that crime is a major problem precisely for the most vulnerable sections of the population (Dixon 1984, 1989). He reveals the ambiguous role of police who are obliged to enforce unpopular and unenforceable anti-gambling laws, showing how these ‘instruments’ of state authority in fact became critical agents for the liberalisation of betting policies. In a more contemporary vein, Miers’s evaluation of the rationale, actions and effectiveness of the British Gaming Board has examined the particular character of British casino law and regulations, identifying the political and legal problems associated with attempts to impose strict regulations on an industry which had operated on the fringe of the law for decades (Miers 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987). British insights into the origins, ambiguities and limitations of state authority have been extended by Canadian criminologists such as Campbell and Ponting (1984), who have investigated the historical tensions between federal and provincial governments and the fragmentation and inconsistencies of Canadian gambling laws. Their study highlights the structural and

Understanding gambling

29

cultural limitations of the regional state when dealing with national and transnational political-economic forces. It is notable that these contributions signal a change of focus from the equation of gambling with individual behaviour to a broader conception of gambling which explains specific legal developments in the context of broader political-economic and sociocultural transformations. As previously explained, in early post-war sociological studies, gambling as a legal or illegal activity involved a model of the coercive and punitive role of the state. The deeper theoretical reorientation of radical criminological studies involves a quite different conception of the political-legal order which examines the total system of social relations subject to regulation. A further modification in the treatment of gambling embodies revision of an historical materialist perspective and methodology. Although analysis of specific law-making has long been been part of liberal gambling studies, this new historical approach to gambling analysis involves a critical examination of the dynamic relation between state actions and the transformation of economic and social relations. It is a recognition that the legal definition of gambling no longer merely constrains the under-classes but also creates and mobilises the ideological legitimation of the capitalist social order. A further feature of contemporary developments in the analysis of gambling is that it rises above the intellectual sectarianism which characterised earlier studies. In its formative years of development, the study of gambling exhibited a narrow, disciplinary exclusivity; each perspective, in seeking to establish its own field, held to a rigid boundary maintenance. For example, most American studies of gambling law, dominated by legal positivism, tend to ignore the contributions of other disciplinary fields. The work of Campbell, Dixon, Dombrink and Miers makes a positive contribution to debates about the relation between the gambling industry and the state by locating them within a broader interdisciplinary perspective. Included in their point of contact with sociology and political economy are the key contemporary issues of power and control, as embodied in the philosophical traditions of Marx and Weber. This trend thus signifies a ‘leftist’ shift which rejects liberal sociology (gambling as a reflection of society) and positivism (gambling as a reflection of neutral and rational law).

CONCLUSION The purpose of this chapter has been to outline and evaluate prevailing explanations for gambling in order to illustrate the diverse points of entry into an understanding of contemporary commercial gambling which have emerged. It has traced the impacts of national gambling practice and policy on theoretical development and revealed the analytical limitations of narrow disciplinary frameworks. In the process, it argues for the ability of gambling analysis to go beyond the limits of earlier theoretical foundations which explained gambling by the behaviour and attributes of gamblers. This chapter does not claim to represent a comprehensive survey of the field. As an introduction to gambling theory it necessarily concentrates on only the major themes and contributors. There also are significant empirical and theoretical gaps in gambling research which have not been addressed: gambling in modern Asian cultures has rarely been studied; and the theories of signification and power deriving from Barthes (1973

Gambling cultures

30

[1957]) and Foucault (1974 [1969], 1980), and the broad area of women’s studies provide fertile sources of further insight and stimulation. It is difficult to understand why gambling has attracted so little attention from cultural studies and feminist analysis which have made such important contributions to explanations of contemporary society since the 1980s. National and historical differences in the dominant mode of explanation of gambling can be understood partly through changes in theoretical emphasis in the social sciences themselves and partly as the result of national policies prescribing stages of gambling legalisation which set the moral and research agenda. Despite their potential importance for a contemporary understanding, sociologists and policy analysts interested in gambling have made little use of the frameworks and concepts provided by other disciplines and accounts in other countries. In each case, analysis has been contained within a localised framework in which attention has been concentrated on particular groups of gamblers and policies to the exclusion of more general, international processes. The dominant values in analysis tend to reflect the dominant values of that society. The pluralism of recent American casino studies stresses the rise of markets, the progressive dispersal of power, the rise of elites and the separation of ownership from state control, whereas British and Canadian critiques have stressed the accelerating concentration of economic and state power. There has been a recent convergence towards acknowledgment of the central role of capital and state in gambling development and of the significance of their interconnections with socio-cultural forces. Research has shown that the quality as well as the quantity of gambling is historically specific. The nature of gambling in pre-capitalist societies differs from gambling under a system of global capitalism. The shape of modern gambling not only reflects the nature of social relations in any society, but also powerfully determines new social and political outcomes. Without grappling with these central conceptual issues, many gambling studies remain entrapped, albeit un-intentionally, within a narrow liberal orientation which limits their concerns to descriptive analysis of the functioning of gamblers and gambling institutions. An understanding of contemporary gambling and its rapid global expansion requires different conceptual tools and a more explicitly political project.

NOTES 1 See, for example, the Petition to the Queensland Legislative Assembly, 1 September, 1898; and the South Australian Report of the Commission on Betting (1933). 2 Although sharing a concern for social and welfare policies, it is worth noting that the Australian state has not supported academic gambling studies in the same way. There was no comparable institutional funding for academic research into Australian gambling during this period. Only in the 1990s have some Australian states (Queensland and Victoria) begun to investigate the social effects of their gambling policies (McMillen 1994). 3 For discussions of public choice theory, see Dunleavy 1991; March and Olson 1989; Olson 1965; Niskanen 1971; Posner 1974; Stigler 1971, 1972; Self 1985. 4 See also Skolnick (1979a, 1979b) and Dombrink (1981).

Understanding gambling

31

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V., Smith, J.F. and Christiansen, E.M. (1985) The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Adler, J. (1966) ‘Gambling, drugs and alcohol: a note on functional equivalents’, Issues in Criminology 2(1):111–18. Albanese, J. (1985) Organized Crime in America, Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing. Alchin, T.M. (1989) ‘Taxation of gambling in Australia’, Economic Analysis and Policy 19(2):167–84. Altman, J. (1985) ‘Gambling as a mode of redistributing and accumulating cash among Aborigines: a case study from Arnhem Land’, in G.Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm: 50–67. Aronson, P.H. and Miller, R.L. (1980) ‘Economic aspects of public gaming’, Connecticut Law Review 12(4):822–53. Barthes, R. (1973 [1957]) Mythologies, trans. A Lavers, St Albans: Paladin. Becker, H. (1963) Outsiders, New York: Free Press. ——(1968) ‘Whose side are we on?’ Social Problems 14:239–47. Bergler, E. (1957) The Psychology of Gambling, New York: Hill & Wang. Blakey, R.G. and Kurland, H.A. (1978) ‘The development of the federal law of gambling’, Cornell Law Review 63(6):923–1021. Blascovich, J., Ginsburg, G. and Howe, R. (1976) ‘Blackjack: choice shifts in the field’, Sociometry 39(3):274–6. Blaszczynski, A., McConaghy, N. and Frankova, A. (1989) ‘Crime, anti-social personality and pathological gambling’, Journal of Gambling Behaviour 5:37–52. Bloch, H. (1957) ‘The sociology of gambling’, American Journal of Sociology 57: 217–18. Bolen, D.W. (1976) ‘Gambling: historical highlights and trends and their implications for contemporary society’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling and Society. Interdisciplinary Studies on the Subject of Gambling, Springfield, IL: Charles C.Thomas: 7–38. Box, S. (1983) Power, Crime and Mystification, London: Tavistock. Brown, R.I.F. (1987) ‘Pathological gambling and associated patterns of crime: comparisons with alcohol and other drug addictions’, Journal of Gambling Behaviour 3(2): 98–114. Bursik, R.J., Jr and Grasmick, H.G. (1992) Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control, New York: Lexington Books. Cabot, A.N. and Schuetz, R.J. (1991) ‘An economic view of the Nevada licensing process’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy. International Perspectives, Nevada: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada-Reno: 123–54. Caillois, R. (1961) Man, Play and Games, trans. M.Barash, New York: Free Press. Caldwell, G.T. (1972a) ‘Leisure Co-operatives. The Institutionalisation of Gambling and the Growth of Large Leisure Organisations in New South Wales’, PhD thesis, Australian National University. ——(1972b) ‘Jackpot: the NSW club’, Current Affairs Bulletin (Sept.): 13–16. ——(1974) ‘The gambling Australian’, in D.Edgar (ed.) Social Change in Australia. Readings in Sociology, Melbourne: Cheshire: 13–28. ——(1983) ‘Statement to the poker machine inquiry’, Appendix to the Report of the Board of Inquiry into Poker Machines (Wilcox Report), Melbourne: Government Printer. ——(1985a) ‘Some historical and sociological characteristics of Australian gambling’, in G.Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm: 18–27.

Gambling cultures

32

——(1985b) ‘Poker machine playing in NSW and ACT clubs’, in G.Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm: 261–8. Caldwell, G., Dickerson, M., Haig, B. and Sylvan, L. (eds) (1985) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm. Campbell, C. (1987) ‘Casino gambling and the peripheral state: charitable gaming in British Columbia’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research, vol. 1. Reno: University of NevadaReno: 332–72. Campbell, C.S. and Lowman, J. (eds) (1989) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University. Campbell, C.S. and Ponting, J.R. (1984) ‘The evolution of casino gambling in Alberta’, Canadian Public Policy 10(2):142–55. Campbell, F. (1976) ‘Gambling: a positive view’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling and Society, Springfield, IL: Charles C.Thomas: 218–28. Capling, A., and Galligan, B. (1992) Beyond the Protectionist State, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Chafetz, H. (1960) Play the Devil: A History of Gambling in the United States from 1492 to 1955, New York: Clarkson N.Potter. Chambliss, W. (1976) On the Take, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Charlton, P. (1987) Two Flies Up a Wall. The Australian Passion for Gambling, North Ryde: Methuen Haynes. Childress, S.A. (1991) ‘“Reel rape speech”: violent pornography and the politics of harm’, Law & Society Review 25(1):177–214. Cohen, K. (1993) Character and Circumstance. Thirty Years of the Totalisator Administration Board in Queensland. 1962–1992, Brisbane: Boolarong. Commission of the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling (1976) Gambling in America: Final Report of the Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling (Morin Commission), Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Cornell Law School (1977) The Development of the Law of Gambling 1776–1976, National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, US Department of Justice, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Cornish, D.B. (1978) Gambling: A Review of the Literature and Its Implications for Policy and Research, Home Office Research Study No. 42, London: Home Office Research Unit. Cowan, J. (1974) ‘The gambler’s fallacy’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30:238–51. Cressey, D.R. (1969) Theft of a Nation, New York: Harper & Row. D’Angelo, R. (1985) ‘The social organisation of sports gambling’, Paper presented at the Sixth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Atlantic City (Nov.). Dennis, N., Henriques, F. and Slaughter, C. (1956) Coal is Our Life, London: Tavistock. Dessant, J. (1976) ‘The betting shop industry in Glamorgan, 1961–1967’, in D.M. Downes, B.P.Davies, M.E.David and P.Stone, Gambling, Work and Leisure: A Study across Three Areas, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 230–46. Devereux, E.C. (1968a) ‘Gambling in a psychological and sociological perspective’, International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences 6:53–62. ——(1968b) ‘Gambling and Social Structure: A Sociological Study of Lotteries and Horseracing in Contemporary America’, 2 vols, PhD thesis, Harvard University. Dickerson, M. (1984) Compulsive Gamblers, London: Longman. Dickerson, M. and Hinchy, J. (1987) ‘Minimal treatment for problem gamblers’, in M. Walker (ed.) Faces of Gambling. Proceedings of the Second National Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies (NAGS), Sydney: National Association for Gambling Studies: 291–8. ——(1988) ‘The prevalence of excessive and pathological gambling in Australia’, Journal of Gambling Behaviour 4:4–21. Dielman, T.E. (1979) ‘Gambling: a social problem?’ Journal of Social Issues 35(3):36–42.

Understanding gambling

33

Dixey, R. (1984) ‘Bingo: “The only place to go”’, Society for the Study of Gambling Newsletter 6:1–7. Dixon, D. (1980a) ‘“Class Law”: the Street Betting Act of 1906’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law 8:101–28. ——(1980b) ‘The discovery of the compulsive gambler’, in Z.Bankowski and G. Mungham (eds) Essays in Law and Society, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul: 157–79. ——(1982) ‘The state and gambling: developments in the legal control of gambling, 1867–1923’, Paper presented at the Fifth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Las Vegas, NV. ——(1983) ‘Illegal gambling and histories of policing in Britain’, The Society for the Study of Gambling Newsletter 3 (April): 1–7. ——(1984) ‘Illegal gambling and histories of policing in Great Britain’, Paper presented at the Sixth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Atlantic City, NJ (9–12 Dec.). ——(1987) ‘Responses to illegal betting in Britain and Australia’, Paper presented at the Seventh National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno, NV (23–26 Aug.). ——(1989) From Prohibition to Regulation. Bookmaking, Anti-gambling and the Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dixon, D. and Fishwick, E. (1984) ‘The law and order debate in historical perspective’, in P.Norton (ed.) Law and Order and British Politics, Hampshire: Gower Press: 21–37. Dombrink, J.D. (1981) ‘Outlaw Businessmen: Organized Crime and the Legalization of Casino Gambling’, PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley. Dombrink, J. and Thompson, W.N. (1986) ‘The Report of the Commission on Organised Crime and its implications for commercial gaming in America’, Nevada Public Affairs Review 2:70–5. ——(1990) The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos, Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press. Dowie, J. (1975) On the Efficiency and Equity of Betting Markets. Studies in Economics, Canterbury: University of Kent (mimeo). Downes, D.M. (1979) ‘From raffles to heart-stoppers: the social regulation of gambling’, British Journal of Law and Society 6(1): 235–43. Downes, D.M., Davies, B.P., David, M.E. and Stone, P. (1976) Gambling, Work and Leisure: A Study across Three Areas, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Downes, D. and Rock, P. (1982) Understanding Deviance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Downton, F. (1969) ‘A note on betting strategies in compound games’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A 132:543–7. Dunleavy, P. (1991) Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice: Economic Explanations in Political Science, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Eadington, W.R. (ed.) (1976) Gambling and Society. Interdisciplinary Studies on the Subject of Gambling, Springfield, IL: Charles C.Thomas. ——(1982a) ‘The evolution of corporate gambling in Nevada’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics 6(1):13–22. ——(1982b) ‘Regulatory objectives and the expansion of casino gambling’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics (Fall): 4–13. ——(1982c) ‘Casino gambling and tourism: recent experiences and future considerations’, in W.R.Eadington, Materials Pertaining to Casino Gambling in America, Reno: University of Nevada: 1–5. ——(ed.) (1982d) The Gambling Papers: Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno: Bureau of Business and Economic Research, College of Business Administration, University of Nevada, Reno. ——(1984) ‘The casino gaming industry: a study of political economy’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:23–35.

Gambling cultures

34

——(1985) ‘Trend in the legalisation of gambling in America in the 1980s and the implications for Australia’, in J.McMillen (ed.) Gambling in the 80s. Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies, Nathan: National Association for Gambling Studies. ——(1986a) ‘Impact of casino gambling on the community: comment on Pizam and Poleka’, Annals of Tourism Research 13. ——(ed.) (1986b) The Gambling Studies: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno: University of Nevada, Reno. ——(1987–88) ‘The changing face of commercial gambling in America in the 1980s’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics 22(1):5–11. ——(ed.) (1988) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Seventh National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno: University of Nevada, Reno. ——(1989) ‘Issues and trends in world gaming’, in C.S.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 3–26. ——(1990) Indian Gaming and the Law, Reno: University of Nevada. ——(1991) ‘Public policy considerations and challenges and the spread of commercial gambling’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Nevada: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno: 3–12. Eadington, W.R. and Cornelius, J.A. (eds) (1991a) Gambling and Public Policy. International Perspectives, Nevada: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno. ——(eds) (1991b) Gambling and Commercial Gaming. Essays in Business, Economics, Philosophy and Science, Nevada: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno. Eadington, W.R. and Hattori, James S. (1976) ‘A legislative history of gambling in Nevada’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics 2(1):13–17. Ebel, R.D. (ed.) (1990) A Fiscal Agenda for Nevada, Reno: University of Nevada Press. Encel, S. (1970) Equality and Authority, Melbourne: Cheshire. Foucault, M. (1974 [1969]) The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.Sheridan Smith, London: Tavistock. ——(1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. C.Gordon, Brighton: Harvester. France, C.J. (1974) ‘The gambling impulse’, American Journal of Psychology 13: 364–407. Freud, S. (1928) ‘Dostoevsky and Parricide’, in J.E.Strachey (ed.), Complete Psychological Works of Freud 21, London: Hogarth Press: 177–94. Frey, J.H. (1984) ‘Gambling: a sociological review’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:107–21. Frey, J.H. and W.R.Eadington (eds) (1984) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474. Friedman, M. and Savage, L.J. (1946) ‘The utility analysis of choices involving risks’, Journal of Political Economy 56:288. Gaming and Wagering Business (1984–95) (various issues) New York: BMT Communications. Garland, D. (1985) ‘The criminal and his science’, British Journal of Criminology 25:109–37. Geertz, C. (1972) ‘Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight’, Daedalus 101:1–37. Goffman, E. (1967) ‘Where the action is’, in Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behaviour, New York: Anchor Doubleday: 149–270. Goldthorpe, J., Lockwood, D., Platt, J. and Bechhofer, F. (1969) The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grichting, W. (1986) ‘The impact of religion on gambling in Australia’, Australian Journal of Psychology 38(1):45–58.

Understanding gambling

35

Gruen, A. (1976) ‘An inquiry into the economics of race-track betting’, Journal of Political Economy 84(1):169–77. Haig, B.D. (1984) ‘Gambling in Australia 1920–21 to 1980–81’, Working Paper No. 20, Working Papers in Economic History, Canberra: Australian National University. Halliday, J. and Fuller, P. (eds) (1974) The Psychology of Gambling, London: Allen Lane. Hardy, F. (1958) The Four-legged Lottery, Sydney: Penguin. Hayano, D.M. (1982) Poker Faces, Berkeley: University of California Press. ——(1984) ‘The professional gambler: fame, fortune, and failure’, in J.H.Frey and W. R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views From the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:157–67. Herman, R.D. (1967) ‘Gambling as work: a sociological study of the race track’, in R.D. Herman (ed.) Gambling, New York: Harper & Row: 87–104. ——(1976) Gamblers and Gambling. Motives, Institutions and Controls, Toronto: D.C. Heath. Hill, C.R. (1987) Horse Power: The Politics of the Turf, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hood, C. (1972) ‘The development of betting taxes in Britain’, Public Administration 50: 183–202. ——(1976) The Limits of Administration, London: Wiley. Huizinga, J. (1949 [1938]) Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Inglis, K. (1985) ‘Gambling and culture in Australia’, in G.Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm: 5–17. Johnson, J. (1985) ‘Gambling as a source of government revenue in Australia’, in G. Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helrn: 78–93. Johnson, J.A. (1976) ‘An economic analysis of lotteries’, Canadian Tax Journal 24 (Nov.–Dec.): 639–51. Kallick-Kaufman, M. (1979) ‘The micro and macro dimensions of gambling in the United States’, Journal of Social Issues 35(3):7–35. Kaplan, L. and Maher, J. (1970) ‘The economics of the numbers game’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 29(4):391–408. King, R. (1969) Gambling and Organized Crime, Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press. Kornblum, A. (1976) The Moral Hazards: Police Strategies for Honesty and Ethical Behaviour, Lexington, MA: D.C.Heath. Kozlowski, P. (1985) ‘Privately financed gambling: New Jersey’s approach to regulating the casino industry’, in J.McMillen (ed.) Gambling in the 80s. Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies, Nathan: National Association for Gambling Studies. Lehne, R. (1986) Casino Policy, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lemon, A. (1972) Racing and Politics. Victoria’s Great Totalisator Debate 1880–1906, Melbourne: Hornet. Lesieur, H.R. (1984) The Chase: Career of the Compulsive Gambler, Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. ——(1987) ‘Gambling, pathological gambling and crime’, in T.Galski (ed.) The Handbook of Pathological Gambling, Springfield, IL: C.C.Thomas: 89–110. Lesieur, H.R. and Custer, R.L. (1984) ‘The compulsive gambler: causes and treatments’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:146–56. Lesieur, H.R. and Puig, K. (1987) ‘Insurance problems and pathological gambling’, Journal of Gambling Behaviour 3(2):123–37. Light, I. (1977a) ‘Numbers gambling among blacks: a financial institution’, American Sociological Review 42:892–904. ——(1977b) ‘The ethnic vice industry, 1880–1944’, American Sociological Review 42: 464–79. Lowenhar, J., Lonoff, C. and Smith, R. (1991) ‘Regulatory requirements and legalised casino gaming in New Jersey: the case for change’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A. Cornelius (eds)

Gambling cultures

36

Gambling and Public Policy. International Perspectives, Nevada: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno: 261–8. Lynch, R. (1990) ‘Working class luck and vocabularies of hope among regular poker-machine players’, in D.Rowe and G.Lawrence (eds) Sport and Leisure. Trends in Australian Popular Culture, Marrickville: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 189–208. McCall, G.J. (1963) ‘Symbiosis: the case of hoodoo and the numbers racket’, Social Problems 10:361–71. McCoy, A.W. (1980) Drug Traffic. Narcotics and Organised Crime in Australia, Sydney: Harper & Row. McKibbin, R. (1979) ‘Working class gambling in Britain 1880–1939’, Past and Present 82:147– 78. Maclean, N. (1984) ‘Is gambling “bisnis”?: the economic and political functions of gambling in the Jimi Valley’, Social Analysis 16:13–27. McMillen, J. (ed.) (1985) Gambling in the 80s. Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies, Nathan: National Association for Gambling Studies. ——(1986a) ‘Winners and losers: dilemmas of gambling policies’, Labor Forum 8(2):65–9. ——(1986b) ‘The other revolution: the legalisation of commercial gambling in Australia’, Nevada Public Affairs Review 2:65–9. ——(1987) ‘Gambling for high stakes: developments in Australian casinos’, Current Affairs Bulletin 64(4):20–5. ——(1987–88) ‘A risky business: political control of Australian casinos?’ Nevada Review of Business Economics 12(1):12–24. ——(1988) ‘Gambling on casinos: a political economy of Australian developments’, Journal of Gambling Behaviour 4(2):21–32. ——(1989) ‘The future: golden goose or Trojan horse?’, in C.S.Campbell and J. Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 371–410. ——(1990) ‘Casino policies: have Australians had a fair deal?’ Journal of Gambling Studies 6(1):3–29. ——(1991) ‘Casinos and tourism: what’s the big attraction?’, in P.Carroll et al. (eds) Tourism in Australia, Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 153–72. ——(1993) ‘Risky Business: The Political Economy of Australian Casino Developments’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland. ——(1994) ‘Social priorities in gaming policy: studies from two Australian states’, Paper presented to the Ninth International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Las Vegas. McMillen, J. and Eadington, W.R. (1986) ‘The evolution of gambling laws in Australia’, New York Journal of International and Comparative Law 8(1):167–92. McMillen, J. and Lafferty, G. (1991) ‘The tourism workforce: service or servility?’, in P. Carroll et al. (eds) Tourism in Austalia, Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 82–96. Macomber, D. (1984) ‘Management policy and practices in modern casino operations’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:80–90. March, J.G. and Olson, J.P. (1989) Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Bias of Politics, New York: Free Press. Martinez, T. (1983) The Gambling Scene: Why People Gamble, Springfield, IL: C.C. Thomas. Matza, D. (1969) Becoming Deviant, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Miers, D. (1980) ‘Eighteenth century gaming: implications for modern casino control’, in J.A.Inciardi and C.E.Faupel (eds) History and Crime: Implications for Criminal Justice Policy, London: Sage: 169–92. ——(1981) ‘The mismanagement of casino gambling’, British Journal of Criminology 21(1):79– 86.

Understanding gambling

37

——(1983) ‘Malpractices in casino gambling’, in M.Clarke (ed.) Corruption, London, Francis Pinter: 24–38. ——(1984) ‘The regulation of commercial gaming’, Journal of Law and Society 11(1): 33–63. ——(1985) ‘The impact of regulation on the commercial gaming market in Great Britain’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) The Gambling Studies: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno, University of Nevada: 253–73. ——(1987) ‘The Gaming Board for Great Britain: enforcement and judical restraint’, in R.Baldwin and C.McCrudden (eds) Regulation and Public Law, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 81–106. ——(1989) ‘Developments in commercial gambling in Great Britain’, in C.S.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 27–52. ——(1991) ‘The national regulation of gambling and the completion of the internal markets in the European Community’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Nevada: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno: 409–24. Miers, D. and Dixon, D. (1979) ‘The national bet: the re-emergence of the public lottery’, Public Law: 372–403. Moody, G.E. (1972) The Facts about the ‘Money Factories’, London: The Churches’ Council on Gambling. Newman, O. (1972) Gambling. Hazard and Reward, London: Athlone Press. ——(1975) ‘The ideology of social problems: gambling, a case study’, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 12(4):541–50. Niskanen, W.A. (1971) Bureaucracy and Representative Government, New York: Aldine-Atherton. O’Connor, J. (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State, London: St Martins Press. O’Hara, J. (n.d.) ‘The great Australian gambling tradition’, in R.Cashman and M. McKernan (eds) Sport, Money, Morality and the Media, Kensington: University of New South Wales Press: 68– 85. ——(1986) ‘Getting a stake: gambling in early colonial Australia’, in J.McMillen (ed.) Gambling in the 80s. Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies (NAGS), Brisbane: Griffith University Reprographics, n.p. ——(1988) A Mug’s Game: A History of Gaming and Betting in Australia, Kensington: New South Wales University Press. Oldman, D. (1974) ‘Chance and skill: a study of roulette’, Sociology 8:407–26. ——(1978) ‘Compulsive gamblers’, Sociological Review 26:349–71. Olson, M. (1965) The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Osborne, J.A., and Campbell, C.S. (1988) ‘Recent amendments to Canadian lottery and gaming laws: the transfer of power between federal and provincial governments’, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 26(1):19–43. Painter, M. (1990) ‘At arm’s length with dirty hands: taxing the Australian punter’, Australian Journal of Public Administration 49(2):179–91. ——(1991) ‘Policy diversity and policy learning in a federation: the case of Australian state betting laws’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism 21:143–57. Parker, S. (1976) The Future of Work and Leisure, New York: Praeger. Paton, J.H. (1946) ‘Gambling’, in J.Hastings (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics 6, Edinburgh: T.T.Clark: 163–7. Peterson, V.W. (1950) ‘Obstacles to enforcement of gambling laws’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 269:9–20. ——(1951) Gambling: Should it be Legalised? Springfield, IL: C.C.Thomas. Polsky, N. (1971) Hustlers, Beats and Others, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Posner, R. (1974) ‘Theories of economic regulation’, Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 5:263–309.

Gambling cultures

38

Pryor, F.L. (1976) ‘The Friedman-Savage utility function in cross-cultural perspective’, Journal of Political Economy 84:823–4. Ransom, B. (1991) ‘Public policy and gambling in New Jersey’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy. International Perspectives, Nevada: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno: 155–68. Reuter, P. (1983) Disorganised Crime. Illegal Markets and the Mafia, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ——(1984) ‘Police regulation of illegal gambling: frustrations of symbolic enforcement’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:36–47. ——(1979) ‘Easy sport: research and relevance’, Journal of Social Issues 35(3):166–82. Reuter, P. and Rubenstein, J. (1978) ‘Fact, fancy and organized crime’, The Public Interest 53:46– 54. ——(1981) Illegal Gambling in New York: A Case Study in the Operation, Structure and Regulation of an Illegal Market, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Rose, N. (1979–80) ‘The legalization and control of casino gambling’, Fordham Urban Law Journal 8(2):245–300. ——(1986) ‘Constitutional questions of Nevada gaming licensure: a rights-based analysis’, Nevada Public Affairs Review 2:15–20. ——(1987) Gambling and the Law, California: Gambling Times. Rosecrance, J. (1985a) The Degenerates of Lake Tahoe, New York: Peter Lang. ——(1985b) ‘Compulsive gambling and the medicalization of deviance’, Social Problems 32(3):275–84. ——(1986a) ‘Why regular gamblers don’t quit’, Sociological Perspectives 29:357–78. ——(1986b) ‘Racetrack buddy relations: compartmentalized and satisfying’, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 3:441–56. ——(1986c) ‘The sociology of casino gamblers’, Nevada Public Affairs Review 2:27–31. ——(1987) ‘The invisible horsemen: the social world of the backstretch’, Qualitative Sociology 8(3):301–12. ——(1988a) Gambling without Guilt: The Legitimation of an American Pastime, Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole. ——(1988b) ‘Professional horse-race gambling: working without a safety net’, in W.R. Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, vol. 3, Reno: University of Nevada-Reno: 11–37. Rosett, R.N. (1965) ‘Gambling and rationality’, Journal of Political Economy 73(6): 595–607. Royal Commission on Gambling (1978) Royal Commission on Gambling. Final Report, 2 vols (Rothschild Report), London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Rubner, A. (1966) The Economics of Gambling, Melbourne: Macmillan. Scimecca, J.A. (1971) ‘A typology of the gambler’, International Journal of Contemporary Sociology 8(1):56–72. Self, P. (1985) Political Theories of Modern Government, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. ——(1989) ‘An economic perspective’, in B.Galligan (ed.) Australian Federalism, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire: 69–97. Shonkwiler, J.S. (1993) ‘Assessing the impact of Atlantic City casinos on Nevada gaming revenues’, American Economics Journal 21(2):50–61. Simmel, E. (1920) ‘Psychoanalysis of the gambler’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 1:352–3. Skolnick, J.H. (1978) House of Cards: Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling, Boston: Little, Brown. ——(1979a) ‘The social risks of casino gambling’, Psychology Today 13(2):52–64. ——(1979b) ‘The dilemmas of regulating casino gambling’, Journal of Social Issues 35(3):129– 43.

Understanding gambling

39

——(1984) ‘A zoning merit model for casino gambling’, in J.H.Frey and W.R. Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:48–60. Smith, R.W. and Preston, F.W. (1984) ‘Vocabularies of motives for gambling behaviour’, Sociological Perspectives 27(3):325–48. Stigler, G.J. (1971) ‘The theory of economic regulation’, Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2:3–21. Suits, D. (1977) ‘Gambling taxes: regressivity and revenue potential’, National Tax Journal 30(1):19–35. ——(1979) ‘Economic background for gambling policy’, Journal of Social Issues 3(3): 43–61. Summers, A. (1975) Damned Whores and God’s Police, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin. Tec, N. (1965) Gambling in Sweden, New Jersey: Bedminster Press. Thompson, W.N. and Dombrink, J. (1989) ‘A politically acceptable model of casino gaming for American jurisdictions’, in C.S.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 337–70. Thorp, E.O. (1962) Beat the Dealer, New York: Random House. Turner, W. (1965) Gambler’s Money: The New Force in American Life, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Vamplew, W. (1976) The Turf: A Social and Economic History of Horse Racing, London: Allen & Unwin. Veblen, T. (1953 [1899]) Theory of the Leisure Class, New York: Mentor Books. Walker, M. (ed.) (1987) Faces of Gambling. Proceedings of the Second Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies, Sydney: National Association for Gambling Studies. Ward, R. (1958) The Australian Legend, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Weber, M. (1976 [1904–5]) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Allen & Unwin. Weinstein, D. and Deitch, L. (1974) The Impact of Legalised Gambling: The Socio-economic Consequences of Lotteries and Off-track Betting, New York: Praeger. Woung, S. (1980) Professional Blackjack, Atlantic City, NJ: Boardwalker Magazine. Wykes, A. (1964) The Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling, New York: Doubleday. Young, J. (1986) ‘The failure of criminology: the need for radical realism’, in R. Matthews and J.Young (eds) Confronting Crime, London: Sage: 34–48. ——(1988) ‘Radical criminology in Britain: the emergence of a competing paradigm’, British Journal of Criminology 28(2):159–83. Zola, I.K. (1967 [1963]) ‘Observations on gambling in a lower class setting’, in R.D. Harmon (ed.) Gambling, New York: Harper & Row: 19–31.

2 GAMBLING AND THE LEGALISATION OF VICE Social movements, public health and public policy in the United States John Dombrink1

The politics of the criminalisation, decriminalisation, legalisation or recriminalisation of vice in America has deep roots and complex forms. Other western industrialised countries have used the criminal law to control vice, but in the twentieth century, the United States has displayed a stubborn attachment to the use of the criminal sanction in the area, a prime example being the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s. Meanwhile, Britain and Germany have chosen less punitive forms of control, utilising medical and market models to restrict citizen access to possible harmful substances. However, a comparative approach examining various countries’ practices on regulating vice is beyond the scope of this chapter. What follows is a comparison within the United States of the status of legal treatment of several types of vice. While the discussion may not be easily related to other countries, even those with similar economic and social structure or shared cultural traditions, it is hoped that the comparative analysis of gambling to other vices within the United States is useful. I aim to explain why gambling has been an exceptional case in the legal treatment of vice, as well as to gauge the extent to which it resonates with elements of deep-seated debate over family, sexuality, privacy, the limits of the criminal sanction and the role of government in matters of personal morality. Skolnick and Dombrink (1978) have identified various factors which would lead towards or inhibit effective legalisation of the ‘classic’ vices—gambling, abortion, homosexuality, drug use, pornography and prostitution. This was more than a decade after a group of socio-legal scholars had argued for or predicted the liberalisation of criminal laws affecting these areas of victimless or consensual crime, advocating in the context of a model penal code the adoption of policies limiting the reach of the criminal sanction, an examination initiated by the British Wolfenden Report (Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1963). Indeed, by 1978 the US Supreme Court had already provided American women with access to abortion through its 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade;2 various states had addressed marijuana decriminalisation; and sodomy laws were changing. Above all, gambling was undergoing enormous change, as states legalised lotteries (Clotfelter and Cook 1989) and casino gambling in New Jersey (Dombrink and Thompson 1990) in what has been termed the ‘third wave’ of legalised gambling in American history (Rose 1980).

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

41

By 1992, however, there was a conservative backlash against the trend to liberalisation of vice. The thrust of the arguments of many who have analysed vice, morality, law and society is that resentment among the lower middle class and others who perceive threats to their social status is responsible for the endurance of vice as a political issue. In the United States, the issues of sexuality and drugs were central to many of the cultural shifts of the 1960s and 1970s, and the liberalised public policy responses of those times created social dissent across the dimensions of age, religion, region and political orientation. One of the emblematic phenomena in the United States in the 1980s was the furthering of a conservative social agenda, which can be mapped in several ways. Several authors (Himmelstein 1990; Hunter 1991; Luker 1984) have written about the ways in which issues related to law and morality have become a key feature of conservative activists, especially those referred to as the ‘religious right’ (Marty and Appleby 1992; Sullivan 1993). These issues can be contrasted with the economic issues on which other conservative activists and politicians focused. The treatment of abortion in American law and public policy in different eras— sometimes unregulated, sometimes prohibited, sometimes medicalised, sometimes regulated and legalised—represents a wide range of legal models for the treatment of vice. Abortion provided a key issue of this focus, with the main goal of many conservative activists being to overturn the right of a woman to choose an abortion, as held in Roe v. Wade. Luker (1984), in her study of pro-choice and pro-life activists, emphasises the extent to which their positions reflect disagreement on a constellation of values and issues related to the changing nature of women’s and men’s roles, of sexual mores and sexual practices, of women’s roles in the marketplace, and the changing natures and functions of the family. While stating that many media reports have provided caricatures of these conflicts, Hunter (1991) none the less describes them as ‘culture wars’ reflecting the deep division over definitions of personal and public morality involved. The ‘war’ against drugs had been as captivating as any public policy issue in recent times. While the American economy emerged as a topic of primary concern in the current recession, the issue of drug control had risen dramatically (from 1 per cent identifying it as the most important national issue rising to 38 per cent a few years later). Attempts by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) to limit funding for artists whose work offends certain social mores resulted in an explosive debate over freedom of expression, government censorship and the First Amendment rights of free speech (Bolton 1992). In a celebrated incident in 1992, President Bush removed the chief of the NEA when it became clear that Bush’s conservative challenger in the nation’s Republican primaries was prepared to make a campaign issue of that agency’s funding of art he thought obscene—in particular, a film about gay black males. This had followed widely publicised events in which the Senate debated the nature of the art funded by the NEA, such as the homoerotic photographs of the late Robert Mapplethorpe, which had also been the focus of an earlier obscenity prosecution against a Cincinnati museum director (Gurstein 1991; Paglia 1991). At the same time, attempts by state legislatures to pass laws mandating warning labels on recordings containing possibly offensive language have met with legal challenges, mixed judicial success, and strong opposition from the arts community and recording industry.

Gambling cultures

42

At another level, developments related to euthanasia, such as failed initiatives for physician-assisted suicide in Washington in 1991 and California in 1992 (Humphry 1991; Kamisar 1991; Vorenberg 1991) and public smoking controls (Pertschuk and Shopland 1989), have led to those topics being analysed along with the classic vices as situations involving consensus, willing ‘victims’ and public health. While smoking limitations were first sought as a classic vice control, in which smokers were segregated, such as in ‘smoking sections’ of restaurants or public facilities, recent emphasis on ‘second-hand smoke’ has spotlighted the non-smoker as unwilling victim. Legal reform related to homosexuality also has been a key issue of those with a conservative social agenda. In several municipalities, referendums reversed previously passed ordinances adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes under civil rights provisions. In Oregon, a hotly contested referendum in 1992, which would have declared homosexuality a perversity and restricted state institutions from teaching, recognising or regarding it as an acceptable lifestyle, was defeated. However, Colorado passed a referendum that prevents any municipality from enforcing an ordinance that would provide civil rights protection for homosexuals. School prayer was a vibrant issue in a similar way, until a 1992 Supreme Court ruling held to the traditional separation of Church and state, despite the expectations of conservative activists. In both the abortion and school prayer issues, the election of Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992 portends that conservative court majorities for those issues might not be forthcoming in the near future. Certainly, conservative federal trial and appellate judges were appointed over the course of those eight years who were thought to have survived a litmus test on abortion, school prayer and other closely held beliefs held by the moral entrepreneurs in the ‘moral majority’, among them various pro-life groups (Becker 1963; Himmelstein 1990; Luker 1984; Tribe 1990). Some have commented that these federal judicial appointments could end up as the most significant legacy of the Reagan administration, one less likely to be overturned by changing domestic or economic priorities, evolving world events or shifts in public attitudes toward crime, vice or the range of personal and lifestyle issues at debate in the ‘culture wars’. Still, the politics of vice at the level of New Right consciousness and activity has been a chequered one. The issue of abortion has been problematic for the Republican Party, which has sought to maintain the allegiance of disenchanted Democrats (or ‘Reagan Democrats’)—often blue-collar, ethnic and religious— who left the party of ‘abortion, amnesty and acid’ (and affirmative action) in 1968 and thereafter. Many political analysts argue that these people did not gain economically from such political shifts, but did see their stances on issues like abortion, school prayer, homosexuality and, more abstractly, patriotism, affirmed in political discourse. The 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston was perceived as showing too much intolerance on these issues, however, and lost votes among more socially tolerant middle-class voters, especially women, as a price of allowing the religious right and other conservative activists too much say in the party’s platform (Wills 1992). Even so, the political organising of the Christian Coalition in school board races in small towns and big cities continues apace, even though their candidates are often referred to as ‘stealth candidates’, because of their purposeful low profiles. In New York City in 1993, the Christian Coalition distributed lengthy guides to the candidates in the usually low-turnout school board elections, in a city in which

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

43

multicultural curricula and the use of books explaining same-sex couples to primary schoolchildren were heatedly discussed (Sullivan 1993). Against this background, a core theme of this chapter will be developed: one way in which gambling has diverged from the other vices is that it has not played any role in this politicisation of vice. Gambling has been most noticeable for its inability to produce much in the way of moral resentment. Indeed, if gambling is now separate from the list of the classic vices—because of its acceptance, its legalisation, its pervasiveness, its perceived lack of seriousness—a primary reason is that it has not generated as much of the cultural conflict and moral resentment associated in the last decade with the other vices.

SOCIO-LEGAL ANALYSIS, VICE AND THE CRIMINAL LAW In the late 1960s, a group of legal scholars began a comprehensive and critical analysis of the limits of the criminal sanction in the area of vice in the United States. A series of studies and analyses called into question the philosophical and practical bases for the use of the criminal law in the legislation of morality, including at that time state proscriptions related to abortion, gambling, homo-sexuality, pornography, prostitution and drugs. In the aftermath of the Wolfenden Report in Great Britain, which argued for the decriminalisation of certain vices, a debate was conducted in the United States between these prominent legal scholars and defenders of the existing use of the criminal sanction in which the central issue was the effect on society of an individual’s choice to pursue activities, ingest substances or modify behaviour in ways which could cause them harm.3 In defence of existing criminal laws, Sir Patrick Devlin, a British jurist, attacked the precept of John Stuart Mill (1956 [1859]) that a person should be allowed to go to hell in his or her own way, and argued that the web of society is torn by the collective actions of individuals causing vice-related harm to themselves (Devlin 1965; Hart 1963). In this view the criminal law is an appropriate and necessary measure to maintain societal stability and to enforce common morality. Some involved in that debate cautioned against negative consequences in relation to the legitimacy and effectiveness of the criminal sanction by over-criminalisation (Kadish 1967). Others, like Skolnick (1968), decried the ways in which this ‘coercion to virtue’ was a misuse of the criminal sanction which engaged the police in the difficult enforcement of consensual crime, with few complainants and consequent evidential constraints. Packer (1968) discussed in depth how the effort to enforce morality through the legal system effectively proved the limits of the criminal sanction. Schur (1965, 1980; Schur and Bedau 1974) and later Geis (1972) elaborated on the variety of activity and lawenforcement activity associated with each vice, and drew the attention of an entire generation of socio-legal scholars and students to the significance of ‘victimless crime’, even as that generation was experimenting with new forms of drug use, sexual activity and sexual mores, and demanding liberalised abortion laws. Many of these scholars contributed to the drafting of the Model Penal Code, a practical effort to encourage implementation and standardisation by relevant jurisdictions of the reforms they espoused.

Gambling cultures

44

CHANGES IN THE LEGAL AND SOCIETAL TREATMENT OF VICE, 1967–92 Each of the six ‘classic vices’, even if they once occupied a relatively common conceptual place in the United States, has changed in so many significant ways between the 1960s and 1990s that they each seem to now represent a new type within a general typology of vice. In the sections that follow, the legal treatment of each will be discussed and contrasted with the legal treatment of gambling. Perhaps one of the most compelling differences, in addition to the perception of seriousness and harm, will be that several of the vices are concerned with sexuality. Consequently, they are more likely to strike a deep chord within ongoing cultural debates over the role of the family, gender roles, sexual identity and sexual practices than is gambling. At the same time, a key basis for the protection of these activities has been the right to privacy, which has not been a central factor in gambling legalisation discussions. Gambling Several studies have noted that gambling was deeply ingrained in colonial America. Like other societies, various forms of gambling have been tolerated at different times in US society. Indeed, lotteries were used in colonial times to support public works projects and the construction of some of America’s leading universities (Cornell Law Project 1977). Horse-racing was considered sport, especially among the new country’s ruling elites. The issue of the morality of gambling was of concern to Puritan groups, and the concept of chance argued to be at odds with their emphasis on hard work. However, it is clear that a deep-rooted ambivalence has existed in American law and public policy towards gambling throughout the country’s history (Skolnick 1978, 1988). During several distinct periods in US history, there have been movements to limit or repeal gambling, along with alcohol and other vices. The attacks on gambling because of its inherent immorality, however, have not usually been determinative, except when combined with fraud or public scandal—such as the Louisiana Lottery scandal of the mid nineteenth century—or corruption in the political process, such as when the Progressive Movement targeted the saloon as a corrupting institution, along with the worker safety and intemperance arguments of the anti-alcohol campaigns of the early twentieth century (Gusfield 1963). Skolnick and Dombrink (1978), in evaluating the potential commercialisation of the various vices, suggested that gambling would emerge as the most socially acceptable vice, for several reasons. First, gambling has been interpreted, both by public and scholars (Geis 1972), as being the least harmful of the vices and that which has been socially sanctioned in many societies. One reason for this assessment is the level of harm which gambling may do to an individual. For example, if much gambling is engaged in by those who are occasional or recreational gamblers, wagering discretionary funds, the harm of their gambling is perceived as minimal. Moreover, while some religious groups in western industrialised societies do oppose gambling, it is not perceived as severely as some of the sexually orientated vices. Nor is the physical harm of gambling as pronounced as drug use.

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

45

Second, the possibilities of state ownership, while not absent in the other cases, seemed more appropriate for gambling than state-operated drug clinics, as in the British model, or state-operated brothels. Third, the criminal justice system has been unable and unwilling for some time to assign penalties of even a moderate magnitude to gambling offences, making the arguments for their prosecution in a resource-scarce environment that much more difficult. Since the 1970s, legal gambling in the United States has changed in the following dramatic ways. Legal gambling has risen dramatically at double-digit annual increase in gambling handle figures throughout the 1980s, and diversified at the same time (Abt et al. 1985). This rise has been uneven, focusing more on some areas (for example, lotteries) than others (sports gambling, casinos). Tax revenues from such forms have risen in a corresponding manner, and increased as state-run lotteries, with their higher return to the state as operator, have increased as a share of the total gambling dollar (Christiansen 1990; Kaplan 1984). Gambling has been reduced in seriousness as a crime, as measured by crime seriousness surveys, judicial sentencing, prosecutorial decisions to charge and public opinion polls. American national policy towards gambling was examined and articulated in a national review, and the trend towards legalisation was furthered by the report of this inquiry (Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling 1976). Gambling has emerged as a serious public policy issue in the United States, examined in depth by an array of international scholars of a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, working through a network developed in large part by the University of Nevada, Reno, through more than a decade of international conferences, publications and sharing of research and practitioner results.4 The stigma attached to other forms of vice has not continued to attach to the player or consumer in the case of gambling as it attaches to the heroin-user or the prostitute. This has happened at the same time as excellent research on problem gambling in recent years has been published (Volberg and Steadman 1992). On the one hand, added knowledge of or focus on problem gambling, whether in celebrated cases or in society as a whole, presents a negative view of problem gambling in legalisation discussions. At the same time, the medical explanation for these problem gamblers can blunt the issue’s negative effect. In sum, the average gambler is not a problem gambler, and a problem gambler does not pose the threat that a drug addict or prostitute might. Some analysts have raised the issue of the regressivity of lotteries as a form of taxation (Clotfelter and Cook 1989), but the focus on the individual gambler has had its main impact on legalisation debates which question the desirability of certain urban centres as casino gambling sites, given the large poor and working-class population living in these cities. That focus limited the inclusion of New York City in the 1980s state proposal for casinos, has thwarted Chicago’s emergence as a potential locale, but has not foreclosed New Orleans. Recent efforts for casinos in the smaller north-eastern states of Rhode Island and Connecticut have yet to come to fruition. Where the stigma has attached, it has attached to the gambling operator, motivated by the fear of the influence of organised crime and political corruption. Several scholars have noted that, for these various reasons, the successful attacks on gambling have more often been on their collateral effects or institutional forms than the nature of gambling itself. These issues have proved paramount in the slowing of the anticipated trend

Gambling cultures

46

towards legalisation of Las Vegas-style casino gambling or sports gambling in the United States. Dombrink and Thompson (1990) argue for the salience of a ‘veto’ model to explain why the opposition of a single significant political or economic elite helped thwart casino legalisation in many states, in contrast with the seemingly painless approval of state-run lotteries by state after state (Clotfelter and Cook 1989). Yet in the face of the emerging riverboat gambling phenomenon and the expansion of gambling on Indian land, renewed interest in and enduring proposals for the legalisation of various forms of gambling suggest that the chequerboard pattern of gambling legalisation in the United States may change in the next decade. Abortion Of other classic vices, abortion remains one of the most problematic because, as some have stated, it is either a clear crime (resembling murder) or a clear surgical decision, related to privacy and the individual rights of women, and unrelated to the pursuit of pleasure as the other vices are. Abortion thus has had an historic and contested category in the earlier treatments of vice. Abortion also remains an active example of the mobilisation of public and resources, the definition and redefinition of an activity as legal or illegal, the interplay of politics, public opinion and influence matters, and the role of the legal system in personal spheres, issues which affect all of the vices discussed in this chapter. In the 1960s and early 1970s, abortion laws followed a medicalisation approach. For example, Californian physicians were approving 99 per cent of requests for abortion in the period preceding Roe v. Wade in 1973, thus begging the question of why abortion on demand should not be legalised, since the medical model was in fact delivering that (Luker 1984). In this instance, medicalisation, or the empowerment of trained professionals to use their expertise and discretion—sometimes under strict state rules, at other times under more ambiguous regulations—was a transitory phase. Once criminalisation was overturned, the women’s movement argued persuasively for the validity of personal choice and rights to privacy as imperative, rather than the empowerment of medical professionals. By 1992, however, analysts and activists were predicting that the growth of a conservative majority on the US Supreme Court was certain to lead to an outright reversal of Roe v. Wade, even as other decisions limited the access of certain types of women—those needing federal funding, or those under 18 years of age, for example. The resulting protests, organisation of electoral politics, drafting of new legislation, lobbying, and projected shifts in voting behaviour at the national level and other levels have made abortion an issue of extreme importance in the United States. When the Casey decision was handed down in 1992,5 it preserved the concept of Roe v. Wade, while allowing for some limitations on access. This surprising result reflected the new ‘centre’ of the court on this issue, with Justices O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter forming that bloc.

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

47

Prostitution Prostitution, in many ways, remains a vice that resists full or formal decriminalisation or legalisation but which is not seen as a serious issue by the American public, prosecutors, juries and judges, or police officers (Symanski 1981). In only a few places has it grown in importance in the policing of public disorder (Bursik and Grasmick 1992; Skogan 1990). Community organisations in affected communities have opposed prostitution and used zoning laws to preserve community stability. Still, because of the lesser seriousness and lower sentencing, police forces have treated prostitution as a crime to be controlled, rather than eradicated. There have been no wide-scale moves for the legalisation of prostitution in the United States, and the movements for legalisation described by Weitzer and Jenness (Jenness 1993; Weitzer 1991), whether organised by sex workers or others, have not even achieved the referendum stage. At the same time, there has been an increase of solid research, much of it historical, including important feminist treatments of the meaning of tolerated prostitution, easily integrated into all sectors of society (Goldman 1981; Walkowitz 1980). Some European countries could serve as models generally for the alternative treatment of prostitution, but Americans have not been anxious to adopt such models. Several reasons might be given for this. First, there is no perception that an expensive police effort is producing mixed results in the case of prostitution, as is being argued regarding the ‘war on drugs’, despite estimates of the cost to the legal system of each prostitution case processed. Second, there has been little suggestion of the tax revenues or economic development possible by either a state-owned and -operated or privately run legal prostitution operation. Only Nevada, in its sparsely populated rural counties, has a tradition of legalised prostitution (Symanski 1981). This is a direct contrast to the appeal of legal gambling. Third, the civil rights of sex workers are not as clear a focus (and do not represent as many persons) of a movement for equal treatment, as is the case of lesbian/gay rights. Fourth, unlike abortion, prostitution has neither been defined as a woman’s choice as a right of privacy, nor as instrumental in the development of women’s lives, careers or standards of living. There has been no connection to larger movements or larger concerns, and the incidence of AIDS among street sex workers, while raising public health issues such as that which fuelled earlier ‘purity crusades’ (Pivar 1973), has probably undercut whatever slim chance there was in any locality for a decriminalisation movement. There are no current situations that indicate that the types of rationale that have prompted gambling legalisation since the 1970s will lead to any substantial reform of prostitution laws in the United States. Pornography The issue of pornography and obscenity is fraught with difficulties of definition, as US Supreme Court cases and enforcement efforts as well as public discussion and policymaking efforts have shown (Hawkins and Zimring 1988). Several themes characterise sexually explicit images and their production and distribution at this time. First, there is an active debate in which some feminist scholars and activists have taken the role of opposition previously occupied by conservative and religious opponents. In some cases

Gambling cultures

48

feminists have formed unlikely coalitions with those groups (Downs 1989; Greek and Thompson 1991; Kimmel 1990; Segal and McIntosh 1992; Zurcher and Kirkpatrick 1976). Second, the growth of home video technology has enabled the use of sexually explicit materials in the privacy of one’s own home, as opposed to pornography or ‘sex’ shops, creating a new population of consumers. Third, the availability of more ‘couplesorientated’ sexually explicit material, or material with more of a woman’s perspective (Williams 1989), has weakened some of the charges of sexism. Fourth, the separation of child pornography as a category without redeeming value and illegal by definition (since it involves under-age actors) has made it more difficult to combine other forms with it legally and morally. Whereas prostitution has encouraged feminist analysis of the complexity of roles and power relationships surrounding gender, pornography and obscenity have generated a strong debate over their effects on violence and aggression against women, rape fantasies and the degradation of women in general. Psychologists have attempted to measure and predict the propensity for aggression among subjects who watch sexually explicit movies with violent themes, while others see the suppression of erotic works as censorship and denial of freedom of speech and expression (Childress 1991, 1992; Kutchinsky 1992). One development in this debate has been a previously missing feminist critique of pornography and pornography laws, seen as reflecting the male domination of the legal profession, policy-making and social science research. The battle over pornography has generated new uses of the law to control its distribution, as in the passage of various municipal ordinances to counteract the perceived negative effects of pornography. With the structure of gambling laws, however, most of the focus has been on state laws and state legislatures. Even as the legal basis for local ordinances has been challenged, pornography has been included as a predicate crime under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organisations (RICO) statute resulting in, among other things, the controversial forfeiture of property (a video store) under ‘proceeds of crime’ legislation (in a case reviewed in 1993 by the US Supreme Court). Yet the United States Supreme Court refused to hear a case which struck down a municipal ordinance using civil remedies under civil rights provisions to sanction pornography distri- butors. The Canadian courts have upheld a similar law, and some state legislators in the United States are considering bills to effect similar legislation (Downs 1989). Homosexuality Homosexuality was one vice identified in the Wolfenden Report as an activity which warranted the withdrawal of the criminal law (Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution 1963). In the decades since that report, discussions and social movements in many western industrialised societies have brought the issue of sexual orientation to the forefront, with several possible legal reforms available. In the United States, Altman notes that movements among homosexuals for better treatment by society have followed the model of the African-American civil rights strategies, falling into groups Altman described as pursuing ‘assimilationist’ strategies, and those choosing confrontation (Altman 1982). Over more than two decades, as Greenberg (1988) and others (Faderman 1991) have noted, the struggle over the

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

49

‘construction’ of homosexuality has been waged in American culture at the same time as legal reform has been sought. One legal reform model is represented by states such as California, which chose to decriminalise sodomy. However, not all American states did so, and the US Supreme Court ruled in the 1980s that sodomy laws were constitutional. Another type of legal reform effort is directed at states, counties, municipalities and other entities to add sexual orientation to the list of protected classes under civil rights laws. Only a few states have adopted wide-scale protections for gays and lesbians using civil rights laws, and most of those have limited the scope to state or public employment. Several dozen cities and counties have enacted legislation affecting all employment, most forms of housing, accommodation and other areas (Meeker et al. 1985). A major effort to protect gays and lesbians in the US military is generating public discussion and debate (Shilts 1993). Another type of legal reform has been the increased focus on the use of ‘hate crime’ statutes to prosecute those whose assaults and other crimes against gays and lesbians are accompanied by selection of their victim because of his or her actual or perceived sexual orientation (Comstock 1991). This reform has been applied to a variety of other groups, especially to racial minority groups, but has been limited to date by a US Supreme Court ruling. The growth in anti-discrimination protections for lesbians and gays has flattened out, in some cases because of the diversion of resources to the fight against AIDS (Hunter and Rubenstein 1992; Shilts 1987). However, the organising potential of gay rights as a rallying cry for fundamentalist religious groups and conservative activists has been pronounced (Greenberg 1988:478–80). Groups like California’s Reverend Louis Shelton and his Traditional Values Coalition and the Christian Coalition have become commonplace lobbyists against attempts by public entities such as school districts to discuss sexuality, abortion, AIDS and other issues in the classroom. One strategic decision they have made is to run candidates for local school board seats, often a public office for which few citizens vote. A 1993 New York City campaign by the Christian Coalition, whose guide to candidates was also distributed by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, followed a nationally prominent debate over the use of multicultural curriculum items, including stories for primary school students about gay couples. Unlike the other vices, gay rights have followed more of a civil rights model, as Altman (1982) and others (D’Emilio 1983; Marotta 1981) have pointed out, rather than a commercial model (as with gambling), and without the possibility of a wide selfinterested support of the kind an abortion rights movement might have. By comparison, gambling eludes much of the acrimony of the divisions which characterise debates over homosexuality, for better or worse. In the United States, at least, the comparability of the public debate and discourse over these issues has radically diverged. They may have shared common elements twenty-five years ago, but it is difficult to find such commonality in the present and projected near future. Drugs The drugs that are currently criminalised in the United States and draw the most attention because of the frequency of their use are primarily heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine, and marijuana. There are also law enforcement emphases on methamphetamine, debate over

Gambling cultures

50

the appropriateness of weight-related minimum sentencing laws which include the weight of the wrapping around LSD doses, and concern over synthetic ‘designer’ drugs, such as ecstasy. Many brilliant analyses of the genesis of American drug laws have been published since the 1970s (Bonnie and Whitebread 1974; Grinspoon and Bakalar 1976; Himmelstein 1983; Kaplan 1970, 1983; Lindesmith 1965; Musto 1973) at the same time as policy discussions of the appropriateness of the criminal sanction have taken place (Currie 1993; Kleiman 1992). In the most salient example of decriminalisation, the seriousness of marijuana use diminished during the 1960s and 1970s, as a result of either the evaluation of its effects or its increased use by white middle-class college students. Members of the elite whose children were users were outraged that lengthy prison sentences could be given for possession of minor amounts of the substance. Also, the ageing of many marijuana users placed them in positions of legal authority, such as judges or legislators. As Himmelstein (1983) notes, the reformulation of marijuana from ‘killer weed’ to ‘drop-out drug’ accompanied this transformation. Several states decriminalised marijuana use, issuing only citations for possession of amounts under 28 grams. Full-scale legalisation generally lost support after these reforms. In recent years, the United States has witnessed attempts to recriminalise marijuana. The Director of the President’s Drug Policy Office argued in the 1980s that marijuana’s legal treatment undercut the efforts to target drugs with stiffer penalties, and argued for recriminalisation. At the same time, mandatory sentences and mandatory minimum sentences, a movement typifying criminal justice reform in the 1980s, began to have an impact on America’s legal system, criminal justice system and correctional system. The ‘war on drugs’ became an important feature of the Reagan and Bush administrations, coinciding with this rise of mandatory prison sentences, increased use of the death penalty, a steep rise in the use of imprisonment (and gaol and prison overcrowding accompanying it), and a reduction in emphasis on the rehabilitative ideal, the use of probation and parole, and attempts to address the root causes of crime. During that time, despite the vociferous arguments for legalisation by sociological scholars, policy-makers and other influential persons of liberal, libertarian and even conservative bent (such as former Secretary of State George Schultz, and economist Milton Friedman) (Nadelmann 1991; Vila 1993), the public has often viewed drugs as America’s most important public policy issue (Colasanto 1990).6 The federal criminal justice system reports that roughly half of its criminal cases are concerned with drugs, a pattern reflected in the prison population. The rise in drug sanctioning (for sales and use) at the state level has crowded courts to the extent that there is a crisis in the ability of courts to handle civil cases. Even conservative jurists have called for more attention to be paid to ‘early intervention, treatment, education, and investigation of the basic cause leading to the proliferation of drug use’ (Administrative Office 1991:8). In 1993, statements from the new Attorney-General of the United States indicated that increased emphasis on treatment for drug use would be accompanied by a reduction in the criminalisation response. However, the vitality of drugs as a vice issue with connections to other features of American life has operated in at least three ways. With the rise in rock cocaine, or crack, use among non-white urban populations, as opposed to the affluent, largely white use of

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

51

powder cocaine during the 1970s, drug-control policies can be seen as resonant of larger racial and class-based cleavages in American society. Thus, the punishment of drug users can be seen in the same traditional light as the rationale for other punishments of dangerous classes, such as burglary or robbery. At the same time, African-American policy-makers, like New York Congressional Representative Charles Rangel, or progressive criminologists such as Currie (1993), are reluctant to endorse drug legalisation, because of the adverse public health effects such a legal change would have on America’s non-white population, without addressing the problems of poverty and unemployment that contribute to drug use and sales. Still others (Inciardi and McBride 1991; Jacobs 1990; Kaplan 1983; Kleiman 1992) have argued for prudence and scepticism in adopting drug legalisation as a response. At a second level, but closely related, drugs have become a surrogate term for all crime, carrying at the same time many of the preconceptions of race and class conflict that are mentioned above. As such, many anti-crime measures, whether expressly about drugs or not, use drugs implicitly or explicitly as the foundation for arguments about the need for stricter laws, longer sentences, less judicial discretion, fewer rights and more uses of incarceration as a sanction. In recent years, new twists, such as the criminalisation of pregnant women who are drug users, the intervention of the state into the lives of ‘crack babies’, the loss of public housing privileges, school loans, drivers’ licences and the like, and even the suggestion of revived orphanages in drug-impacted neighbourhoods, can be seen as representing the depth of drug use as a public health topic. At a third level, consistent with many of the other forms of vice, drug use and drug sales—in this case, no matter where they take place in the social strata—are portrayed as a sign of general moral weakening in society, and part of the permissiveness that threatens American economic and social strength. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the emergence of several viable grassroots movements for the decriminalisation or legalisation of many forms of drug use. By comparison, the calls for re-examination of American drug policies in the 1990s have come from judges, academics and an elite group of societal influentials. The opinion and editorial pages of newspapers are rife with arguments for the reform of drug law from liberal, libertarian and even conservative commentators, as noted above, but the movement in legislation so far has been toward recriminalisation, not liberalisation. However, other western industrialised countries have produced very different models over the twentieth century for dealing with drugs. British medical models have long been suggested as a possible alternative for American laws (Kaplan 1983). Skolnick and Dombrink (1978) have suggested a variety of models that might be followed. Unlike homosexuality or abortion, the issue of illicit drugs contains some similar elements to the case of gambling. Commercial models could be employed, although most proponents of legal reform in the drug area emphasise the substitution of public health goals rather than revenue raising (Skolnick 1992). However, the fiscal crisis of states and cities is implicit in arguments for shifting the law. Rather than emphasising the state tax revenues that would proceed from legalisation, which is the most common argument in gambling campaigns, the emphasis has been on the reduction of expenditures on the ‘war on drugs’.

Gambling cultures

52

At the same time, it must be stated that gambling has not been the subject of the recriminalisation sentiments. There has been very little gambling backlash or ‘rollbacks’, such as in the gay rights or marijuana examples. Admittedly, there have been campaigns that failed, and types of gambling, such as sports gambling (Frey 1992), that have not been legalised, and declines in lottery excitement and revenues over time in certain places. But gambling has not drawn a renewed moral wrath, nor been deeply associated with crime problems in general.

GAMBLING’S STATUS AMONG THE VICES What, then, can be said about gambling’s position between 1967 and 1992 in America, and its position vis-à-vis the other vices? One of the central themes of this chapter has to do with the models of legalisation which apply in the area of vice. More directly, the questions that need to be addressed relate to a social change or social movement model. For example, does the passage or proliferation of smaller forms of legal gambling, in a revenue sense (for example, riverboat gambling), make the case for or build the momentum for more large-scale development? Or, conversely, does the passage or proliferation of those smaller forms satisfy the demand for gambling, thus limiting the perceived need for further expansion in form, type or size? For example, one reason commonly given why the decriminalisation of marijuana in the 1970s in the United States did not lead to legalisation of the substance was that the reduced criminal penalties satisfied the majority of users, and thus undercut any simultaneous impetus for legalisation of cultivation and sales. Similarly, one argument given by at least some members of the five-member majority in the US Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld the state of Georgia’s sodomy statute was that it was not really enforced.7 Therefore, under that de facto decriminalisation, the statute did not essentially threaten homosexuals in that state or in the other states which still maintain such laws. Consequently, its removal was not mandated by a compelling civil rights protection argument (Harvard Law Review Editors 1990). In the case of gambling, divergent theories can be seen as possibly being supported. For example, in 1990, some US gambling operators expressed fear that if there was a potential scandal in a state initiating relatively small-scale riverboat gambling, it might impair the eventual ability of larger operators and larger developments to follow.8 An opposing theory would hold that the proliferation of smaller-scale gambling erodes the opposition to other forms and larger venues, ‘softening’ or increasing the conduciveness of populations to accept legal gambling. None of the other classic vices has demonstrated in any way the powerful commercial potential of legal gambling, an activity which, while at once representing the most harmless of the vices (Geis 1972), has almost moved beyond the other vices in its sense of legal inevitability so as to warrant exclusion from the category of vice. Lotteries have become so widespread since New Hampshire became the first state to bring back the state-sponsored lottery in 1964 that it is hard to remember a time without them. Even as their sales dip, and new games attempt to rekindle the public participation, even as people grumble about the real fiscal impact upon education, law enforcement or other targeted beneficiaries of the lottery revenues, the vitality of the lotteries reminds us of the colonial

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

53

days when they were commonly used as revenue-raising mechanisms for universities (Harvard, Columbia) and public works projects, or the nineteenth-century presence of the lottery, before scandal and prohibition caused their decline (Cornell Law Project 1977). During the same period as lotteries have flourished, casino gambling has only spread in its Las Vegas style to one state (New Jersey), despite the attempts by many others to permit it. In the last few years, however, small-scale casino gambling has been permitted in states along the Mississippi River, in the context of ‘riverboat gambling’, and even California is considering offshore gambling ships again. Old Western towns like Deadwood, South Dakota, and its Colorado counterparts have also legalised small-scale casino gambling, at the same time as Indian reservation gambling has proliferated under the unique jurisdictional laws governing American Indian sovereignty (Eadington 1990; Rose 1992). Sports gambling, admittedly the largest illegal form of gambling, and one that would have an enormous legal market in the United States, has been kept from legalisation in large part because of the efforts of a professional sports organisation, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and fears that such gambling would lead to a rise in corruption in sports. This fear of corruption, and of the political process generally, has been behind some of the casino opposition, as have fears of collateral vice growth, such as prostitution. Still, unlike the other vices, gambling has emerged from this remarkable period of growth—what Rose has termed the ‘third wave’ of legal gambling in the United States— with neither the political concern for damages to the individual who engages in the activity, nor with an active social movement supporting either its legalisation or criminalisation. Certainly, powerful and influential elites, organisations and coalitions have arisen during campaigns to defeat certain types of gambling legalisation (Dombrink and Thompson 1990). However, the image of the wilful, affluent gambler using discretionary income in limited betting has supplanted images of the problem gambler, even as valuable research about the incidence and prevalence of such problem gambling has been undertaken. In part, this is reinforced by the notion that gambling is something done on vacation, on time away. However, it is largely because of the careful publicrelations work of legal gambling operators. Legalisation has been accompanied by the growth of legal gambling industries, consultants and experts, in lieu of a wide-scale social movement, so that the battles for gambling growth are often conducted by competing groups of business and political elites, with the public included generally as referendum voters responding to the packaged media efforts for the opposing sides to portray revenues or crime/corruption as the inevitable outcome of such a legal reform. This is far different from the mobilisation, marches and intense public scrutiny placed on the ‘constituency-based’ vices or the highly politicised activities such as abortion rights. In fact, one could postulate that gambling, as it has inched away from the other vices, adds both protection and vulnerability—protection because it is perceived as less harmful and possesses socially valued fiscal abilities, vulnerability because it could easily be portrayed as a ‘special interest vice’ in the same way that the tobacco and alcohol industries and lobbies are limited in their opportunities for advertising, sponsorship and public use. Indeed, public opinion polls show strong public support for assessing higher taxes on both alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, as ‘sin taxes’, to raise more revenues for increased health coverage nationally. In this context, critiques questioning the actual performance and contribution of lotteries and casinos (Clotfelter and Cook

Gambling cultures

54

1989; Sternlieb and Hughes 1983) represent a new era of scholarship, challenging not the moral basis of a vice activity but its actual societal contributions.

CONCLUSION Many of the classic studies of the criminalisation of vice have described the role of class conflict, racial issues, moral entrepreneurs and moral panics in the establishment of laws prohibiting vice. Alongside other studies of the class-based nature of the emergence of non-vice laws, these studies provided a framework for understanding the symbolic power of vice in American society. Gusfield’s classic study of the symbolic politics of alcohol prohibition (1963) spawned later studies, such as Himmelstein’s analysis of the transformation of marijuana from ‘killer weed’ to acceptable recreational drug when white, middle-class college students (and some of their elders) began smoking marijuana in the 1960s (Himmelstein 1983). Luker’s depiction of the world view of opposing abortion activists (1984) amidst conflict over women’s roles, women’s workplace participation and the relationship between men and women is a powerful commentary on the larger connections of vice to the social structure generally. One classic commentary on vice and class resentment was made by Ranulf (1964), who located the impetus for much legal action against vice and other activities in the disinterested impulses and resentment of the lower middle class (see also Duster 1970). Certainly, the Republican Party was able, at least at the national level, during the 1970s and 1980s to reap political advantage out of the willingness of voters whose economic interests might not lie with Republican policies to vote Republican because of its positions on abortion, sexuality, race, sexual preference, drugs and ‘moral permissiveness’. The courting of these ‘Reagan Democrats’ was seemingly without cost until the emergence of white supremacist candidates, and the loss of the votes of prochoice middle-class women in the 1992 presidential campaign. It used vice issues as a critical wedge among persons with economic class similarities. The emergence of abortion as an important issue suggests that gender issues exist across the social strata. Meanwhile, public financing and health access issues accentuate class concerns. Drugs seemingly have become too integrated with the politics of race and crime in America for the failure of the war on drugs or the public cost of the criminal justice system’s being overwhelmed with drug cases to have much impact. Still, the analyses, arguments and opinion/editorial articles in leading newspapers keep the question of the legalisation of now illicit drugs in active discussion. Even if there were to be no legalisation of drugs, the discussion is more vibrant, and debated more nationally, than the discussion of the other vices, which is generally localised. This is certainly the case with gambling. Justice Blackmun, in his opinion in Roe v. Wade, may have provided the legal support for the philosophical underpinnings of the way in which vice and its legal treatment may ultimately have its most lasting impact on American society: the right of privacy.9 The location of the crux of the abortion rights argument on precisely the grounds that remove these activities from excessive public intervention—that of privacy—creates the possibility for the strength of a concept that transcends class and thus negates that which Ranulf describes. When the victims of a too intrusive state policy on vice are essentially

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

55

marginalised drug addicts, sex workers or degenerate gamblers, the rationale for liberalised social policy in this area is essentially other-considering. In other words, society shifts legal policy to avoid doing harm to some class of individuals, using various rationales, such as their illness or vulnerability. The limits for social movements, and legal reform, are derived by the size of constituencies, and their relative powerlessness. Reforms in which more persons have a stake, such as those concerning privacy or affecting tax revenues, have potentially wider bases of support. Against this background, gambling still maintains its curious membership on the list of vices, as used by socio-legal scholars. At one level, gambling has moved closer to the status of alcohol or tobacco in its treatment in the United States, perceived as an acceptable, middle-class recreational activity. Both tobacco and alcohol have high levels of revenues and are well integrated into American society. Thus, they do not fear outright prohibition. Still, public health themes have fuelled movements for the limitation or reduction of use of these two substances, and, at least in the case of smoking, have severely changed the expectations of public behaviour, if not commercial availability. None the less, gambling operators, both private and public, might well settle for such an entrenched status. At the same time, the notion of a ‘sin tax’ is often viewed as a mature and reasonable approach for societies as they consider the mechanisms for the treatment of some of the above-mentioned vices. One of the attractions of legal gambling is that it provides tax revenues for its jurisdictions. Unfortunately, taxes have their own problems in regard to support from the citizenry, and the current anti-incumbent mood in the United States suggests that a sin tax may not necessarily have as stable a status as it might seem. If gambling operations come to be viewed as privileged special interests, or criticised for failing to meet their proponents’ expectations, their vulnerability to control and restriction might increase (Rose 1991). Because legalisation of this vice has been framed in the language of privilege, rather than right, maintaining legal gambling will depend more on lobbyists, corporate entities and government bodies rather than the protesters in the streets that abortion rights or gay rights can provide. Consequently, support for the continuation or expansion of various forms of gambling might be perceived as limited to a small number of well-placed and self-interested public and private parties, rather than any grassroots movement or wider public good. As such, the movement of gambling towards acceptability and legitimation, and its separation from the other classic vices listed in the 1960s, might present it with a host of new vulnerabilities in future years.

NOTES 1 Earlier versions of this chapter were delivered at the Eighth International Conference on Risk and Gambling, London, 15–17 August 1990, and the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Francisco, 20–23 November 1991. The author thanks Nicole Negrete, Audra Simon, Karol Kurata, Mark Kimura, David Maples, Aric Lasky and Biljana Korac for their contributions, and Gilbert Geis, Jerome Skolnick and Joseph Scott for their helpful comments. Ms Negrete’s participation was supported by the Pregraduate Mentorship Program of the Office of Academic Affairs of the University of California, Irvine, and the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Site Grant at the Program in Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine, Gary W.Evans, Principal Investigator.

Gambling cultures

56

2 Roe v. Wade 410 US 113 (1973) established this right through its reading of the US Constitution and the right to privacy. 3 On harm, see Feinberg 1985, 1986, 1990. 4 The Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gambling, and its director, economist William R.Eadington, have been the leaders in this effort for almost two decades. 5 Planned Parenthood v. Casey 1125 S. Ct 2791 (1992). 6 Drugs dropped as the most important policy item as the economy worsened in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 7 Bowers v. Hardwick 106 S. Ct 2841 (1986). 8 Comments of panel participants at the Eighth International Conference on Risk and Gambling, London. 9 For scholarly treatment, see Richards 1986; for popular treatment, see Brill 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V., Smith, J.F. and Christiansen, E.M. (1985) The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Administrative Office of the Courts, Judicial Council of California (1991) California Judicial System: Report of the Chief Justice, San Francisco: Administrative Office of the Courts. Altman, D. (1982) The Homosexualization of America, Boston: Beacon Press. Becker, H.S. (1963) Outsiders, New York: Free Press. Bolton, R. (ed.) (1992) Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts, New York: The New Press. Bonnie, R. and Whitebread, C.H. II (1974) The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the US, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Brill, A. (1990) Nobody’s Business: Paradoxes of Privacy, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Bursik, R.J. Jr., and Grasmick, H.G. (1992) Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control, New York: Lexington Books. Childress, S.A. (1991) ‘“Reel rape speech”: violent pornography and the politics of harm’, Law & Society Review 25(1):177–214. ——(1992) ‘Pornography, “serious rape”, and statistics: a reply to Dr Kutchinsky’, Law & Society Review 26(2):457–61. Christiansen, E.M. (1990) ‘US gaming handle up only 6% in ’89’, Gaming & Wagering Business 11(7):9–31. Clotfelter, C.T. and Cook, P.J. (1989) Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Colasanto, D. (1990) ‘Widespread public opposition to drug legalization’, The Gallup Poll Monthly (Jan.): 2–8. Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling (1976) Gambling in America, Final Report of the Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling (Mann Commission), Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, Great Britain (1963) The Wolfenden Report, American edition, New York: Stein & Day. Comstock, G.D. (1991) Violence against Lesbians and Gay Men, New York: Columbia University Press. Cornell Law Project (1977) The Development of the Law of Gambling, 1776–1976, Washington, DC: National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice. Currie, E. (1993) Reckoning: Drugs, the Cities and the American Future, New York: Hill & Wang. D’Emilio, J. (1983) Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

57

Devlin, P. (1965) The Enforcement of Morals, London: Oxford University Press. Dombrink, J. and Thompson, W.N. (1990) The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos, Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press. Downs, D.A. (1989) The New Politics of Pornography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Duster, T. (1970) The Legislation of Morality, New York: The Free Press. Eadington, W.R. (ed.) (1990) Indian Gaming and the Law, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming. Faderman, L. (1991) Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America, New York: Columbia University Press. Feinberg, J. (1985) Offense to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 2, New York: Oxford University Press. ——(1986) Harm to Self: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 3, New York: Oxford University Press. ——(1990) Harmless Wrongdoing: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 4, New York: Oxford University Press. Frey, J.H. (1992) ‘Gambling on sport: policy issues’, Journal of Gambling Studies 8(4): 351–60. Geis, G. (1972) Not the Law’s Business?, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Goldman, M.S. (1981) Gold Diggers and Silver Miners: Prostitution and Social Life on the Comstock Lode, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Greek, C.E. and Thompson, W. (1991) ‘Antipornography crusades and religious fundamentalism: a comparison of the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1980s’, Paper presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Francisco (20–23 Nov.). Greenberg, D.F. (1988) The Construction of Homosexuality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grinspoon, L. and Bakalar, J.B. (1976) Cocaine: A Drug and its Social Evolution, New York: Basic Books. Gurstein, R. (1991) ‘Misjudging Mapplethorpe: the art scene and the obscene’, Tikkun 6:70–7. Gusfield, J. (1963) Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Guskind, R. (1991) ‘Casino round the bend’, National Journal 37:2205–9. Hart, H.L.A. (1963) Law, Liberty, and Morality, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Harvard Law Review Editors (1990) Sexual Orientation and the Law, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hawkins, G. and Zimring, F.E. (1988) Pornography in a Free Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Himmelstein, J.L. (1983) The Strange Career of Marihuana, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ——(1990) To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism, Berkeley: University of California Press. Humphry, D. (1991) Final Exit, Eugene, OR: The Hemlock Society. Hunter, J.D. (1991) Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, New York: Basic Books. Hunter, N.D. and Rubenstein, W.B. (eds) (1992) AIDS Agenda: Emerging Issues in Civil Rights, New York: The New Press. Inciardi, J.A. and McBride, D.C. (1991) ‘The case against legalization’, in J.A.Inciardi (ed.) The Drug Legalization Debate, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Jacobs, J.B. (1990) ‘Who’s going to mind the government drugstore?’ Los Angeles Times (20 March): B7. Jenness, V. (1993) Making It Work: The Prostitutes’ Rights Movement in Perspective, Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Kadish, S. (1967) ‘The crisis of overcriminalization’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 374:157–70. Kamisar, Y. (1991) ‘An unraveling of morality’, New York Times (5 Nov.): A15. Kaplan, H.R. (1984) ‘The social and economic impact of state lotteries’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 474:91–106.

Gambling cultures

58

Kaplan, J. (1970) Marijuana: The New Prohibition, New York: World Publishing. ——(1983) The Hardest Drug: Heroin and Public Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kimmel, M.S. (ed.) (1990) Men Confront Pornography, New York: Crown. Kleiman, M.A.R. (1992) Against Excess, New York: Basic Books. Kutchinsky, B. (1992) ‘The politics of pornography speech’, Law & Society Review 26(2): 447–55. Lindesmith, A.R. (1965) The Addict and the Law, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Luker, K. (1984) Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Berkeley: University of California Press. Marotta, T. (1981) The Politics of Homosexuality, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Marty, M. and Appleby, S. (1992) The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World, Boston: Beacon Press. Meeker, J.W., Dombrink, J. and Geis, G. (1985) ‘State law and local ordinances in California barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation’, University of Dayton Law Review 10:745–65. Mill, J.S. (1956 [1859]) On Liberty, Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Musto, D. (1973) The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Nadelmann, E.A. (1991) ‘The case for legalization’, in J.A.Inciardi (ed.) The Drug Legalization Debate, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Packer, H.L. (1968) The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Paglia, C. (1991) ‘The beautiful decadence of Robert Mapplethorpe: a response to Rochelle Gurstein’, Tikkun 6:77–81. Pertschuk, M. and Shopland, D.R. (eds) (1989) Major Local Smoking Ordinances in the United States, National Institutes of Health Publication 90–479. Pivar, D.J. (1973) Purity Crusade, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Ranulf, S. (1964) Moral Indignation and Middle-Class Psychology, New York: Schocken Books. Reuter, P. (1992) ‘Hawks ascendant: the punitive trend of American drug policy’, Daedalus 121(3):15–52. Richards, D.A. J. (1986) Toleration and the Constitution, New York: Oxford University Press. Rose, I.N. (1980) ‘The legalization and control of casino gambling’, Fordham Law Review 8:245– 300. ——(1991) ‘The rise and fall of the third wave: gambling will be outlawed in forty years’, in W.R.Eadington and J.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gambling: 65–86. ——(1992) ‘The future of Indian gaming’, Journal of Gambling Studies 8(4):383–99. Schur, E.H. (1965) Crimes without Victims, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ——(1980) The Politics of Deviance: Stigma Contests and the Uses of Power, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ——and Bedau, H.A. (1974) Victimless Crimes: Two Sides of a Controversy, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Segal, L. and McIntosh, M. (eds) (1992) Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate, London: Virago Press. Shilts, R. (1987) And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, New York: Penguin Books. ——(1993) Conduct Unbecoming: Lesbians and Gays in the US Military, Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, New York: St Martin’s Press. Skogan, W. (1990) Disorder and Decline, New York: The Free Press. Skolnick, J.H. (1968) ‘Coercion to virtue: the enforcement of morals’, Southern California Law Review 41:588–641. ——(1978) House of Cards: Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling, Boston: Little, Brown. ——(1988) ‘The social transformation of vice’, Law and Contemporary Problems 51: 9–29. ——(1992) ‘Rethinking the drug problem’, Daedalus 121(3):133–49.

Gambling and the legalisation of voice

59

——and Dombrink, J. (1978) ‘The legalization of deviance’, Criminology 16(2): 193–208. Sternlieb, G. and Hughes, J.W. (1983) The Atlantic City Gamble, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sullivan, R (1993) ‘An army of the faithful’, New York Times Magazine (26 April): 33–5, 40–4. Symanski, R. (1981) The Immoral Landscape: Female Prostitution in Western Societies, Toronto: Butterworths. Tribe, L.H. (1990) Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, New York: W.W.Norton. Vila, B.J. (1993) ‘Is the war on drugs an example of a runaway cultural process?’, in P. B.Kraska (ed.) Altered States of Mind: Critical Observations of the Drug War, New York: Garland Publishing. Volberg, R.A. and Steadman, H.J. (1992) ‘Accurately depicting pathological gamblers: policy and treatment implications’, Journal of Gambling Studies 8(4):401–12. Vorenberg, J. (1991) ‘Going gently, with dignity’, New York Times (5 Nov.): A15. Walkowitz, J.R. (1980) Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weitzer, R. (1991) ‘Prostitutes’ rights in the United States: the failure of a movement’, The Sociological Quarterly 32(1):23–41. Williams, L. (1989) Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’, Berkeley: University of California Press. Wills, G. (1992) ‘The born-again Republicans’, New York Review of Books (24 Sept.). Zurcher, L.A., Jr and Kirkpatrick, R.G. (1976) Citizens for Decency: Antipornography Crusades as Status Defense, Austin: University of Texas Press.

3 SOCIAL EVIL OR SOCIAL GOOD? Lotteries and state regulation in Australia and the United States Wendy Selby

At a time when gaming and betting were thought to be immoral and socially threatening, the Queensland government owned and operated a lucrative and popular lottery, the Golden Casket Art Union. This lottery began in 1916 when the Queensland Patriotic Committee, a non-profit charitable organisation, sought permission to conduct a lottery for their soldier repatriation fund. So successful was this fund-raising activity that another four Caskets were held over the following three years to raise money for victims of the war. In 1919 the Home Office1 approved the use of another Casket to assist the Hospital for Sick Children in Brisbane, and in June 1920 the Queensland government decided to take over the Golden Casket Art Union and place all profits into the newly created Motherhood, Child Welfare and Hospital Fund. Today the Golden Casket continues to provide the state government with a much-needed source of revenue. Operating a lottery in 1920 was highly controversial. Lotteries, once popular fundraisers with governments in the Middle Ages, had been outlawed in most countries since the nineteenth century and were no longer seen as an area of enterprise suitable for governments. Attempts by private entrepreneurs to operate lotteries were also subject to restrictive legislation. Britain outlawed lotteries in 1809 and the United States began prohibiting lotteries from 1833 (Wilson 1980:41; Clotfelter and Cook 1989:38). Agitation for anti-gambling legislation came from the revitalised evangelical movement and those wanting to impose middle-class values of savings and industry, and their influence was most pronounced in the United States (O’Hara 1988). However, lotteries have always been a popular form of working-class gambling and lotteries have been common throughout the world, with or without legal sanction (Abt et al. 1985; Charlton 1987). This chapter will consider the unique set of circumstances that made the state government of Queensland the first Australian government in the twentieth century to own and operate a lottery. A combination of six factors persuaded the Queensland government of 1920 that public outcry would be minimal and that the lottery would be popular. The lead taken by Queensland was innovative in the climate of the early twentieth century and its special Motherhood Fund was arguably the first of its kind in the world. The Golden Casket’s success as a source of revenue was closely watched by other governments both in Australia and overseas, so it is of historical interest to understand the circumstances that enabled this lottery to survive and prosper. Other early Australian lotteries will be discussed also, especially George Adams Tattersall’s lottery which began to operate publicly from 1881. Tattersall’s is unique because it is the only

Social evil or social good?

61

privately owned and operated lottery to survive the legislative restrictions introduced to control private enterprise involvement in lotteries in Australia. North American lotteries make an interesting comparison to Australian lotteries because their legalisation and proliferation have been quite recent. A brief analysis of the differences between Queensland’s Golden Casket and the first state lottery to operate in the United States in the twentieth century will be undertaken, as well as a general overview of lotteries in the United States. The dominance of Puritan values blocked the legalisation of lotteries in the United States far longer than most other western countries (Abt et al. 1985:191–7). In Australia, especially Queensland, ‘socialist’ state governments led by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) were keen to use a revenue source that did not require increasing income taxes, and were not blocked from doing so by federal policies and legislation, as were the state governments in the United States. Despite the importance of access and legitimacy as factors which influence participation, it will be shown that legislation banning lotteries does not necessarily mean that people were not enjoying the prospect of winning large amounts of money. The proliferation of illegal lotteries throughout the seventy-year ban on lotteries in the United States suggests that lotteries have been, and continue to be, one of the most popular working-class gambling practices.

OUTLAWING LOTTERIES Lotteries were popular fund-raisers with governments in the Middle Ages, and the first lottery with cash prizes was held in Florence in 1530 (Wilson 1980:63). England’s first national lottery was sanctioned by Elizabeth I in 1567 and lotteries continued to flourish in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (O’Hara 1988:5). Between 1769 and 1826, for instance, there were 128 state lotteries in England, yielding £35 million to government revenue (Wilson 1980:72). A series of lotteries was held to assist British settlement in the ‘New World’, principally Virginia. Revenues from the lotteries, provided at a critical time in Virginia’s early European colonisation, saved the venture from extinction (Wilson 1980:64). Lotteries continued to be popular in colonial America and were viewed as charitable contributions for public purposes (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:35). However, since the nineteenth century, lotteries as well as other forms of gaming and betting have been subject to increasing censure and control. During and immediately after the Industrial Revolution, the revitalised evangelical movement and the establishment of the industrial work discipline by the middle classes together transformed traditional leisure and recreation in many countries such as England and the United States. Gaming and betting, previously tolerated and even encouraged as a form of recreation, came to be seen not only as immoral but also as a threat to individual and national efficiency (Dixon 1991:63). According to Dixon (1991), gambling, along with alcohol and ‘idleness’, was regarded as having damaging social consequences for both the individual and the community as a whole. Legislation was introduced world-wide to ban most forms of gambling, and the lottery, a particularly popular working-class gaming activity, was specifically targeted by the legislators in the early nineteenth century. Lotteries offered the possibility of a large return for a small investment and it was feared that sudden windfalls to the lower classes

Gambling cultures

62

would undermine the middle-class value system of savings and industry (O’Hara 1988). Lotteries were outlawed in England in 1809 and in the United States from 1833. Most other lotteries held in Europe were banned throughout the nineteenth century. In Australia, reformers had less impact upon gambling legislation. In the Australian colonies, the middle classes were small and lacking in political and cultural influence, while the Churches were preoccupied with educational and sectarian issues. Gambling reform movements were unable to win enough support to transform the widespread gaming and betting practices of the convicts and other immigrants, allowing gambling to be widely accepted in nineteenth-century Australian society (O’Hara 1988:28). Because Australian governments were more tolerant of gambling practices, it is often argued today that Australians are a nation of gamblers (Macintyre 1986:65; Ward 1958:34). However, during the anti-gambling crusades in other countries gambling practices continued, even where there was strict anti-gambling legislation such as the United States (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:39; Dixon 1991:321). Illegal lotteries were common in both England and the United States. For instance, a British Royal Commission investigating lotteries and betting in 1932–33 found that prohibition had failed to prevent gambling; in fact, gambling had greatly increased (Dixon 1991:320–1). As with most intrusive social legislation, prescriptions do not necessarily equate with practices. Despite Australia’s comparatively liberal approach to gaming and betting (McMillen and Eadington 1986), lotteries remained controversial because they are a highly visible and accessible form of gambling. Those forms of gambling which were legalised in Australia, such as totalisators, were strictly controlled not only in procedure, but also in the physical space in which the gambling operated. Lotteries, on the other hand, were conducted in areas frequented by the general population and open to all who could afford to buy a ticket. This made lotteries more suspect in their potential to attract both more clientele and criminal behaviour. Australian colonial governments may have been more tolerant of gaming and betting than other jurisdictions but they wanted it removed from the public eye. All colonies between 1876 and 1897 enacted legislation designed to stop gambling in public spaces (O’Hara 1988:115). The first known attempt to organise a state lottery in Australia was in 1844, when the New South Wales Legislative Council proposed a lottery to save the Bank of Australia. The idea was scrapped only because legislative changes to hold the lottery required approval from Britain (O’Hara 1988:41–2). The imperial government was no longer prepared to sanction an activity now seen by British authorities to be immoral. Although Australian colonial governments were unable to hold lotteries, other forms of mass gambling were beginning to appear, including sweepstake consultations and land lotteries. Sweepstakes, lotteries based on the results of horse-races, were an innovative way of sidestepping laws forbidding games of chance and they became very popular in Australia from the 1870s (O’Hara 1988:77; Wilson 1980:28). The first public sweep was held in Sydney in 1881 by the most successful gambling entrepreneur of this period, George Adams. Adams’s business was based at his famous Tattersall’s Hotel in Sydney and until 1881 Adams restricted sales of tickets to members of his club (Wilson 1980:28– 46).2 It was the growth of sweeps beyond the boundaries of clubs and into the public sphere that intensified anti-gambling reformers’ criticisms of lotteries and forced the New South

Social evil or social good?

63

Wales government to outlaw sweeps, consultations and other games of chance in 1891. Adams and other sweepstake entrepreneurs moved their activities to Queensland, where it was thought there would be less opposition to sweeps. It was not long, however, before the Queensland government introduced the Suppression of Gambling Bill which aimed to prevent private gambling entrepreneurs from operating by defining sweepstakes as a form of lottery. The passing of this bill in 1895 forced Adams to move to Tasmania, where the state government allowed him to operate by post, after paying £10,000 for a licence. Despite this move, Adams’s successful business continued to attract controversy and obstructive government legislation. Wilson (1980) argues that no government was more active in its attempts to suppress Tattersall’s (as Adams’s business was known) than the federal government after 1901. The introduction of the 1901 Postal Act gave the federal government the right to refuse to handle or deliver mail. This began a thirty-year battle between Tattersall’s and the Postmaster-General who, in an effort to prevent the lottery from operating anywhere in Australia, blacklisted not only Tattersall’s mail, but also any business considered to be acting as an agent. Despite government obstruction, Tattersall’s survived to become Australia’s only privately operated lottery, with a profitable, state-protected monopoly in Victoria and Tasmania. In the early twentieth century every state other than Tasmania attempted to prevent Tattersall’s agents from operating. The South Australian government even made it an offence to be found in possession of a Tattersall’s ticket (Wilson 1980:153). In 1930 the Commonwealth postal ban was lifted, allowing Tattersall’s to operate interstate more successfully. In 1953 the Victorian government invited Tattersall’s to operate in the state and the business moved from Hobart to Melbourne in 1954, where it remains today. The move was a result of Tattersall’s fears of the Victorian government starting a state lottery coinciding with the Tasmanian government’s proposal to raise its lottery tax (Wilson 1980:186–91). Victorians were Tattersall’s major customers and the trustees decided the move was in the best interests of the company. This was a political coup for Victoria as it gained both a reputable operator and a new state tax. Tasmania responded predictably and initially banned Tattersall’s from operating in the state and attempted to start another lottery in 1954. The subsequent failure of the lottery forced Tasmania to allow Tattersall’s once again to operate legally in the state. Government encouragement of lotteries in the 1950s was a far cry from the situation in earlier decades. At the turn of the century no Australian state dared to operate a lottery because of the general fear of the moral implications of such an enterprise. Yet in 1920 one state dared to take the plunge. In doing so, the Queensland government stumbled upon a ‘sure bet’ with the Golden Casket Art Union.

QUEENSLAND’S GOLDEN CASKET If people must have a gamble, they might as well have a gamble on something that will do the community some good instead of on something that will make some private exploiter rich. At least one has contributed a few shillings to help the institutions along. (Hanlon 1938:1126)

Gambling cultures

64

Edward Hanlon, Queensland’s Secretary for Health and Home Affairs, was referring to the Golden Casket Art Union, the state government’s lottery. There are six factors that together explain the unique circumstances which led to the Queensland government owning and operating a lottery in 1920, a time when gambling was seen by many to be highly immoral and socially threatening. Desperate for post-war reconstruction and welfare programmes, the government was able to ‘purify’ the profits of gambling by using the money to finance an extensive state-operated maternal and infant welfare scheme. It was an ingenious way of silencing gambling opponents, conceding to popular demand, and solving the problem of growing demand for government assistance in health and hospital facilities. To understand why the Queensland government owned and operated a lottery before any other Australian government in the twentieth century, one needs to understand first the objectives of the Queensland branch of the ALP and its commitment at the time to state enterprises and the nationalisation of health. Labor was elected to power in 1915 and, with the exception of one term (1929–32), held office until 1957. In its early years the government was vigorously reformist, under the leaderships of Thomas Ryan (1915– 19) and Edward Theodore (1919–25). The reformist socialist philosophy of the government was clearly articulated at its biennial state conventions, when policies and issues of concern were debated. At the 1910 Labor-in-Politics convention the President of Labor’s central political executive, David Bowman, declared his firm belief in the principle of state socialism and the party’s aim for ‘every man and woman to be freed from the system of wage slavery’ (Bowman 1910:11). Once in power, the Labor government introduced a number of social reforms, such as making workers’ compensation compulsory, tightening laws governing industrial accidents and starting several state enterprises, including a state cannery, state butcheries and cattle stations.3 The government believed that only the state could be guaranteed to operate key industries fairly in the interests of the general public. Since 1905 Labor had been committed to the nationalisation of public and charitable hospitals, and it was of great concern to the rank and file members that this was not achieved after the party came to power in 1915 (Jordan 1980:314). Most hospitals in Queensland survived by voluntary subscriptions, with some assistance in the form of government endowments. It was estimated, however, that another £250,000 per year was needed to nationalise these hospitals, an amount far beyond the financial capabilities of the government in 1919. Lack of funds to carry out an important plank of the Labor Party’s platform was a constant source of embarrassment to the government. Labor had found that, once in office, it had more pressing needs for its limited revenue. The opportunity to gain access to an additional source of funds from lotteries without increasing taxation levels must have seemed very attractive. A second influence on the government was its concern about the military vulnerability of the state. As well as Germany’s and Holland’s imperialist ambitions in the Pacific, Queensland feared an invasion from its northern neighbours, a fear which intensified with the First World War. Queensland was a large state of 670,500 square miles but the majority of residents lived within 200 miles of Brisbane, in the south. Much of the state was unpopulated, especially in the northern and western regions.4 The population was considered far below a level sufficient for the state to prosper, and underpopulation remained an issue for much of the twentieth century. Once it was established that a white

Social evil or social good?

65

race could survive in the tropics, the Labor government was committed to encouraging settlement in the more remote regions (Cilento 1961–62:922).5 However, decentralisation policies, including the provision of social and health services, placed an additional drain on the public purse. In addition to these regional concerns, the Queensland government, together with other states, was alarmed about the declining birth rate, which had been steadily decreasing since the 1890s (Quiggin 1988:19–20).6 A federally paid maternity allowance of £5 for every birth after 1912 had done little to encourage women to have larger families. As it was a common view that better medical and hospital facilities would decrease maternal and infant mortality and encourage women to have more children, and as Queensland was in no position financially to provide these services in 1920, the additional source of funds was considered a ‘blessing’. This was the third factor which precipitated the decision to take over the lottery. A fourth and very important factor for the government lottery was the financial crisis of 1920, known today as ‘the Queensland loans affair’. At the time, all Australian state governments were dependent upon London financiers for loans for developmental works and special works requiring extensive capital outlay. Since 1915 the Queensland Labor government’s socialist policies had been monitored with concern by the propertied classes, both within the state and abroad (Cochrane 1989). The wartime European turmoil and the civil war in Russia only intensified their mistrust of socialism and the Labor Party. The final straw for Queensland’s capitalists was the passing of the Land Act Amendment Act in 1920, which enabled Labor to increase pastoral rents from 12 to 59 shillings per square mile. When the Premier of Queensland, Edward (Red Ted) Theodore, left for London in March 1920 to raise finance for the state, a delegation of three of Queensland’s ‘oldest active conservative men of influence’ also left for London (Cochrane 1989:7). The Labor government was seen as a threat to capital, and the conservatives aimed to bring down the government by convincing London to impose an economic blockade on Queensland. This blockade, which lasted until 1924, was without precedent in the history of Australia and its effect on Queensland was disastrous. Never before had an Australian state been refused loans from London. A recession, increased unemployment, forced retrenchments and the abandonment of many government schemes, including the state’s proposed steel works, were directly attributable to the blockade (Cochrane 1989:141–5). It was no coincidence, therefore, that the government’s decision to take over the Golden Casket was made within a month of the blockade being imposed. The government desperately needed funds and each Casket which had been held by the Queensland Patriotic Committee had yielded a profit of £7,300. It was an opportunity for revenue that was too good to lose. The fifth factor that was conducive to a lottery was the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Queensland politics and society and the more secular and liberal form of Protestantism in Australia. According to O’Farrell, Queensland was the most Catholic state in Australia, not just statistically but ‘in the sense that [Queensland] most readily and warmly accepted its Catholic citizens’ (O’Farrell 1977:307). Of the sixty-seven Labor members in the Legislative Assembly during the 1920s, 44 per cent were Catholics (MacGinley 1982:159). Catholics exercised a disproportionate political influence in Queensland and, during the Ryan leadership in particular, many Catholics were promoted

Gambling cultures

66

into key positions in the public service (Fitzgerald 1984:11–14). The large Catholic sector of the Labor government and public service helped enable the lottery to proceed despite concern for its supposed immoral influence. Because lotteries both in Queensland and in southern states were popular with the working classes and because Australian Catholicism was based on working-class alignments and cultural values, the Catholic Church was not opposed to gambling per se (O’Hara 1988:132). The influential Archbishop of Queensland, James Duhig, supported the Golden Casket, claiming that ‘if a man had money to risk, neither he [n]or any one else could condemn him as doing a moral wrong’ (Duhig 1933). Finally, the Golden Casket owed both its inception and its operation during the first fifteen years to a key bureaucrat in the Home Office, Charles Chuter. Chuter joined the Queensland public service in 1898, rising through the ranks to become Assistant Under Secretary of the Home Office in 1922 and Under Secretary in 1935. In 1917 the government took over the finances of the Brisbane General Hospital from the hospital’s voluntary committee and Chuter, at that time Chief Clerk of the Home Office, was given responsibility for the hospital’s financial administration. This began a long involvement between Chuter and Queensland’s health and hospital administration. Government records held in the Queensland State Archives document Chuter’s astute business skills and suggest that Chuter was responsible for organising and implementing Queensland’s famous public hospital system. No person in the Home Office was more likely to have understood the government’s financial predicament in 1920. All correspondence from hospital committees requesting financial assistance was directed to Chuter. One hospital in particular, the Hospital for Sick Children in Brisbane, had for years been pleading with the government for help. So desperate was the children’s hospital for funds that the committee threatened to resign if no help from the government was forthcoming.7 The profits of the sixth Casket were used by Chuter in 1919 as a one-off solution to the hospital’s relentless pleas for financial assistance. In doing so, Chuter stumbled across an easy solution for the Labor government’s financial problems. Although it is not known who approached the government in 1920 with the plan for owning and operating the lottery, Chuter was most likely to have recommended the takeover. Once the government assumed responsibility for the Golden Casket, Chuter remained its key administrator and directed the spending of all the Casket’s profits for the next fifteen years. The most contrived aspect of the policy was the plan selected for the use of the Golden Casket Art Union’s profits. Gambling was a highly controversial issue in the 1920s, as the brief history just noted has shown. It would appear that the ALP wanted the state to benefit from lottery profits (which, as a party, Labor did not morally oppose), but at the same time had to be respectful of the wider community’s suspicions of gambling practices. British and American state lotteries of earlier centuries had set a precedent of using lottery profits for funding community projects. To ensure that the profits would be used on the most ‘sanitised’ community project, it was decided to direct all of the Golden Casket’s profits into financing maternal and infant welfare facilities. Improved facilities for mothers and babies was one of the most popular social reforms for Australian governments at this time, ‘motherhood’ being the most highly esteemed of female occupations.8

Social evil or social good?

67

So that the public could see the good use to which the Golden Casket’s profits were put, a special Motherhood, Child Welfare and Hospital Fund was created. Instead of adding the profits from the lottery to general revenue, all profits went to this fund. Furthermore, the State Treasury had no control over the fund; the Home Office was completely responsible for its distribution. The Motherhood Fund’s principal aim was to finance the building of maternity hospitals and baby clinics throughout Queensland, and Chuter began work on drafting the Maternity Bill to implement this plan in 1920. The Maternity Act was passed in 1922. Within three years, fifty-seven fully equipped maternity hospitals and ten baby clinics had been built, as well as a training centre established in Brisbane for infant welfare nurses. By 1938, ninety-four maternity hospitals and more than 100 baby clinics were in operation. The Motherhood Fund completely financed this extensive building programme. Any remaining profits of the Casket were used as special grants to hospitals. As the Golden Casket increased in popularity (and profitability), the Fund was increasingly the major revenue source for Labor’s public hospital scheme. Throughout the 1920s the Labor government repeatedly emphasised the ‘noble cause’ on which the profits were spent and, because of the popularity of the policy, were able to use the maternal and infant welfare programme to their political advantage. The Maternity Act was publicised as being ‘the noblest legislation ever placed on the Statute book’, responsible for ‘saving the lives of thousands of young Queenslanders and their mothers’ (Australian Labor Party 1926). The opening of every maternity ward or baby clinic was a gala occasion, with politicians making numerous speeches about Labor’s latest ‘monument to motherhood’ (Warwick Daily News 1939). The Casket’s profits neatly solved a number of problems confronting the government in 1920 and enabled them to provide a service widely thought to be important to the state. The government spent over £314,000 on maternity hospitals and baby clinics in the first ten years, and one Home Secretary, Edward Hanlon, stated clearly Labor’s feelings about the Golden Casket: ‘It was realised by the vast majority of citizens of the state that the mothers of the next generation, and the children being born in the world, were being given that idealistic treatment that only Casket funds have made an actuality’ (Hanlon 1933). The Golden Casket proved to be an enormous fund-raiser for Queensland. Initially tickets cost 5 shillings, each ticket holder hoping for the first prize of £5,000. The first Casket in 1916 took seventeen weeks to sell all the tickets, the second Casket took ten weeks and by 1922 a Casket was being drawn every three weeks. Each decade the lottery became more popular; by the 1940s there were drawings every few days. Every Casket made a profit of £7,300 for the Motherhood Fund and £1,250 in state taxation (Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1925).9 In its first year of government management the Casket made a net profit of £190,224, excluding taxation. After ten years of operation, £2,298,110 had been placed in the Motherhood Fund (Queensland Government, ABC of Queensland Statistics 1936:137). The Golden Casket Art Union was so popular that, in 1933, the government began to run ‘mammoth’ lotteries, where the prize money was greatly increased. In 1933 an ordinary Casket sold 100,000 tickets with a first prize of £6,000. A ‘mammoth’ Casket issued 200,000 tickets and, depending on the price of the ticket, had a first prize of £20,000, £25,000 or £50,000.10 Initially these ‘mammoth’ lotteries had a specific fundraising purpose, such as the building of the Women’s Hospital in Brisbane. While most

Gambling cultures

68

tickets for the Golden Caskets were sold in Queensland (66 per cent) and New South Wales (31 per cent), the Casket began to attract a large international patronage after 1932 (Home Office 1923–30; Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1937). So successful was the Casket and so much a part of the Queensland way of life, that the government never bothered to change legislation which had banned the operation of lotteries in the state since 1895. The Premier, Thomas Ryan, ignored this legislation in 1916 when he granted the War Council permission to hold the first Casket. Ryan was an ardent anti-conscriptionist, a stance seen by some to be unpatriotic, and it is thought that Ryan was concerned that his patriotism would be further questioned if he refused the War Council permission to raise funds (Charlton 1987:190). It is also likely that because the Suppression of Gambling Act was only introduced to block private gambling enterprises, such as Tattersall’s, from operating in Queensland, it was not seen by Ryan as an obstacle to government involvement in lotteries. Chuter was well aware of the technical illegality of the government’s lottery in 1920 but he either decided to ignore the legal implications or was unable to convince his Minister, William McCormack, of the importance of changing the law. It was only in 1930, when a new government made numerous inquiries into the Casket’s and Chuter’s activities, that legislation was quickly added to the Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offences Bill, which was passed in 1931.11 After fifteen years of operation the Golden Casket was legalised.

ENSURING SUCCESS Despite the success of the Golden Casket and the shrewd tactics used by the government to minimise criticism, the lottery did attract some controversy. When the Queensland government took over the Golden Casket in 1920, it rekindled the arguments against gambling and against lotteries in particular. The Home Office had a difficult time in the early years of the Casket’s operation, both ensuring that the lottery was run without fraud and convincing the general public that all ticket-holders had a fair chance at first prize. In order to prevent corruption and fraud, the government established two levels of control. The first level was a special subdivision of government office staff, controlled by a government-appointed manager. Their task was the handling of all the administrative and clerical work of the lottery, including the distribution of tickets and prizes. As the Casket grew, so did its staff, and in 1934 there were 129 people working in this subdivision of the Home Office. The second level of control was the Golden Casket Committee, also appointed by the government. The committee’s role was to oversee the work of the manager, recommend changes in the running of the Casket, attend each drawing and to scrutinise the accounts. Each member of the Committee was carefully selected, with the Premier’s wife appointed as the first president. Chuter was a member of this committee for sixteen years and president from 1924 (Home Office 1920–39). To protect the committee from charges of corruption, an audit of the Casket’s operations was conducted each year by the Auditor-General’s Department, and any member of the general public could inspect the books at any time. Despite these safeguards the Casket had some problems. The first scandal involved the manager of the Casket, Archer Lucas. It is not clear from the surviving records what his alleged misdemeanours were. However, Theodore and Lucas had fought continuously for

Social evil or social good?

69

two years over errors in the Casket’s accounts and cheques not being properly signed (Home Office 1920–39). When Lucas took three months’ salary and was ‘absent without leave’ in 1922, he was sacked and quickly replaced by a new manager, William Noble. To avoid losing public trust, the government announced that Lucas had resigned due to war injuries. On another occasion two members of staff of the Home Office were caught trying to cheat the Casket and were tried and imprisoned (Home Office 1920–39). The most serious problem for the Golden Casket’s smooth operation concerned the method chosen for drawing the lottery. The committee had considered many possibilities and initially selected a ‘double draw’ system, involving two octagonal revolving barrels. One barrel contained 100,000 marbles numbered consecutively and the second barrel had 813 marbles, with the values of each prize stamped upon them. In a public hall in Brisbane, a marble was drawn from each barrel simultaneously by two people from the audience (generally children), with the number of the ticket winning the value of the prize shown on the second marble (Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1925). At the conclusion of each drawing the barrels were sealed by the government inspector, generally Chuter, and the seal was left intact until the next drawing. In 1931 the method of drawing was changed to one barrel only, with prizes being awarded in order of the draw. This change was in response to public demand that every ticket-holder’s marble should be in the barrel for the drawing of the first prize. Unfortunately the new system made fraud simpler, and the drawing of Casket number 325 attracted world-wide attention in 1932 when an attempt was made to rig the lottery. Despite scrutineers from the Home Office, the Auditor-General’s Department and the Golden Casket Committee having supervised the sealing of the barrel at the previous draw, the boy called from the front of the audience to draw the lottery was found to be holding a marble with the number 65764 stamped on it. The resulting inquiry revealed that a sub-accountant in the Home Office had stolen the marble, colluded with a friend who bought ticket number 65764 and used his son to sit in the audience at the draw (Truth 1932). The boy had intended to pretend that this marble was the first marble he had drawn from the barrel, thereby winning first prize. The government moved quickly to restore confidence in the lottery by calling for ideas for a new method of drawing prizes. The committee chose an imposing machine designed by a Brisbane engineer, John Lund, which had rotating discs inside tamper-proof compartments. With the state’s maternal and infant programme completely dependent on a minimum of twenty-six Caskets each year and a public hospital system increasingly dependent on state grants, the government could not afford any drop-off in ticket sales. The Lund machine appears to have restored public confidence because sales increased not only locally, but also overseas. This increased patronage was also assisted by the government’s actively pursuing clientele. So proud was the government of the Lund machine that public drawings were organised to coincide with the schedule of tourist ships in port. The government also went to great trouble and expense to take the machine to outback towns of Queensland for country drawings, so that ‘residents could witness first-hand the method of drawing, and are thus given a fitting answer to any adverse propaganda indulged in by people desirous of hampering the Golden Casket operations or injuring its reputation’ (Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1937). In January 1950, a Royal Commission was held to investigate another scandal surrounding the winning ticket of Casket number 1367. It was alleged that the winning

Gambling cultures

70

ticket had been sold after the Casket had been drawn to the manager of a firm that distributed Casket tickets interstate and overseas. Numerous questions were asked in Parliament, and the government chose three highly respectable members of the community to hold the Commission of Inquiry: a senior judge of the Supreme Court, the State President of the RSL (the Returned Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia) and the Auditor-General. After two months of inquiry, the commissioners found no dishonest or improper practice by any person and concluded that the Lund machine was completely efficient and the audit of the accounts effectively performed (Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1951–52). These scandals were dealt with quickly and the Queensland Home Office generally kept the Casket running smoothly. The Protestant Churches of Queensland, however, remained critical of the Casket for many years although the reduced influence of Protestantism in Queensland kept the Churches’ criticisms from having any serious impact upon the Casket. One exception was in 1933 when the first ‘mammoth’ casket was held. This Casket was to help finance the building of the Women’s Hospital and, for an outlay of £1, ticket-holders had a chance of winning £25,000. The Protestant Churches were outraged. The Queensland Council of Churches claimed that the Golden Casket was an ‘evil’ practice, which discouraged industry, contradicted the principles of honest commerce, accentuated the uneven distribution of wealth, and added nothing thereto. It involved gambling for personal profit in the name of charity, and was therefore founded on contradictory motives. It promoted hypocrisy and destroyed the true spirit of charity and philanthropy. It was wrong to raise money to cure physical disease by means which fostered and encouraged an infinitely worse moral and social disease. (Council of Churches 1933)12 The Council designated 25 June 1933 as a day for all Church people to protest against the lottery. The government was forced to respond to this unprecedented attack. After hearing about the planned ‘day of protest’, the Home Secretary, Edward Hanlon, issued a statement saying that the Casket was not the emanation of wickedness, but ‘a mild investment with a profitable result for the state’s institutions of healing. Had it not been for the Casket and its funds, where would the money have come from?’ (Hanlon 1933). The only Church to declare publicly its support for the Casket was the Catholic Church. Archbishop Duhig made a plea for ‘sane reasoning’, and said ‘that he looked upon the holding of the lottery as an emergency means of raising funds for certain laudable purposes’ (Duhig 1933). Despite the day of protest, the Protestant Churches did not prevent either the Golden Casket’s ever-increasing popularity or the Queensland government’s willingness to provide a lottery service to generate revenue. Any time there appeared to be a slump in sales, the government devised a new form of lottery, such as the mammoth series, to stimulate interest. Since 1937 a publicity officer has been employed to promote the Golden Casket both locally and interstate. By 1947, £10 million had been collected from 1,140 Caskets, with over £9 million deposited in the government’s Fund and nearly £1 million collected in state taxation (Queensland Parliamentary Papers 1947). Profits from

Social evil or social good?

71

the lottery provided sorely needed funds for social services. Only in 1989 did the government divert the profit of the lottery to consolidated revenue. Despite other governments watching with interest, the Casket’s success as a source of government revenue did not entice other state governments to follow Queensland for many years. New South Wales, in 1931, was the next state government to run a lottery. It is likely that the depression forced the Labor Premier, Jack Lang, into approving a lottery to obtain revenues. Although Golden Casket agents were banned from operating in New South Wales, many residents purchased both Casket and Tattersall tickets by post. The loss of this gambling revenue at a time of great economic hardship tipped the scales for the Premier, whose personal aversion to lotteries had prevented earlier proposals for a lottery (Charlton 1987:195). Unlike Queensland, New South Wales directed the profits of their lottery into consolidated revenue, suggesting that by the 1930s lotteries had become a more acceptable form of government revenue in Australia, especially when legitimised as supporting a ‘worthy cause’. Western Australia followed in 1933, but this government was more timid in its approach and the temporary legislation permitting the state lottery came up for renewal every five years (Charlton 1987:197). Victoria did not loosen its restrictions on lotteries until 1953, when it invited Tattersall’s to operate in the state. South Australia was the last state to introduce lotteries for public funding, when it passed the Lottery Bill in 1966. With the exception of Tattersall’s operations in Victoria and Tasmania, an important distinction was made in Australia between government-operated lotteries and those of private entrepreneurs. As long as gambling profits were seen to be helping worthwhile causes and as long as the government had full control of its operations, governments appeared more willing to accept lotteries as an inevitable part of Australian society. Private gambling enterprises faced more censure, possibly because they were unable to ‘sanctify’ their lotteries and because a number of gambling businesses had been fraudulent, especially in the late nineteenth century, making governments wary of criminal involvement (Wilson 1980:44).13 The inconsistency of government attitudes towards lotteries is exemplified by the differing treatment by the Postmaster-General of the mail of Tattersall’s and the Golden Casket in the 1920s. Whereas Tattersall’s faced federal postal bans that severely interfered with the successful running of the lottery for many years, no action was taken against the delivery of Golden Casket letters, enabling the Queensland government to advertise publicly and to sell tickets by mail throughout Australia (Wilson 1980:173). Another reason for the success of the Golden Casket was that successive Queensland governments prohibited any private lottery enterprise from operating in the state after 1895. Hanlon and all Queensland Labor government proponents were completely supportive of their own lottery, believing it to be a harmless form of recreation, beneficial to the social services provided by the state. However, it was one thing to have gambling profits help state revenue, quite another for private businesses to prosper from gambling. Although Queenslanders could and did buy Tattersall’s tickets by post, private lotteries were not tolerated. Interestingly, despite its ‘free enterprise’ philosophy, private lotteries were also prohibited in the United States.

Gambling cultures

72

LOTTERIES IN THE UNITED STATES Because the legalisation of lotteries in the United States has been fairly recent, it is worth examining the differences between the United States and Australia. As discussed earlier, Australia’s smaller and less influential middle classes, together with the reduced involvement of the Churches in gambling issues, allowed gambling to become a popular social activity in the Australian colonies. By comparison, anti-gambling legislators had more influence and support in the United States and were successful in preventing lotteries from operating legally anywhere in the country for seventy years. In colonial America, state-sanctioned private lotteries were popular and common and used to finance all kinds of public works (Abt et al. 1985; Clotfelter and Cook 1989). These lotteries were organised by volunteers, usually public-spirited citizens, with all proceeds after the payment of prizes going to a specific public programme. Projects such as the building of highways, schools and hospitals and the supply and support to troops during the Revolution were funded by the profits of these lotteries (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:34). Churches were also the beneficiaries of state lotteries, with the exception of the Quakers who consistently opposed lotteries on religious grounds. For example, sixty lotteries were authorised by Pennsylvania between 1790 and 1833 to benefit various Church groups (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:36). Although there was some criticism of lotteries on moral grounds by the Churches, it was not until the early nineteenth century and the emergence of private lotteries for profit that controversy surrounding lotteries intensified. The increased demand for public infrastructure in the United States motivated more lottery authorisations in the nineteenth century, which in turn attracted the attention of private enterprise. Initially private firms started handling the selling of tickets, opening numerous lottery shops throughout the country. So successful were these enterprises that they began to operate their own lotteries and soon private lotteries outnumbered the volunteer state-sanctioned organisations (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:35–7). As found in Britain and to a lesser extent in Australia, increasing evidence of fraud and dishonesty, as well as concern about the immoral influence of gambling, prompted concern from middle-class social reformers in the United States and legislation prohibiting lotteries was slowly introduced in various states from 1833. By 1860 only three American states still allowed lotteries to operate legally. The Louisiana lottery was the last to survive prohibition, closing in 1894 when Congress passed a series of restrictions on the use of postal services to conduct lotteries (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:38). No legal, government-sponsored lottery existed in the United States from 1894 until 1964. There are many theories as to why lotteries were prohibited for seventy years, and it would appear that arguments similar to those voiced against gaming and betting in England and Australia were more effective and more widely held by the middle classes in the United States. Those in power maintained that the values of thrift and prudence were major components of ‘what made America great’, and successfully outlawed popular gambling practices, such as lotteries, long after other industrialised countries had permitted their operation (Abt et al. 1985:191–203). Lotteries, more than any other type of contemporary gaming and betting activity, were seen to most threaten Puritan values

Social evil or social good?

73

which dominated middle-class American attitudes in the nineteenth century. It was thought that individual rise to wealth and social respectability could only be achieved by honesty, diligence and frugality. It was only when there was a shift from a productive to a consumptive ethic in the middle of the twentieth century, with success measured by material possessions, that gambling both as an activity and as a form of state revenue was tolerated (Abt et al. 1985:194–200). The United States’ relatively prolonged intolerance of legal gambling contrasts sharply with Australia’s, where legislators were more discriminatory in their suppression of gaming and betting. It has already been shown that many Australian state governments, Queensland in particular, were able to justify their operation of lotteries by using the profits for worthwhile purposes. Furthermore, at the time when the Queensland government took over the Golden Casket, the ALP was driven by the ideals of reformist socialism which philosophically endorsed public ownership of major enterprises in the state. It is no coincidence that the next Australian state government to own and operate a lottery (New South Wales) was also an ALP government. The capacity for state government autonomy and control over gambling was greatly assisted in Australia by constitutional protection from federal interference. The US Congress, by contrast, passed a series of effective restrictions against states still operating lotteries in the late nineteenth century, prohibiting all mail referring to lotteries and all lottery activity in interstate commerce (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:38). In both Australia and the United States private lotteries were seen as a potential source of corruption and fraud, and were either tightly controlled or prevented from operating. The first state in the United States to reintroduce a lottery was New Hampshire in 1964. It is interesting to compare the organisation and circumstances of this lottery to Queensland’s Golden Casket. New Hampshire had few conventional means of raising state taxes and was heavily reliant upon alternative sources of finance, including excise taxes on tobacco, horse-racing and alcohol (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:142).14 Revenue for state-funded projects was scarce and the state ranked lowest in state aid to education. Like Queensland in 1920, the government was under considerable pressure to find other forms of revenue and lottery bills had been proposed as early as 1937. Also, New Hampshire had a disproportionately high percentage of Catholics and a relatively high percentage of foreign-born residents. This lessened the political and cultural influence of ‘conservative Yankee puritanism’ (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:142–3). Unlike Queensland’s, New Hampshire’s lottery was in fact a sweepstake. Federal gambling laws in the United States would have imposed a tax on wagering if the state had organised a conventional lottery. The state only organised two drawings a year, and towns within New Hampshire could vote to exclude sweepstake tickets being sold in their area. Due to the restrictions on purchasing tickets and the limited number of drawings, the lottery proved to be unpopular, with sales declining each year. In contrast, Queensland’s Golden Casket was a huge success because it more effectively met working-class needs both in cost and in accessibility, with the Queensland government running as many lotteries as there was demand for tickets. Furthermore, lottery prizes in Australia are tax-free, therefore having an immediate capacity to transform lives. New Hampshire’s sweepstake, although operating nearly fifty years after the Golden Casket began, was a very tentative state enterprise in comparison.

Gambling cultures

74

The second state to operate a lottery in the United States, New York in 1967, had similar problems to those of New Hampshire, although twelve drawings a year were permitted (Abt et al. 1985:56–7). Neither New Hampshire’s nor New York’s lotteries was very successful and it was not until 1970, when New Jersey’s state lottery started, that lotteries became highly profitable state enterprises in the United States. The New Jersey lottery better suited purchasers’ needs. Tickets were only 50 cents each, drawings were weekly and any convenient retail business was allowed to be a lottery outlet. Sales totalled US$73 million in six months (Abt et al. 1985:57). Since the early 1970s lotteries have proliferated in the United States, although by 1989 there were still only twenty-eight states operating lotteries. Along with other forms of gaming and betting, lotteries have a high profile in the United States today and, where they operate, are one of the major enterprises provided by state governments. Another feature of lotteries in the United States is the absence of private enterprise control. Although a number of states allow non-profit organisations to sell charity game tickets, every American state government which has legalised lotteries has sole right to provide lottery games within its borders (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:238). Private industry is only allowed to supply and retail the government’s lottery product. Admittedly, the state governments’ agreements with private enterprise are substantial, with most states allowing private firms to manage their lotteries for a generous fee. Nevertheless, the involvement of private enterprise in lotteries is limited. As in Australia, it is thought that government monopoly is the result of nineteenth-century scandals involving private lotteries (Abt et al. 1985:63). Most privately operated lotteries were tainted by fraud and corruption and governments moved quickly to ban their operations. The laws prohibiting private lotteries in the United States have never been revoked. Considering America’s predilection for free enterprise, this is remarkable. Despite the relatively late legalisation of lotteries and other forms of gaming and betting in the United States, gambling practices continued. Charity raffles and church bingo were popular during the seventy-year ban on lotteries and Americans were major customers of the Irish Sweepstakes, started in 1930 (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:38). The persistence of numerous forms of illegal gambling practices throughout this period also suggests that middle-class reformers never achieved hegemony. The two most popular illegal lottery games were called ‘policy’ (or ‘insurance’) and ‘numbers’. ‘Policy’ was attractive because betting was cheap; one simply gambled on drawn numbers in a fashion similar to lotto today. ‘Numbers’ was also cheap and easy to play, with patrons guessing combinations of three numbers being drawn daily (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:39–40). So popular are these and other illegal gaming and betting practices in the United States that they have continued after laws on gambling were loosened. For example, in 1976 the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated that over US$45 billion was spent that year on illegal wagering (Abt et al. 1985:204).

LOTTERIES TODAY For a government to legalise a lottery for its own economic and political purposes in 1920 was unusual. Although gambling as a social activity was firmly established in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, lotteries have been controversial and

Social evil or social good?

75

subject to severe anti-gambling legislation since the nineteenth century. The Golden Casket survived after the First World War because of a number of unique factors, including the Labor government’s desperate financial situation and because Chuter shrewdly channelled the profits into the most respectable area of government spending of that era: mothers and babies. Queensland’s success in owning and operating a lottery prompted other state governments in Australia to follow suit from the 1930s. In the United States lotteries continued to be seen as the antithesis of Puritan values and the middle classes kept a tight rein on anti-gambling legislation until the 1960s. The widespread popularity of illegal lotteries and similar games throughout the twentieth century in the United States, however, suggests that the middle classes were not successful in eradicating gambling practices or winning populist support. Gambling which requires small, frequent outlays of cash and where tickets are easily procured, attracts working-class clientele irrespective of the law. Today lotteries continue to be popular. In the 1990/91 financial year, Queensland’s total lottery sales were A$518.8 million, with a profit of A$152 million making a substantial contribution to state revenue (Courier-Mail 1991). In the United States, lotteries are the most profitable public enterprise owned by governments and rank second behind higher education as the most important state product sold to the public (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:238). By 1991 thirty-four states owned lotteries which together attracted 90 million players and US$20.6 billion in ticket sales that year (Time International 1991:74). Despite the introduction of other, more technically sophisticated games such as machine gaming and casinos, lotteries have continued to be well patronised, principally because lotteries have adapted their product to meet changing demand. Marketing attractions include the introduction of innovative games and huge ‘jackpot’ prizes which offer a windfall which will change people’s lives. According to Clotfelter and Cook (1989:53–4), lottery players today want more ‘play value’, more involvement than the simple, passive act of buying a ticket. In response, lotteries now offer instant ‘scratch-off’ games which offer not only simulated play value, but also immediacy in results.15 The popularity of instant rub-off games is reflected in Queensland’s Golden Casket for 1990/91 where sales for ‘scratch-its’, as they are called, rose 22 per cent while ordinary A$2 lottery ticket sales dropped by 18 per cent (Courier-Mail 1991). The enticement of becoming an instant millionaire has been another important factor in the continuing popularity of lotteries. It is estimated that more than 3,000 people in the United States have become ‘overnight’ millionaires as a result of lottery wins (Time International 1991:74).16 Governments’ commitments to lotteries today raise questions about the contradictory role of the state. In Queensland in 1920 it was thought that if people are going to gamble, then the government might as well benefit from the enterprise. At the time, this attitude towards gambling, and lotteries in particular, was distinctive although since then it has become common in other jurisdictions. As Dombrink has argued in the preceding chapter, other ‘vices’, such as prostitution and alcohol, have had neither unambiguous government sanction nor government encouragement. What is the special nature of lotteries that makes them so acceptable as a revenue source, then and now? The Queensland government in 1920 justified the takeover and use of the Golden Casket for the same reasons that the lottery was popular with the general public: wagers were small,

Gambling cultures

76

the profits went to a worthwhile cause and the government was thought to be better able to control the potential for criminal behaviour. The growth in state lotteries today and the extensive advertising campaigns used by governments to attract both new players and old players to spend more raises new questions about the role of the state in gambling enterprises. For instance, what criteria should governments use to evaluate the performance of their lotteries in the 1990s: on the basis of profit or by considering some notion of general public interest, or both? This is a perplexing, yet important, question in the light of recent leaps in the amount of per capita spending on legalised gaming and betting, especially in Australia where in 1991 per capita gambling was 60 per cent higher than in the United States (The Bulletin 1991:80). If, as the evidence suggests, people gamble more when there is a larger variety of ways to gamble, then governments must accept their partial responsibility for creating the problems (as well as the pleasures) associated with the current booming gambling industry. The existence of organisations such as Gamblers Anonymous (in Australia) and the Council on Compulsive Gambling (in the United States) highlights some of the social and behavioural problems resulting from the growing number of gambling choices. However, while people continue to support lotteries for whatever reasons, governments are likely to want a piece of the action. For better or for worse, lottery profits have become an essential and comparatively reliable component of state revenue.

NOTES 1 The Home Office in Queensland was based on the British model and was responsible for all domestic affairs of the state. In 1920 this included health, hospitals, police, prisons, outdoor relief, the register-general, electoral registration and Aborigines. The principal public servant of this department was called the Under Secretary and the Minister was called the Home Secretary. In 1935 the Home Office changed its name to the Department of Health and Home Affairs. 2 Wilson points out that there were many sweepstake clubs operating in the 1870s and 1880s, not all of them honestly. Many clubs disappeared before the draw was held. 3 Despite many state socialist achievements, a number of government reforms were blocked in the Legislative Council (the Upper House). Abolishing the Council was the first plank of the ALP’s policies and they were successful in 1922. 4 In 1914, Queensland’s population, excluding Aborigines, was 676, 707. By 1926, the population had increased to 875, 187 but averaged only 1.32 persons per square mile (Queensland Government, ABC of Queensland Statistics 1916, 1928). 5 In 1909 the Commonwealth government established the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Townsville, in northern Queensland. Its major concern was to investigate whether or not white settlers could colonise tropical Australia. 6 Quiggin notes that birth rates had been declining since the 1860s, but Queensland’s decline was erratic until the 1890s. The most famous inquiry into the declining birth rate in Australia was conducted in New South Wales in 1903–4. In 1916 Queensland decided to hold an inquiry and went so far as to appoint a commission to investigate reasons for Queensland’s declining birth rate. For unknown reasons, the inquiry was never undertaken (Home Office 1916). 7 The ladies’ committee was unable to raise enough money to meet the ever-increasing demand for the hospital’s services. In desperation they finally resigned in 1921 and the government took over the running of the hospital in 1924, along with all hospitals in south-east Queensland.

Social evil or social good?

77

8 The glorification of motherhood in early twentieth-century Australia is a complex issue, inextricably linked with concerns about the declining birth rate, eugenicist debates, and patriarchal definitions of a woman’s role in life. Marriage was deemed an essential part of every truly feminine woman’s life plan, and motherhood was designated the central content of feminine work (Matthews 1984:112, 174). 9 In 1921 the government increased the price of a ticket to 5s 3d, with 3d per ticket being used to pay state income tax. Federal tax was also subtracted until 1924. Total profit varied slightly from the 1930s but amounted to approximately 23 per cent of total revenue. 10 The value of these prizes at the time was enormous, considering a skilled tradesman’s wages was approximately £300–500 per year. 11 The Country and Progressive National government, which served for three years between 1929 and 1932, was very distrustful of Chuter’s power in the Home Office. They held a Royal Commission in 1930 which amounted to little more than an outright attack on Chuter and a removal of many of his duties on committees. In 1932 the new Labor government, which fully supported Chuter’s work, reinstated most of his duties. 12 The Council of Churches was an affiliated group composed of Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational, Church of Christ and Baptist Churches and the Salvation Army temples. 13 Continued government tolerance of Tattersall’s is attributable not only to the company’s apparent integrity and honesty, but also to the use of some of its profits for charitable purposes. For instance, in the period 1977–80, over ninety charities received donations in excess of A$1,000 annually, in addition to hundreds of smaller donations in the same period (Wilson 1980:208–10). 14 New Hampshire had neither a sales tax nor an income tax. 15 The ‘scratch-off’ ticket has a combination of numbers, letters or words hidden under a vinyl covering. Scratching off the covering shows whether or not a prize has been won. 16 The life-altering effect of a large lottery win in the United States is dampened by the common practice of the prize being paid in twenty annual taxable instalments. Australian lottery winnings are paid in a single lump sum and are exempt from both state and federal taxation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V., Smith, J. and Christiansen, E. (1985) The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Australian Labor Party Queensland Branch (1926) ‘Mothers of Queensland your duty is clear’, pamphlet, P 324.7 MOT, John Oxley Library, Brisbane. Bowman, D. (1910) ‘President’s opening address’, Queensland Labor-in-Politics Convention, Official Record of Proceedings, Brisbane: The Worker Newspaper. Charlton, P. (1987) Two Flies up a Wall: The Australian Passion for Gambling, Sydney: Methuen Haynes. Cilento, R. (1961–62) ‘Medicine in Queensland, Part 2, 1894–1962’, The Royal Historical Society of Queensland 6(4):908–41. Clotfelter, C. and Cook, P. (1989) Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cochrane, T. (1989) Blockade: The Queensland Loans Affair 1920 to 1924, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Council of Churches (1933) ‘To dishonesty. Casket provokes churches’ statement’, The Mail, Brisbane (23 June). Courier-Mail (1991) ‘Casket boom as gambling hits $2 billion’, Brisbane (28 Dec.).

Gambling cultures

78

Dixon, D. (1991) From Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking, Anti-Gambling, and the Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duhig, J. (1933) ‘Matter solely for the individual’, Courier, Brisbane (26 June). Fitzgerald, R. (1984) A History of Queensland from 1915 to the 1980s, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Hanlon, E. (1933) ‘Queensland minister replies to church criticism of Golden Casket’, Smiths Weekly, Sydney (10 June). ——(1938) Queensland Parliamentary Debates, 173 (20 Oct). Home Office (1916) Correspondence with the Home Office, 16:10439, HOM/J215, Queensland State Archives. ——(1916–29) Correspondence with the Home Office, COL/359, Queensland State Archives. ——(1920–39) Correspondence with the Home Office re. the Golden Casket, A/4679, Queensland State Archives. ——(1923–30) Correspondence with the Home Office re. the Golden Casket, A/4678, Queensland State Archives. Jordan, P.K. (1980) ‘Health and social welfare’, in D.J.Murphy, R.B.Joyce and C.A. Hughes (eds) Labor in Power: The Labor Party and Governments in Queensland 1915–57, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. MacGinley, M. (1982) ‘Catholicism in Queensland 1910–35’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland. Macintyre, S. (1986) The Oxford History of Australia, vol 4:1901–1942, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Matthews, J.J. (1984) Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth-century Australia, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin. McMillen, J. and W.R.Eadington (1986) ‘The evolution of gambling laws in Australia’, New York Journal of International and Comparative Law 8(1):167–92. O’Farrell, P. (1977) The Catholic Church and Community in Australia: A History, Melbourne: Thomas Nelson. O’Hara, J. (1988) A Mug’s Game: A History of Gaming and Betting in Australia, Kensington: New South Wales University Press. Premier’s Office (1919) Copy of report of the deputation from the Australian Natives Association to the Acting Premier, Edward Theodore, 6 March, COL/165, Queensland State Archives. Queensland Government (1915–36) ABC of Queensland Statistics, Brisbane: Government Printer. Queensland Parliamentary Papers (1925) 3, Golden Casket Art Union Annual Report, 1924/25. ——(1937) 2, Golden Casket Art Union Annual Report, 1936/37. ——(1947) 2, Golden Casket Art Union Annual Report, 1946/47. ——(1951–52) 2, Royal Commission to Enquire into Certain Matters Appertaining to the Golden Casket Art Union. Quiggin, P. (1988) No Rising Generation: Women and Fertility in Late Nineteenth Century Australia, Canberra: Australian National University Printing Service. The Bulletin, Australia (1991) ‘Betting your life on it’, vol. 113, no. 5781 (6 Aug.). Time International (1991) ‘Life at the end of the rainbow’, vol. 138, no. 18 (4 Nov.). Truth (1932) (23 Oct.). Ward, R. (1958) The Australian Legend, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Warwick Daily News (1939) ‘Monument to motherhood’ (11 Dec.). Wilson, T. (1980) The Luck of the Draw: A Centenary of Tattersall’s Sweeps 1881–1981, Melbourne: T.Wilson Publishing Co.

4 ILLEGAL BETTING IN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALIA Contrasts in control strategies and cultures David Dixon

This chapter offers a comparative analysis of some responses to illegal off-course betting and bookmaking in twentieth-century Britain and Australia. The focus is on the development of public policy and law enforcement, and their interrelations with national popular cultures. Australia and Britain are fundamentally comparable in terms of economic and social structure, legal system, dominant political ideology and class relations. In addition, early Australian betting and sporting practices and laws were heavily influenced by those in Britain. However, specific differences (for example, in policing traditions, fiscal policies, working-class composition, and intra-state relations) can be identified as having produced divergent strategies in the control of popular gambling. The British and Australian anti-gambling movements both enjoyed their heyday in the decades around the turn of this century. Employing a common set of anti-gambling arguments (Charlton 1987: ch. 11; Dixon 1991: ch. 2; Fox 1988; O’Hara 1981:75–6; 1988: ch. 5), they had significant influences on public policy. In both countries, the keystone of the state’s strategy was prohibition of working-class gambling, combined with the preservation (in the interests of horse-racing and upper-class gamblers) of legal on-course betting and bookmaking (O’Hara 1988:115–18, 142–9; Dixon 1991: chs 3 and 4). In Britain, this class-discriminatory strategy reached its peak with the Street Betting Act 1906. Very similar legislation was passed in the same year in Victoria and in New South Wales (O’Hara 1988:142–8). A formal, concerted shift away from relying on criminal prohibition came in the 1950s and 1960s. Once again, Australia was influenced by Britain: the 1949–51 Royal Commission’s discussion of principles for the control of gambling (Willink 1951: ch. 4) provided a bench-mark for subsequent Australian inquiries (for example, Kinsella 1963:23–6). While the analysis of principle was the same, the resultant policies were very different, and from 1960 the paths of British and Australian betting controls diverged. Britain decriminalised off-course cash betting and bookmaking, and incorporated previously illegal operators into a legally regulated and taxed system of licensed betting shops. Led by Victoria, the Australian states generally maintained their prohibitions on off-course ‘SP’ bookmaking1 and attempted to compete with it by operating a system of state-run ‘TABs’, the Totalisator Agency Boards. The objective here is to account for why public policy in Australia and Britain diverged in this way and to comment on the relative success and failure of each strategy.2

Gambling cultures

80

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION A crucial factor was the contrast in the policing of information by state agencies. Offcourse bookmaking depends upon information—betting odds and race results. Advances in the technology and marketing of communications—first, the growth of the new, popular sporting press in the nineteenth century, and later, the completion of national telegraph, telephone and radio services—resulted in the growth of off-course bookmaking operations upon which punters could rely. If the communication of information is prevented or even seriously disrupted, the bookmaking business becomes impossible. The British authorities never developed the policing of information as a tactic. The reasons for this included antagonism and lack of cooperation between the Home Office and the General Post Office, political sensitivity about the interception of communications and about press censorship, and the impossibility of distinguishing information required for (legal) off-course credit betting from that used by (illegal) offcourse cash bookmakers (Dixon 1991:167–72). In contrast, a number of campaigns against Australian SP in the inter-war years identified the communication of information as a legitimate target, and concentrated their attacks on it. Legislation (in Queensland in 1936 and New South Wales in 1938) ‘aimed at the total eradication of SP’ (McCoy 1981:43) by means of limiting or banning the broadcasting of results and the communication of odds from racecourses, and prohibiting newspapers from publishing betting odds or tips (McCoy 1981:41–5; O’Hara 1988:191– 2). The result, however, was the organisation of illegal systems of communication, beginning with the employment of tic-tac men signalling to observers outside the course (McCoy 1981:44; Hickie 1985:328–30) and leading (via corruption) to the unauthorised use of on-course press and police communications systems. Information became a commodity around which an illegal organisation was constructed (McCoy 1980:103, 149; 1981:36; Clark et al. 1978:18). Attempts at suppression away from the racecourse had similarly counter-productive results. In the intermittent crackdowns (from those in the 1920s to those designed to support the introduction and expansion of the TABs after 1960), the police aimed at the most visible and vulnerable part of the bookmaking system—independent SP bookmakers operating in clubs, shops or, most typically, bars. (SP’s place in bars has been demonstrated by its inclusion in the ‘goodwill’ costs at the sale of premises.) International experience shows that the main effect of this kind of policing is usually to encourage bookmakers (and suppliers of other illegal services and products) to organise cooperative arrangements and self-protection. Systematic corruption is likely to result. In Australia, a distinctive element of the bookmakers’ response to police crackdowns has been the use of telephone systems (Hickie 1985:337–8, 340; McCoy 1981:53). Punters contact bookmakers working by telephone either directly or via a runner or agent. This necessitates a complex illicit phone network: its scale became clear when, for example, New South Wales police ‘discovered’ a fullscale telephone exchange handling illegal bookmaking transactions (McCoy 1981:44–5). A consequence has been the apparently widespread corruption of the Postmaster General’s Department and (later) Telecom employees, whose services are needed to install telephones, connect lines and provide switching and diversion transmission arrangements (CJC 1990:30; Costigan 1984: ch. 6; Hickie 1985:356–60, 364; O’Hara 1988:233, 240). In response, gaming squads developed

Illegal betting in britain and australia

81

technological and investigative methods of tracing bookmakers. This increased enforcement capacity was countered by bookmakers turning to the use of portable and, more significantly, cellular telephones. A pattern emerges which is familiar from attempts to police illegal gambling since at latest the eighteenth century. As Blackstone put it, ‘the inventions of the sharpers’ are ‘swifter than the punishment of the law, which only hunts them from one device to another’ (1769:173). The ‘punishment of the law’ also suffers from lack of weight; even when available, prison sentences for betting offences are very rare. In the 1980s, pressure from the TABs to protect revenues led some states to strengthen penalties; but there have been problems in enforcing payment of fines where, as in Queensland, default imprisonment is not available. In New South Wales, imprisonment for SP offences was abolished in 1979. What might have been a first step towards legalisation was thwarted by the intervention of scandals about police corruption and organised crime. Imprisonment was reintroduced as a sentencing option in 1989. An additional consequence of pushing SP into the telephone system is that it is thereby encouraged to operate a credit system. This contrasts with Britain, where illegal bookmakers were normally unwilling to extend credit to working-class punters. The availability of credit gives SP a highly significant advantage over the TABs, which are permitted to operate only in cash, including predeposit accounts. A large-scale illegal credit betting system requires sanctions for punters who cannot or will not pay losing bets. SP bookmaking consequently involved the employment of standover men as debt enforcers (CJC 1990:3; McCoy 1981:45–9; Meagher 1983:31). This dependence upon the threat or use of violence pushed SP bookmaking further into networks of illegal activity.3 Accounts of how the modern SP system developed to become a functional part (particularly for money-laundering) of national criminal syndicates generally display the difficulties and weaknesses of an Australian obsession with ‘organised crime’, which in many respects echoes debates in the 1960s about the Mafia in the United States (cf. Block and Chambliss 1981: chs 6 and 9). Dominant accounts are sensationalised, in their journalistic priorities, individualistic, in their search for a ‘Mr Big’ and in the judicial style of official inquiries, and moralistic, in their monochrome view of the world as being ‘ultimately divided into “goodies” and “baddies’” (Brown 1984–85:10; cf. Hogg 1984; O’Malley 1985). The result is a distorted view of the subject matter; in particular, ‘organised crime’ is seen as a distinct field of operations rather than in terms of its intimate and functional (not merely individual) links with legitimate political and commercial activities. Nevertheless, the result was an illegal bookmaking business in Australia which was very different from that in Britain before 1960 in terms of organisation, functional links with other criminal activities, and relations with the authorities. For example, Sydney currently has three large-scale, franchised, SP bookmaking operations. SP is associated with race-fixing and other problems in the racing industry (CJC 1990:16–20). In consequence, legalisation of off-course bookmaking has been regarded as impracticable: SP bookmakers were not the kind of people whose operations could be legalised. Yet nor could they be completely suppressed. In these circumstances, factors such as the ease of revenue collection from a competitive betting structure became more influential than they might otherwise have done.

Gambling cultures

82

ENFORCEMENT AND CORRUPTION In Australia, corruption seems to have been accepted almost as an inevitable part of public life. The media have played a key role in this process of normalisation: exposure and condemnation have been tempered by the depiction of the corrupt as embodying supposedly fundamental Australian virtues of anti-authoritarianism, ‘larrikinism’ and individualism. Attitudes to police corruption have been very different from those in Britain, and must be explained in terms of contrasting histories of police-public and police-government relations (Finnane 1987; Proctor 1985). Political and commercial corruption may in fact be no more common than in Britain; but in Australia, the realities of power are nearer to the surface of political and commercial activities. Consequently, any corruption within them is more visible. Periodically, scandals emerge and individuals may be prosecuted or forced to resign. New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland provided notable examples in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, few people are surprised or expect anything to change in the long term: ‘who bribed whom for what is a commonplace of cynical Sydney conversation, and has been for 30 years’ (Clark et al. 1978:18; cf. Hickie 1985:259–326; McCoy 1980:150, 178–9; O’Hara 1985:382–5). Exposure creates scandal; but this usually does not amount to any general political or ideological threat. This tolerance, even acceptance, of corruption as part of the Australian way of public life means that reform efforts (in SP as elsewhere) have to cope with entrenched apathy about the possibility of change. It is tempting to say that all this is now changing. Between 1984 and 1991, the New South Wales police service was subjected to attempts at major organisational and cultural reform under the leadership of Commissioner John Avery (see, for example, Sparrow et al. 1990:73–7). Like other public bodies, it is supervised by an ombudsman and by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). In 1992, ICAC launched an investigation into New South Wales police involvement in corruption and other criminal activities, including SP. In Queensland, the late 1980s saw the exposure and downfall of the old political regime and the establishment of the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) (Fitzgerald 1989). It soon began a major investigation of SP. While these are important steps, caution lingers about the prospects for long-term and comprehensive effects. There must be doubts about the limited focus of these inquiries and about the political will and ability to confront fundamental realities of the relations between crime, business and politics in Australia. In Britain, betting prohibition and its associated problems (including police corruption) occurred during a period when an enduring and powerful ideological construction was being completed—the ideal of the British police officer who has a special relationship with the public based on shared values and ‘consent’. Because of its threat to this ideology, police corruption was taken much more seriously in this period than it had been before, and was a major factor in leading to the early acceptance in Britain that prohibition would have to be replaced. Corruption in this period achieved an importance that was related not to its objective scale, but to what it signified for the state more generally. This perspective requires revision of the standard accounts in which the legalisation of off-course cash betting was a product of alleged features of post-war social change, such

Illegal betting in britain and australia

83

as ‘affluence’ and embourgeoisement. In fact, the change of state policy from prohibition towards administrative regulation was a product not of the 1950s, but of the 1920s and 1930s (Dixon 1991). The issue had been brought to a head by a series of scandals about police corruption in the 1920s. Decriminalisation was recommended by a Royal Commission in 1933 (Rowlatt 1933). Its concern about harmful contact between bookmaker and punter led to the proposal of an impracticable scheme: bets were to be deposited in a special letter box at the bookmaker’s premises. This, along with the continuing strength of anti-gambling sentiment, meant that the recommendation was shelved. However, the crucial matter was that the impossibility of prohibition and the inevitability of its eventual replacement had been publicly acknowledged (Dixon 1991:320–9). From the 1930s, it was widely realised that prohibition was unworkable and would be replaced sooner or later. Laws directed at street bookmakers were unsuccessful, and could not be made more effective because striking at the roots of the bookmaking system was politically out of the question. As noted above, the authorities were not prepared to use the kind of tactics against the media and communications systems which were a feature of this period in Australia. Police policy became one of containment. Regulated by a system of pay-offs and provision of stooges for arrest and conviction, illegal bookmaking was tolerated as long as public order was maintained (that is, betting was done discreetly), and business was conducted responsibly (that is, primarily with adult males). Prohibition relied on a sliding scale of punishments to act as a deterrent; imprisonment was available for a third offence. However, the organisation of the betting system meant that actual bookmakers were rarely brought to court. While a steady stream of defendants was produced for the courts (and the crime statistics), proceedings became increasingly ritualised, as magistrates realised that the defendants appeared by arrangement. They were rarely eligible for imprisonment, and even those who were often received only fines. This allowed all concerned to regard betting offences as not serious, not ‘real crime’ (Dixon 1991: ch. 7). These policing efforts were not enough and (despite the occasional employment of special squads) were not usually designed to drive bookmaking fully underground. The intention was regulation, not suppression. Consequently, bookmaking was able to remain at the level of small-scale operation. British bookmakers did not require the level of organisation or sophisticated communications systems developed in Australia. Bookmaking was part, not of a criminal subculture, but rather of a wider popular culture for which the laws and values of middle-class society had limited relevance (Chinn 1991; Clapson 1992; Davies 1992: ch. 6). This was of great significance when the issue of legalisation was finally faced in the 1950s. As a result of the factors noted above, the illegality of bookmaking was not an obstacle in considering what could be done: illegal bookmakers could be (and were) accepted as the basis of a new, legal bookmaking business.

Gambling cultures

84

TAXATION The Australian choice of TABs must be set in the context of a willingness by the states to take revenue from gambling which contrasts substantially with the attitude of British governments at mid-century. First, there was a long history of principled objections in Britain to the taxation of gambling. It was argued that the state demeaned itself by drinking at a poisoned well— gambling was inherently immoral and therefore the state should have nothing to do with it (Dixon 1991:120). State dependence on gambling revenue was thought to imply endorsement or approval of gambling. This, it was claimed, would lead to increased levels of gambling, with consequential social problems. The allegedly dire effects of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state lotteries were usually summoned as evidence. Indeed, the arguments against ‘state complicity’ in gambling included objections not just to taxation, but to any form of close regulatory contact. For this reason, state ownership and management of betting facilities were hardly even considered as serious possibilities by the major inquiries. Second, there was the experience of the 1926–29 Betting Duty (Dixon 1991: ch. 8). This attempt to tax betting was such a disaster that the Treasury and the Customs and Excise were reluctant to consider betting taxes for many years thereafter: ‘if a revenue Department is allowed to have a heart, the name of this duty is there inscribed’ (Crombie 1962:121). The Betting Duty had been introduced against the Home Office’s wishes and advice, and its humiliating failure ensured the dominance of the Home Office view in future discussions. The result was that, in the 1950s, betting and bookmaking were regarded as essentially a ‘social’, rather than a fiscal, issue; control, not potential revenue, was the priority. Consideration of reform was the concern of the Home Office, not of the Customs and Excise. When off-course cash betting was eventually legalised in 1960, it was not taxed initially: although a levy for horse-racing was introduced in 1961, the General Betting Duty was not imposed until 1966. In Australia, gambling taxation is attractive because it is not particularly unpopular among taxpayers and voters, and it provides considerable revenue which is under the control of state rather than national government. Lotteries have been a regular source of state income and states have increasingly looked to casinos as a source of revenue (McMillen 1986). Revenue potential was significant in the reconsideration of policy towards off-course betting in the 1960s (McCoy 1981:54; O’Hara 1988:220–6). Likely difficulties in collection of tax from SP bookmakers constituted an important objection to their legalisation (O’Hara 1988:234; Kinsella 1963:44–7, 58). In contrast, totalisators promised to provide a simple and assured source of state revenue. The New Zealand TAB, which began operations in 1951, provided an attractive and successful exemplar. In addition, there was a history of support for totalisators in Australia, from racing interests and from working-class leaders and more liberal politicians (McCoy 1981:36–7). This confidence in the potential product of taxing betting has proved to be well founded: for example, in 1991–92, the TAB contributed AS256.7 million to the revenue of New South Wales (NSW TAB 1992:2).

Illegal betting in britain and australia

85

ANTI-GAMBLING AND THE WORKING CLASS This section considers three significant contrasts between Britain and Australia: the role of religion, and attitudes towards bookmakers and towards punters. A distinctive characteristic of British anti-gambling campaigns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the fact that they crossed class boundaries. In particular, the support provided by labour leaders was crucial to the anti-gambling movement; it legitimated legislative action against working-class gambling, providing a response to accusations that such legislation was ‘class law’. This is a clear example of the great influence of Nonconformism on the British labour movement. Arguments from the left against anti-gambling lacked influence, while the views of the ordinary punter rarely reached any public audience. More generally, the driving force of the anti-gambling movement was ‘new liberal’ paternalism, rather than class antagonism (Dixon 1991: ch. 2). As a result of these factors, the gambling issue in Britain has been relatively depoliticised. Policy has been developed on largely utilitarian, reformist lines. In considerable contrast, Australian gambling has frequently been a political issue (Fox 1988; McCoy 1980:147, 149; O’Hara 1985:277–8). The strong influence of Catholicism on the Australian Anglo-Celtic working class and its labour leadership contributed to a traditional tolerance of and sympathy towards gambling, although not necessarily towards its commercial exploitation (Charlton 1987:278; Inglis 1985; McCoy 1980:113–15; 1981:34–5, 38–9; O’Hara 1985:219–29; 1988:254). Anti-gambling sentiment has been rejected as class hypocrisy (O’Hara 1981:77–80). Consequently, the Australian debate about gambling has tended to divide on common class and religious lines, with anti-gambling essentially the preserve of middle-class Protestants. Realising the unpopularity of anti-gambling, modern moralists usually concentrate on other targets. Even moralistic zealots such as Fred Nile in New South Wales have not mounted significant opposition to the expansion of legal betting facilities. In contrast, they have campaigned against casino legalisation because of the potentially broader support for such opposition. Second, there is the image of the bookmaker. In Britain, a powerful weapon of the anti-gambling movement was the portrayal of the off-course cash bookmaker as an alien, exploitative parasite on the working-class community (Dixon 1991:34–7). The inaccuracy of this meant that legislation designed to suppress bookmakers was inappropriate and inadequate. There are lingering elements in the image of bookmaking as being somehow tainted by abuse, impropriety and immorality; this is a portrayal which the Rothschild Commission rejected (1978:29) and which bookmakers find particularly irksome (Ladbroke Group 1976). By contrast, a strong traditional image of Australian SP bookmakers is much more positive. They have been widely seen as part of the working-class community, benign purveyors of innocent working-class leisure, always willing to help people in financial trouble (McCoy 1981:35; see also Charlton 1987:209–10). McCoy (1980) has insisted that this romantic image is not only outdated (if it ever was accurate), but also that what Costigan calls a pervasive and entrenched ‘myth of innocence’ (1984:87) has had damaging effects on public policy. The growth in scale of SP bookmaking and its integration with other illegal activities (see above) has been ignored. The target of law

Gambling cultures

86

enforcement has been the individual bookmaker, when in reality SP operations are run at the level of state and interstate organisation (McCoy 1980; 1981). Third, in discussions of British betting (and gambling generally), the punter is a shadowy figure. The anti-gambler’s image of the punter as a dupe on an inevitable road to disaster no longer carries weight. But nothing has replaced it. Little attention has been paid to who gamblers are, how they see the business or why they gamble. This amounts to a significant inadequacy in the policy formulation process. The Rothschild Commission’s concern for punters’ interests was welcome, but seems to have had little impact. In contrast, gambling is an important part of a stereotypical (non-Aboriginal) Australian self-image. Australian literature is replete with references to the Australians as ‘natural gamblers’ (Charlton 1987; Costigan 1984:1). This is seen as being associated with or produced by other national characteristics: Australians are regarded as being ‘naturally’ anti-authoritarian, fatalistic, and ‘always willing to “have a go’” (Costigan 1984:1; cf. Inglis 1985; Caldwell et al. 1985). These complacent clichés have had historical force: the perception of Australians as natural gamblers has inevitably promoted disbelief in the possible effectiveness of anti-gambling legislation (O’Hara 1981:83).

LOCAL AND NATIONAL STATES In the late nineteenth century, the British authorities experienced difficulties with gamblers who exploited regional differences in legal provisions. It was frequently claimed that bookmakers and punters avoided by-laws prohibiting street betting by simply shifting their meeting place over the local boundary. This was one of the reasons why national legislation was passed in 1906. More serious problems emerged when gambling promoters worked from beyond national boundaries, running lotteries and betting operations via the post. However, these problems seem insignificant compared with those experienced in Australia’s federal system in which gambling law is the concern of the states: The history of gambling regulation in Australia has produced a chaotic federal system whereby gambling is in the hands of a network of fragmented and divided bureaucratic structures at the level of the separate states. In turn, each state government gambling agency operates within the boundaries of a narrowly defined area of responsibility, with authority over only limited segments of the total gambling scene. (McMillen 1985:7) In the case of SP, each state at various times launched police crackdowns, held its own inquiries and introduced its own legislation (see O’Hara 1988: Appendices A and B for full details). An activity with interstate and national dimensions is approached as if independent state efforts are sufficient. Far from there being a national strategy for control, there is not even systematic gathering and sharing of criminal intelligence about SP. The result has been incoherence and inconsistency which often simply drove

Illegal betting in britain and australia

87

bookmakers over the state border, usually from Queensland or Victoria into New South Wales (Costigan 1984:13–14, 89; Fitzgerald 1989:195; Hall 1986:165). This further encouraged the use of telephones for SP betting. While the telephone system is a federal responsibility, in recent decades (in contrast to the interwar years) the appropriate authorities have displayed little interest in policing its use (Costigan 1984:58; O’Hara 1985:324). None of this is likely to increase the Australian SP punter’s regard for the law. The problem is not merely a lack of national legislation; Australia has never even had a national inquiry into gambling. The numerous Royal Commissions have been judicial bodies with specific references and objectives. In particular, inquiries into casino development are usually established only after a decision to permit casinos has been made; legitimation of executive decisions is high on their informal agenda (McMillen 1986). This lack of general debate is reflected in the reluctance of state officials to sponsor or participate in research activities (cf. Caldwell et al. 1985:2). McMillen has argued forcefully that gambling policy formulation in Australia must be opened up and made democratically accountable, and that a national inquiry is a necessary part of that process. However, the trend is in the other direction. Commission reports are ignored unless they come to economically convenient conclusions (cf. Lloyd-Jones 1985 and Lusher 1977). Major decisions—for example, on casino development—have usually been taken without substantial public consultation or debate (McMillen 1986:66). Here at least there are similarities with Britain, where legitimation seems increasingly to be the function of consultation exercises. Searching public inquiries (and Royal Commissions in particular) were abandoned during the 1980s because of their alleged inefficiency and time-wasting.4 The Rothschild Commission’s recommendations that there was an ‘essential and urgent’ need for state-sponsored research into gambling and that developments in the betting business should be carefully scrutinised have been rejected or ignored (Rothschild 1978:20, 48).

CONCLUSION In Australia, the TABs are aggressively expanding their operations, upgrading facilities, providing new outlets in pubs and clubs, taking bets on sports other than racing (notably, Rugby League) and on special events (such as boxing championships and the Americas Cup), and introducing new services and technology (teletext, Sky Channel broadcasts, computerised betting options). The Victorian TAB is leading the way into diversification, with its role as a licensed poker-machine operator and its gaming-machine venue, ‘Tabaret’). The New South Wales TAB has moved into the international market by providing a betting system for Hungary. The TABs have responded to the drift in revenues from racing to gaming (McMillen 1991) by becoming increasingly entrepreneurial, using technological skills and marketing techniques to expand the betting market by targeting and attracting people who would not otherwise have laid bets. The New South Wales TAB can claim to be ‘the largest off-course betting organisation in the world’ (NSW TAB 1990:2), with a turnover of A$3,200 million in 1990–91 and (affected by the recession) A$3,190 million in 1991–92 (NSW TAB 1992:2). The illegal market continues, although to what extent and how it has been affected by the TAB is largely a matter of speculation because no reliable research on its operations

Gambling cultures

88

is available. If SP’s market share is no more than 10 per cent (a proportion which is often suggested, although admittedly based on rudimentary estimates), illegal bookmaking is big business. It is beyond dispute that the TABs have taken some of SP’s actual or potential market, although it is claimed that ‘despite the increase in legal racing turnover, SP bookmaking also continues to grow’ (CJC 1990:3). This apparent paradox is merely superficial; the crucial contemporary development is the bifurcation of the betting market, with SP and the TABs concentrating respectively on large- and small-scale punters. These are different kinds of business, with the result that SP and the TABs complement each other, rather than compete. It is sometimes suggested in New South Wales that the legalisation in 1983 of TAB agencies in licensed premises finished off small-scale SP betting. SP bookmakers increasingly directed small punters to the TAB and concentrated on taking only larger bets, which they are able to attract by offering preferable odds and, crucially, credit facilities. This is broadly the view of the TAB. However, Gaming Squad officers paint a very different picture: they suggest that, far from eliminating small-scale SP, ‘Pub Tab’ indirectly encouraged it. The Sky Channel broadcasting provided for TAB patrons boosted interest in horse-racing, and led to an increase in SP. Certainly, books confiscated during Gaming Squad raids show that by no means all small bets have disappeared into the TAB. In addition, the line between legal and illegal markets is not as clear as it may appear: although not deliberately, the TAB provides an opportunity for laying off SP bets.5 Similarly, there are links between SP and legal racecourse bookmaking (CJC 1990:2). In part, these competing views illustrate differing organisational interests. In particular, it is clearly in the interests of the Gaming Squad (whose staff was substantially reduced in 1991) to maintain that SP remains a significant problem. It seems to be beyond dispute that bifurcation of the betting market is in progress. This has major implications for the strategy of control by competition: SP is not threatened by TABs which are creating new markets of small-scale recreational punters. SP is able to consolidate its effective monopoly of large-scale, off-course betting. This can be tackled only by providing comparable (not alternative) legal services. A similar process of commercialisation has affected British bookmaking. Legal restrictions have been eased, allowing bookmakers to provide better facilities and services, notably in the communication of betting information. The result has been to accelerate trends towards oligopolisation of the British betting market by the ‘Big Three’, Ladbrokes, Coral and William Hill/Mecca. The previously entrenched policy of allowing only the provision of services to cater for ‘unstimulated demand’ is quietly being abandoned, as the bookmakers apply standard market techniques in attempts to expand their business, and particularly to attract a new generation (and class) of punters. A parallel development has been the growth of an illegal betting market. While legal bookmakers claim that the rate of betting duty is solely responsible, ironically, it appears also to be the case that commercial concentration in bookmaking (particularly the withdrawal of services from some areas) has itself encouraged illegal operations (Dixon 1991:349–55). Independent legal bookmakers suffered a substantial reduction in turnover in the early 1990s. This is likely to lead to further closure of premises and more illegal bookmaking. This chapter has discussed a selection of issues related to the control of illegal betting in Australia and Britain. A theme which emerges particularly strongly is one which is

Illegal betting in britain and australia

89

familiar in gambling studies: the difficulties which are experienced by state authorities in controlling commercialised gambling, whether legal or illegal. The primary control strategy of the modern state is not prohibition, but regulation. It has to deal not just with Blackstone’s ‘sharpers’ by enforcement of the criminal law, but also with legitimate commercial operators, some of which are themselves state agencies. Comparative analysis suggests that states face similar and serious problems in these areas. The legal market in Britain and both the legal and the illegal markets in Australia display similar tendencies of technological development, market concentration and rationalisation and resistance to regulation. Finally, the case of illegal betting exemplifies the need to understand crime and control not as distinct but rather as interactive and interdependent phenomena. Such illegal activities are shaped by the state’s attempts to suppress or control them. In turn, strategies of control have been moulded in response to the resistance and adaptability of the illegal activities.

POSTSCRIPT Since this paper was completed, the links between illegal gambling and corruption have continued to attract attention in Australia. The Independent Commission Against Corruption investigated the New South Wales Police Gaming Squad (focusing on the policing of illegal card games and amusement devices, rather than on SP bookmaking) in the course of its inquiry into New South Wales police corruption. As a result, the Squad was disbanded in December 1993: see Independent Commission Against Corruption (1994) Investigation into the Relationship between Police and Criminals: First Report, Sydney, NSW: part IV. In May 1994, a Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service was established, with wide-ranging terms of reference, including investigation of the ‘nature and extent of corruption within the Police Service, particularly of any entrenched or systemic kind’. A report is expected late in 1996. In Queensland, the Criminal Justice Commission published its report, SP Bookmaking and Related Criminal Activities in Queensland, in November 1992. Inter alia, this report argues that: SP bookmaking cannot be suppressed by law enforcement and can only be reduced by attracting its market share to legal operators; restrictions on legal operations must be eased in order to make them more attractive and competitive; there are few useful criminal intelligence data on SP bookmaking in Australia; and a coordinated national strategy to deal with SP is essential.

NOTES 1 SP bookmaking refers to the starting price odds of racehorses set by on-course bookmakers. In Australia, the meaning of SP has been extended by usage to signify the activity of off-course illegal bookmaking in general. 2 The historical account given here has obviously to be brief and highly selective, glossing over significant factors such as the restricted experiments with legal off-course bookmaking in Australia (for details, see Fox 1988; O’Hara 1988:189–91), other differences between developments in Australian jurisdictions, and the role of off-course credit bookmaking in Britain. For detailed historical accounts, see Dixon 1991; O’Hara 1985, 1988.

Gambling cultures

90

3 See, for example, Bongiorno 1985; Bottom 1979; Costigan 1984: ch. 2; Fitzgerald 1989:13, 73; Hickie 1985:327–71; McCoy 1980:176–82; 1981:52, 59–64; Meagher 1983:31–5; Moffitt 1985; Whitton 1986. For more sober and convincing accounts, see Hall 1986:162– 70; O’Hara 1988:204, 238–40. 4 However, a House of Commons Select Committee has recently examined the Home Office’s responsibilities for the control of gambling. In 1991, a Royal Commission (to investigate the criminal justice system) was established for the first time in thirteen years. 5 I am grateful to Mr Allen Windross, General Manager of the NSW TAB, and to members of the NSW Police Service for their comments on contemporary SP. They are, of course, in no way responsible for my comments in this chapter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Blackstone, W. (1769) Commentaries on the Laws of England: Book 4, Of Public Wrongs, Oxford: Clarendon. Block, A. and Chambliss, W.J. (1981) Organizing Crime, New York: Elsevier. Bongiorno, B.D. (1985) ‘Gambling and crime’, in G.Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm, 208–16. Bottom, B. (1979) The Godfather in Australia, Sydney: Reed. Brown, D. (1984–85) ‘Organised crime: changing practices, markets and relations’, Australian Left Review 90:10–12. Caldwell, G. (1974) ‘The gambling Australian’, in D.E.Edgar (ed.) Social Change in Australia, Melbourne: Cheshire, 13–28. ——(1985) ‘Some historical and sociological characteristics of Australian gambling’, in G.Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm, 18–27. Caldwell, G., Haig, B., Dickerson, M. and Sylvan, L. (eds) (1985) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm. Cashman, R. and McKernan, M. (eds) (1981) Sport: Money, Morality and the Media, Sydney: New South Wales University Press. Charlton, P. (1987) Two Flies Up a Wall: The Australian Passion for Gambling, North Ryde, NSW: Methuen Haynes. Chinn, C. (1991) Better Betting with a Decent Feller: Bookmakers, Betting and the British Working Class 1750–1990, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. CJC (1990) ‘SP bookmaking and other aspects of criminal activity in the racing industry: an issues paper’, Criminal Justice Commission, Queensland. Clapson, M. (1992) A Bit of a Flutter: Popular Gambling and English Society, c.1823–1961, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Clark, A., Wilkinson, M., Snow, D. and Suich, M. (1978) ‘The politics of organised crime’, National Times (16 Sept.): 18–20. Costigan, F. (1984) Final Report of the Royal Commission on the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, vol. 4, SP Bookmaking, Canberra: Government Printer. Crombie, J. (1962) Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, London: Allen & Unwin. Davies, A. (1992) Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working-Class Culture in Salford and Manchester, 1900–1939, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Dixon, D. (1988) ‘Responses to illegal betting in Britain and Australia’, in W.R. Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research, Reno: University of Nevada. ——(1991) From Prohibition to Regulation: Anti-Gambling, Bookmaking, and the Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Doig, A. (1984) Corruption and Misconduct in Contemporary British Politics, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Illegal betting in britain and australia

91

Eadington, W.R. (ed.) (1988) Gambling Research, Reno: University of Nevada. Fitzgerald, G.E. (1989) Report of a Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct, Brisbane. Fox, C. (1988) ‘In search of a fair bet’, in V.Burgman and J.Lee (eds) Constructing a Culture, Fitzroy, Victoria: McPhee Gribble/Penguin. Haig, B. (1985) ‘Illegal betting 1920/21 to 1970/71’, Sporting Traditions 2:69–74. Hall, R. (1986) Disorganised Crime, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Hickie, D. (1985) The Prince and the Premier, North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson. Hogg, R. (1984) ‘Gossip from underground’, Australian Society (Dec.): 6–8. Inglis, K. (1985) ‘Gambling and culture in Australia’, in G.Caldwell et al. (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm, 5–17. Kinsella, E.P. (1963) Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Off-the-Course Betting in New South Wales, Sydney: Government Printer. Ladbroke Group (1976) Evidence to the Rothschild Commission, Unpublished document, London: Public Record Office. Lloyd-Jones, J. (1985) Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Gaming in New South Wales, Sydney: Government Printer. Lusher, E.A. (1977) Report of Inquiry into Legalising of Gambling Casinos in New South Wales, Sydney: Government Printer. McCoy, A.W. (1980) Drug Traffic: Narcotics and Organised Crime in Australia, Sydney: Harper & Row. ——(1981) ‘Sport as modern mythology: SP bookmaking in New South Wales 1920–1979’, in R.Cashman and M.McKernan (eds) Sport: Money, Morality and the Media, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 34–67. McMillen, J. (1985) ‘Gambling policies: a sure bet or a stab in the dark?’, in J.McMillen (ed.) Gambling in the 80s, Nathan, Brisbane, Queensland: National Association for Gambling Studies. ——(1986) ‘The other revolution: the legalisation of commercial gambling in Australia’, Nevada Public Affairs Review 65–9. ——(1991) ‘Australian casinos: who gets the golden egg?’ Paper presented in the Non-profit Corporations Seminar Series, Queensland University of Technology (29 Nov.). Meagher, D. (1983) Organised Crime, Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service. Moffitt, A. (1985) A Quarter to Midnight, North Ryde: Angus Robertson. NSW TAB (1990) Annual Report 1989–90. ——(1992) Annual Report 1991–2. O’Hara, J. (1981) ‘The Australian gambling tradition’, in R.Cashman and M.McKernan (eds) Sport: Money, Morality and the Media, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 68–85 ——(1985) ‘Gaming and betting in Australia 1788–1983: a social and cultural analysis’, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of New England. ——(1987) ‘Class and attitudes to gambling in Australia’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) (1988) Gambling Research, Reno: University of Nevada. ——(1988) A Mug’s Game: A History of Gaming and Betting 1788–1985, Sydney: New South Wales University Press. O’Malley, P. (1985) ‘The illegal sector of capital’, Contemporary Crises 9:81–92. Proctor, C. (1985) ‘The police’, in A.Patience (ed.) The Bjelke-Petersen Premiership, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Rothschild, L. (1978) Final Report of the Royal Commission on Gambling 1976–78, Cmnd 7200: London: HMSO. Rowlatt, S. (1933) Final Report of the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting 1932–3, Cmd 4341, London: HMSO. Sparrow, M.K., Moore, M.H. and Kennedy, D.M. (1990) Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing, New York: Basic Books.

Gambling cultures

92

Whitton, E. (1986) ‘Crime and justice’, Sydney Morning Herald (8 April): 13–16. Willink, H. (1951) Report of the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries & Gaming 1949–1951, Cmd 8190, London: HMSO.

5 WHEN IT’S BAD IT’S BETTER Conflicting images of gambling in American culture James F.Smith

As members of a democratic society, Americans are socialised by means of various myths and rituals characteristic of our popular culture. Among the rituals that reflect, articulate and transmit cultural myths are those of play and games. Materialism and competition are two distinguishing traits of the American character that are reflected in the games we play—from the Superbowl, the national spectacle of championship professional football which is played as much for the profit of television networks and their sponsors as for sport, to Wheel of Fortune, a popular television game show in which players solve word puzzles for expensive prizes and which has been described as American materialism run amok. Present-day America encourages in its citizens unlimited expectations for material wealth and gratification through images in advertising and entertainment media while the constraints of real life put limits on opportunities to fulfil our dreams. The playing of gambling games can provide a form of recreation that is both a product of and a contributor to prevailing cultural myths. In his excellent study of the history of gambling in America, John Findlay (1986) has called Americans ‘people of chance’, because of both traditional risk-taking associated with the history of US frontier expansion and the pervasiveness of gambling recreation throughout our history. It should not be surprising that commercial gambling among adults has become such a significant social and economic issue in our time. In many respects, gambling is a dramatic example of pure conspicuous consumption: money is exchanged for the thrill of the experience— not for an increase in wealth—because most players lose over the long term. Nevertheless, the thrill of the game, coupled with the hope for a win, has proved to be a powerful attraction. But the nature of gambling in America has changed over time, particularly during the second half of the twentieth century, and the change is consistent with changes in the mass cultural values. This chapter argues that neither change is beneficial to American culture, although both may have some economic benefit. During 1991 Americans gambled more than US$304 billion in legal games (Christiansen 1992a:22), wagering about 6.3 per cent of their personal income. In fact, between 1982 and 1991, legal gambling wagers increased by more than 142 per cent while personal income increased by approximately 81 per cent (Christiansen 1992a:37). Over the past several years, the fictional ‘US Gambling, Inc.’ (the combined ‘win’ of legal gambling enterprises) has ranked in the top twenty of the Forbes Sales 500, a listing of the most successful US business enterprises; the 1991 total of US$26.7 billion in gambling revenue (‘sales’) places ‘US Gambling’ in nineteenth place, just ahead of American Express (Christiansen 1992b:18–19). A ‘real world’ comparison of popular leisure activities brings the numbers into focus: Americans spent five times more money

Gambling cultures

94

on gambling games than they did on movie tickets during 1991 (US$26.7 billion versus US$4.8 billion). The economic impact and resulting power of legal gambling interests are clearly implied by the magnitude and rate of growth of their wealth. What may not be so obvious is the fact that the culture of gambling has changed. With the increasing popularity of state-sanctioned lotteries and their mega-jackpot appeal, and the increasing reliance on the technology of coin-operated gaming devices by the sanitised, corporate-controlled casino industry (and today by state lotteries as well), the mythic archetype of a rugged individualist gambler—whether card sharp, pool hustler or horse-player—involved in a specific ritual of play is an endangered species, likely to become a thing of the past. Such players, whether found in real life or in legend, have assumed a larger-than-life stature. They have mastered or defied the odds against them; they have challenged their opponents and the vagaries of chance. In so doing, they have mirrored the risk-taking characteristic of an evolving nation, culture and economy even though they may have been acting outside the traditional boundaries of socially admired behaviour. Historically, the United States has had an ambivalent attitude towards gambling. On the one hand, gambling has been regarded as a sin, a vice, a crime and an unproductive waste of time. This attitude dates back to the time of earliest settlement, and persists among some Americans even to this day. However, since the legalisation of the first modern state lottery in New Hampshire in the early 1960s and at an accelerating pace in the past two decades, gambling has undergone a marked change in image. In fact, today gambling can be seen as harmless, recreational, charitable and even patriotic— particularly when it is in the context of playing state lotteries. This change in image has profound implications for American culture. Not only does it reflect changes in cultural values that have already occurred, but it also works to change cultural values further. In many ways, gambling was ‘better’ when it was seen as ‘bad’. Because it was a pariah enterprise of shady glamour, it had an attraction to the marketplace and, more importantly, a separation from the normal events of everyday life that kept the activity in its place which, for most people, was the differentiated world of play. As it has become more integrated into everyday events, gambling has actually become less ‘fun’ and, perhaps, even more insidious than any of the traditional negative images could portray. For Americans in earlier times gambling was a rebellious decision, replete with images of vice (gambling was seedy, if not immoral) and risk (gambling was a threat to one’s bankroll if not to one’s person). In spite of the often noted gamble that the European explorers and colonists experienced when they settled the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were amazed and appalled at the extent of gambling among native Americans, the passion with which the various games were played and the magnitude of the wagers.1 Although British colonists from Virginia to Massachusetts were no strangers to gambling games themselves, their laws and their sermons proscribed card- and dice-playing as immoral wastes of time. Nevertheless, gentlemen were allowed to race their horses and wager on the outcome, and sanctioned lottery games were available, usually to benefit a community need. By the eighteenth century, gambling in America was essentially a private affair and usually associated with the aristocracy, for as John Findlay observes, in contrast to the ‘gambling shops’ in England, ‘Americans had no such public and commercial setting in which to gamble.

When it's bad it's better

95

More dispersed throughout the land and with little cash at hand, colonists did not develop an urban hierarchy of public houses in which gambling could flourish’ (Findlay 1986:29). Betting on games did occur in taverns, but wagers were made between individual patrons rather than against the house. Consistent with Enlightenment thought, private gamblers were expected to play at risk moderately and within their means. By the nineteenth century, however, ‘commercial’ gambling became more significant, and possibilities for immoderate losses became more available. New Orleans and other river towns offered gambling houses; private operators created ‘state’ lotteries; professional gamblers worked the steamboats, and frontier cattle and mining towns provided gambling saloons. Foreign visitors to America, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, contended that ‘the dynamics of capitalism and democracy in the new republic generated a restlessness and an infatuation with risk that heightened the urge to wager’ (Findlay 1986:50). At the same time, though, people who made their livelihood from gambling were regarded as ‘blacklegs’—if not outright criminals, at least not properly part of polite society. Cheating at games was rampant, and several of the most profitable lottery games were found to be corrupt. Card sharps and dishonest operators came to characterise the class of ‘professional’ gamblers, and those unfortunates who played with them were at best foolish sheep waiting to be fleeced. But while it was comparatively easy to pass and enforce legislation against lottery games, it was more difficult—in fact, impossible—to eliminate professional gamblers and the Americanised forms of commercial gaming from society.2 The twentieth century has seen both a continuation of the earlier attitudes, in the first half-century, and, in recent decades, a capitulation to the inevitability of gambling behaviour so long as it is regulated and taxed.3 The resulting status of gambling in contemporary America is ambiguous, with the state simultaneously prohibiting those forms in which it has no regulatory or financial interest and promoting those which it controls and taxes. Operators are regarded as either legitimate corporations and entrepreneurs or criminals; so they are either praised for their financial success or condemned by law enforcement agencies. Players and their interests are generally ignored unless they run afoul of the law or they become problem gamblers.4 But it is among people who gamble where the ‘rebellion’ of gambling persists. Whether a game is legal or not, a player’s decision to gamble still may be socially or morally suspect even though it is consistent with a cultural propensity for risk, particularly if the chosen game is not a legally sanctioned lottery. In the other more or less indigenous forms of gambling that have evolved in the United States, players test their mettle and become initiated into particular gambling subcultures: card games (poker, gin rummy and the like), casino play (blackjack, roulette, dice), pari mutuel wagering (at the races or jai-alai fronton) or sports betting (in Nevada or most often with an illegal bookie). In each of these subcultures, the players face a definite antagonist— whether another player, the vagaries of pari mutuel or bookmaker’s odds, or the inescapable house advantage. They test their judgement, money management and, finally, their knowledge of odds and their playing skills according to formal rules, bound by the etiquette of the particular subculture surrounding the game. Experience and knowledge pay dividends in this type of gambling because, even though the final outcome is influenced more or less by chance, the skill of players can help determine their destiny. Chance makes the games democratic and opens the possibility of winning to anyone; skill, knowledge and competition make winning a worthy pursuit.

Gambling cultures

96

Therefore, traditional gambling games and their subcultures can provide intrinsic rewards beyond the obvious material gain from a win. One way to understand games and play is to see them as social fictions. As in the case of reading or writing good fiction, playing a game can reveal truth about the human condition. In their world of makebelieve, games do not replace reality, nor do they alter it. However, they do suspend the consequences of real life for the duration of the game. Often the games we play mirror, if only obliquely, our real lives. In the context of play, the suspense, conflict and uncertainty of life become easier to manage because our play is conducted according to specific protocols within certain recognisable surroundings and because it is, after all, a game.5 Further, there is a marked coincidence between the principles that rule various kinds of games—whether they are games of chance or games of skill—and those that characterise the web of human interaction in culture. Among these are: • the need to prove one’s superiority • the desire to challenge or overcome an obstacle • the hope for and pursuit of the favour of destiny • the desire to test one’s strength, skill, endurance, or ingenuity • conformity to rules and laws, the duty to respect them, and the temptation to circumvent them. (Caillois 1979:64–5) In the context of a competitive and materialistic culture that has become increasingly regimented, standardised, predictable and bound by finite economic limits, allowing comparatively little room for individual creativity and personal achievement, games provide an important outlet for these human tendencies, offering at least the illusion of control over destiny and circumstance. David Sklansky, the son of a mathematics professor from Teaneck, New Jersey, studied for two years at the University of Pennsylvania only to drop out and become a professional poker player in Las Vegas. He has written three books on poker theory, but he makes his living at the tables. For a time, he worked in the ‘straight world’ as an actuary, but found that when he developed new methods for solving problems, his superiors were unimpressed: ‘I knew something no one else knew, but I got no recognition for it’ (quoted in Alvarez 1983:134). He continues, however, that the world of the gambler is very different, and, ultimately, more satisfying: In poker, if you’re better than anyone else you make immediate money. If there’s something I know about the game that the other person doesn’t, and if he’s not willing to learn or can’t understand, then I take his money. By rights that guy who ran the actuarial office should have been broke; he shouldn’t have been my boss. But in the business world things aren’t like that. I was always being told what to do by incompetent people, and I hated it…. But [Las Vegas] gives me what I want. I like the freedom of the gambler’s life, I like being my own boss. I like the way you are rewarded directly according to your ability, not according to what people think of you. (Quoted in Alvarez 1983:135)

When it's bad it's better

97

In addition, gambling games provide a clearly defined conclusion through the final outcome of play. Too often the circumstances of our lives do not immediately tell us whether our decisions are right or wrong, whether we have won or lost; by the end of a game, however, we have no doubt. Games are occasions to display important personal character traits: courage, integrity, gallantry and composure. These virtues, too, are part of a mythic American heroic stereotype which is today reinforced by games and athletic contests.6 In a very real sense, participants in a game gamble these traits—their sense of self—when they engage in the contest; and if they make a good showing, they can enhance their egos, whether they win or lose, so long as they act in culturally approved ways. Even today, gaming can produce heroes in a cultural context where knowledge and skill combined with other personal traits can affect the outcome of play. Expert poker players, such as Doyle Brunson, ‘Amarillo Slim’ Preston and Jack Strauss are admirable among their peers whether they win or lose a particular contest. The late blackjack guru, Ken Uston, was not only successful at beating the casino game and paving the way for other card counters to be allowed to play without being barred for their skill (at least in Atlantic City casinos), but he was instrumental in making the game of twenty-one the most popular casino table game in America during the past two decades. Handicappers such as Andrew Baker have shown that in the long run knowledge, perseverance and restraint can overcome the uncertainty of horse-races. Sports handicappers, such as Lem Banker, have the uncanny ability to figure the odds and sniff out an overlay in judging professional and collegiate sporting events. Even the legendary Nick ‘the Greek’ Dandalos, who is reputed to have won and lost millions of dollars during his gambling career, can be numbered among such ‘heroes’ because of his unflinching grace in the face of occasionally staggering monetary losses. Eric Stoner ‘The Cincinnati Kid’, Lancey Howard The Man’, Eddie Felson ‘The Hustler’, and other fictional gamblers contribute their bigger-than-life roles and risks to gambler heroism. The egos of all these players, not just their bankrolls, are put on the line whenever they make a bet, and although there is monetary consideration—and the realisation that their livelihood may be at stake (making gambling their real world of ‘work’ after all)—such players are still playing. It is significant to note that all these ‘heroes’ are unconventional, even ‘rebellious’ personae who live outside the boundaries of the world that most of us call ‘normal’.7 A corollary to the assertion that gamblers can be heroic is the notion that our heroes can—or must—be gamblers. One of the most popular ‘American’ heroes for over fifty years is found in Margaret Mitchell’s enormously successful novel about the Civil War, Gone With the Wind (1936). Rhett Butler is a classic American heroic type: handsome, intelligent, daring, resourceful and independent—in short, the only character ‘man enough’ for Mitchell’s heroine, Scarlett O’Hara. When this story was brought to the cinema in 1939 by producer David Selznick, there was only one actor who could play the part: Clark Gable, then the reigning king of Hollywood. The screenplay was a monumental task for Sidney Howard, who with Selznick himself and several consultants, including Ben Hect and the novelist F.Scott Fitzgerald, worked to pare the story to a reasonable length for filming while preserving the magic that Mitchell’s narrative worked upon her readers. Even so, the film runs for nearly four hours.

Gambling cultures

98

Nevertheless, the production includes a gambling scene which does not appear in Mitchell’s novel. After the South has fallen to the Yankees, Butler is held in a federal prison in Atlanta where Scarlett visits him in order to obtain money to pay taxes on her beloved plantation. Mitchell’s version of this scene has Rhett brought to Scarlett for the interview from his cell. The film version opens with Butler playing poker with a Union army major: ‘Kings and treys’, says the major. ‘Aw, too much for me, Major,’ replies Rhett. ‘You know, it’s a pity we couldn’t have fought the war out on a poker game. You would have done far better than General Grant with far less effort. My losses for the afternoon come to what?… Ummm, three-hundred-forty. My debts do mount up, don’t they, Major.’ This cavalier exchange ends just before Scarlett is allowed to see Rhett, against the rules, with the major’s observation to a subordinate: ‘It’s hard to be strict with a man who loses money so pleasantly.’ This addition to Mitchell’s classic story is meant to reinforce the dashing image of Rhett Butler, and it is significant that this literary and cinematic hero is portrayed in a gambling encounter, appropriately mirroring the colossal gamble the Confederacy took against the Union. After all, American heroes are known for taking chances, and it is fitting that Butler’s character traits are shown at the poker table. As Jack Binion, a Las Vegas casino owner and host of the World Series of Poker, observes: Let’s face it, gambling is a very romantic activity. Movies reflect what people are looking for. Well, I wonder how many gamblers a big star like Clark Gable played in his career. We all daydream about people doing something we are a little bit afraid to do, and we make heroes out of those who pull it off.8 By playing well, a gambler can win both self- and public esteem even while losing money. The opportunity to test one’s honour and the thrill of the game itself can be intrinsic rewards in a gambling encounter. Action in a gambling game is the primary attraction. As Erving Goffman explained, the ritual involves squaring off, in which a challenge is presented and rules are set; determination, the actual play producing an outcome; disclosure, the brief but suspenseful time between the completion of play and the participants’ realisation of the result; and finally the settlement, in which the players acknowledge the result (Goffman 1967:154). Action was paramount to Nick the Greek, whose apocryphal remark is now part of gambling folklore: ‘The best thing in the world is to gamble and win. The next best thing is to gamble and lose.’ The intangible rewards of a successful self-presentation in the ritual, the building of a reputation, become as important as monetary rewards. As one player observes: ‘It’s real important for me to show that I won’t freeze up or anything like that, and that I’ve got what it takes’ (Hayano 1982:88). For the best ‘heads-up’ players—world class poker professionals are a classic example—recognition for skilful play and a reputation for ‘heart’ or ‘the courage to bet all their money when they reckon that the odds are in their favor’ (Alvarez 1983:31) are at least as important as the money they win. Bobby Baldwin, one of the younger players on the high-stakes poker tournament scene, elaborates:

When it's bad it's better

99

Playing poker for a living gives you backbone. You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. I don’t care how bad you are going or how good, you have to stand solid. Poker is a character builder— especially the bad times. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. (Quoted in Alvarez 1983:47) Such traditional gamblers are not motivated by a desire to ‘get something for nothing’. In fact, for professional poker players or expert handicappers, getting something for nothing is scorned. Luck is the last refuge of the novice or poor player, and money is regarded only as the ammunition needed to keep playing. Describing the action of tournament poker, Alvarez claims: ‘The chips were like rapiers in a fencing match—instruments to attack, parry, counterthrust until one or the other duellists delivered the coup de grace’ (1983:174). Further, Doyle Brunson explains that in order to play well at high-stakes poker: ‘you need to have a total disregard for money. It is just an instrument, and the only time you notice it is when you run out’ (quoted in Alvarez 1983:43). That is not to say that these gamblers have no regard for winning. On the contrary; they share aggressive characters and thrive on competition. Jack Strauss notes that ‘Winning is everything…. If I lose, I don’t give a damn about the money, but I just hate the embarrassment of being beaten’ (quoted in Alvarez 1983:107–8). At the annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, the top players gather from every state in the Union, and the Vegas professionals wait to be challenged by them, like knights in armour—or, rather, since this is the West, like the last of the gunslingers, loners in a dangerous profession. For them, the risk, challenge, and solitariness of their profession are a source of intense pride. (Alvarez 1983:113) But like the showdowns of fabled gun-slingers, heroic gambling is threatened by the passage of time and the advance of modernity. In America today gambling has been mainstreamed. There is no rebellion or even well-defined subculture to be found when a person buys a lottery ticket along with a carton of milk and pack of cigarettes at the local convenience store. Indeed, one of the attractions that figure prominently in the promotion and legalisation of lotteries is that playing (not gambling) is now synonymous with good citizenship. It is not surprising then that the relative mix of gambling opportunities available to Americans has changed. Gambling in the United States has been a growth industry during the past twenty-five years, with the most dramatic growth in games which have the lowest possible ‘entry barrier’ to the players and the most predictable profit for the operators. These games are the various lottery games, including the latest video lottery terminals, and the array of coin-operated gaming devices available in casinos and at other locations.9 Because commercial gambling, just as any other business, depends on profits to survive, the direction of modern-day gambling has been to produce a thoroughly predictable profit margin for the operator. This goal is best achieved if the last unpredictable factor—human ingenuity or skill—can be eliminated. Unlike poker and

Gambling cultures

100

blackjack, which are games of mixed chance and skill, lottery games, video lottery terminals and casino coin-operated machines are games of pure chance in which any human intervention other than the superstitious selection of numbers or machines is cheating and subject to prosecution. Games such as craps, roulette and baccarat are also games of pure chance; however, a player’s sophistication—knowledge of odds and money management—may help the player survive the house advantage long enough to benefit from a lucky streak. In contrast, the new gambling games are simply money machines operating according to a pay-out schedule that guarantees the operator a fixed percentage of win. Because lottery and slot-machine players find their primary reinforcement in winning money, almost hitting a jackpot is meaningless, and they can derive no pleasure from a losing bet, no matter how ‘close’ it comes to a win. One cannot play a lottery or a slot machine well; one can only play more by buying more tickets or dropping more coins into the slot and triggering the mechanism. In fact, the play of lottery games and most coin-operated devices defies the objective knowledge of odds and money management that can pay dividends in more ‘old-fashioned’ games. In reality, the more players know, the less they should play.10 Therefore it should not be surprising that no heroes can be found in this new gambling world because there is nothing that a lottery or machine player can do to become a better or ‘professional’ player. No amount of practice, skill or knowledge can improve a player’s luck or overcome the negative expectation of the games. What we find in the place of heroes are celebrities: people who become famous for the moment, usually because of the magnitude of their win. The public life-span of such winners is brief. Usually the publicity diminishes with time, barring some unusual personal circumstance or tragedy occurring after the win, and it may evaporate quickly if their win is surpassed by another player. Like other celebrities, they need not possess remarkable talent, character or other personal distinction. They are known for being well known, and their status depends upon attention from the media. Daniel Boorstin contends that celebrities are neither good nor bad, but an inevitable result of contemporary culture and media exposure, human ‘pseudo-events’ to satisfy our exaggerated expectations of human greatness.11 Were it not for their win, their play would be devoid of lasting meaning. In the long run, they have won only money, not genuine or lasting prestige. Traditional lottery games, including instant tickets and daily numbers games, have been accused of being a regressive tax, preying upon the people most in need of help (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:221–30). While it is true that people having higher incomes and levels of education spend more money on lottery tickets than do poorer and less educated players, the latter spend a greater proportion of their income on tickets (Kaplan 1984:100). Further, the demographics of lottery markets reveal that certain groups are more likely to play lottery games and to do so heavily: males, Hispanics, blacks, the middle-aged, Catholics, labourers, and those with less than a college degree (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:100). However, the popularity of lotto games, where the jackpots can grow to staggering levels, has begun to change the mix of players, bringing more middleclass and well-educated players into the fold. The larger the jackpot, the more likely players will impulsively buy tickets, even if they do not normally do so, or buy additional tickets if they are regular bettors.12 These players can only dream of having a day such as Leslie Robins had on 7 July 1993. After casually buying a ticket for the Powerball lotto game (played in a pool of fourteen states and the District of Columbia) shortly before the

When it's bad it's better

101

drawing, Robins, who is a 30-year-old junior high school English teacher, found that he held the only winning ticket for a jackpot worth US$111 million, or US$3.5 million per year, after taxes, for the next twenty years. The story of this winner and his fiancée, a nurse, is only beginning to unfold, but they claim in an Associated Press interview that they do not plan to live lavishly; instead, they hope to support the school and hospital in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where they work, and to share their good fortune with friends and family (Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 July 1993: A2). Middle-class sentiments persist, and the free publicity surrounding this apparently wholesome, white, middle-class couple stimulates the sales of lotto tickets in every jurisdiction. And yet, it is also clear that Mr Robins did nothing special to deserve his windfall or to influence the odds of his win, nor was he particularly needy or desperate. He is no ‘hero’, as a co-worker observed: ‘He just wants to be an ordinary guy’ (Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 July 1993: A2). In lotto games where no player has a particular advantage, Americans may have found an ultimate democracy. The irony here is that there is little or no real play in the new world of gambling, while play (or action) is the raison d’être for traditional gambling games. It may be argued that busloads of slot-machine players heading to Atlantic City or groups of co-workers discussing the outcome of the lotto drawing against their pool-purchased tickets do, in fact, enjoy the sociability engendered by these gambling opportunities. But the games themselves are not comparable to other, more ‘personal’ games.13 Lotteries and slots are played in the hope of winning a long-odds jackpot; traditional games combining chance, skill and fateful encounters are played to play as well as to win. Accompanying this change is the fact that newer forms of gambling games are fast games, capitalising on intensity of experience and churn of gamblers’ dollars with each new generation of equipment. On-line video lottery games may cycle several times per hour, where lotto games occur once or twice per week. Microchips and computer technology make modern slot machines faster and more foolproof than the old mechanical or electro-mechanical models; blackjack and poker hands appear on computer screens faster than any human could deal them. This speed creates a kind of action, to be sure, but it is a narcotising action, numbing the players into a trance-like fixation. Handicappers and card players thrive on action, too, but their action is deliberate and thoughtful mental exercise as opposed to reflex response. In the new world of gambling, the meaning of play and games has been distorted, and many of the traditional social and psychological functions of true recreation are lost.14 At an individual level, these changes have negative impact. There is nothing a person can do to become a more skilful lottery or slot-machine player. The player can act on superstition by betting lucky numbers, buying from a lucky ticket vendor, or playing favourite machines in a lucky casino. On the other hand, through study, practice and experience, a person can improve skill at cards, handicapping and sports betting, and improved skill can bring success or, at the very least, active participation in determining one’s fate. However, if one is to play a game seriously, one must work at learning theory and practise the mechanics of applying the theory in order to succeed. For many modern players, this is too much like ‘real’ work. The twentieth-century cultural switch from a work ethic of production to the gratification ethic of consumption is illustrated neatly in the shift from our studying a racing form or counting cards in the game of twenty-one to letting a computerised ‘dream machine’ pick out lotto numbers. It is important to note

Gambling cultures

102

that automatic selection tends to increase ‘spontaneous’ play at those lotto games where it is available (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:176) and that a large number of lottery megawinners, including Leslie Robins, admit that the on-line computer chose their winning numbers at random. It is no accident, then, that lottery games have been until recently the most aggressive growth market in the gaming industry—a position lotteries expect to regain with the proliferation of video lottery terminals.15 Nor is it a coincidence that they have assumed a prominent position both in the finances of state governments, the most reliable source of ‘painless taxation’ given the typical 45–50 per-cent take-out rate, and in US popular culture, since they are legal in thirty-six states. The most successful casinos in Atlantic City and in Nevada earn at least half their revenue from coin-operated devices, the most dramatic of which accept US$100 tokens, three at a time.16 Effortless amusement appears to be a more marketable commodity in America today than is active involvement, and market analysts, not gaming experts, are the fast-track executives in the gambling industry. This fact is most evident in the promotion of state lotteries. In a fashion unprecedented for a government agency, lottery managers have adopted the techniques of consumer marketing to sell their games.17 Many observers of modern America note that we live in an age of diminishing real opportunities to match the dreams fuelled by advertising and such media-extravaganzas as Robin Leach’s television exposés of the lifestyles and runaways of the rich and famous. The work ethic has been critically eroded by promises of instant gratification and instant wealth. Cultural commentators such as Philip Slater (1970) and Christopher Lasch (1979) have noted the negative impact of recent history on American culture, making people lonely and narcissistic even as they become materially better off.18 In his exploration of success and middle-class culture, Loren Baritz (1990:289–318) claims that contemporary Americans have replaced traditions with a desire to escape restrictions, moral values with an imperative to satisfy psychological needs, and financial security with unrelenting demands for ‘more’ in a world where happiness is an acceptable substitute for genuine accomplishment. In this world, sin is regarded as a disease which therapists and other experts can try to cure. With Veblen’s ‘conspicuous consumption’ no longer only a ‘leisure-class’ trait, people in the United States seemingly live for the moment in an unpredictable world, and they are willing to consume wealth for the pleasure it can afford.19 It is no historical accident that the most explosive growth in gambling industries, both state lotteries and legal casinos, has occurred during the past twenty years. This time has seen both the collective realisation of the limits of our fiscal and natural resources, in fuel crises and tax revolts, and an acceptance of the ‘unreal’ wealth found in junk bonds and other extravagant market speculation. We have also demonstrated a growing tolerance for—and even the greedy expectation of—the unabashed public display of wealth. Gambling fits easily within these trends, being pure capitalism as an enterprise and conspicuous consumption as a game. This congruence is unfortunate, since many critics, including Lasch and Baritz, judge the trends to be signs of a civilisation in decline. Historically, values promoted by material consumption without thought of tomorrow were almost ‘un-American’, at least in the proper world of the middle class, though these values were always associated with gamblers and the world of play. Now ordinary citizens bet their future with unprecedented levels of personal and corporate debt in order

When it's bad it's better

103

to live the good life. In the past Americans held as an article of faith that ‘personal progress was an inspired and irrevocable law. Progress toward wealth might be slowed but could never be stopped’ (Baritz 1990:106). A recent Gallup poll reveals that one-fifth of the American population believe that the only way to get ahead is by playing the lottery (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:133). Gamblers have always bet on a quicker tomorrow and have tested their fate in rituals that were less ambiguous than their everyday lives. In the past, these gambling rituals were set apart from the ordinary; today, they are not only part of the everyday experience, but they are also sold as skilfully as consumer goods. Americans are consumers, particularly in their leisure, and their consumption feeds the social and industrial complex. Having great expectations but low motivation, many contemporary consumers look for new diversions and the proverbial quick fix. The new culture of gambling is only too glad to oblige, but the real value of games is lost in the process.

NOTES 1 Henry Chafetz (1960:3–12) offers several observers’ accounts of gambling among American Indians. Games which ranged from athletic contests, such as ‘football’, to primitive crap games in which participants tossed painted sticks, stones or multi-faced animal bones could last literally for days. Contestants and onlookers wagered passionately, even to the extent of offering wives, children and themselves (as slaves) when their other stakes were exhausted. Noteworthy was the fact that in spite of the seriousness of the gambling, participants, however reckless, remained in good humour, taking wins and losses with equanimity. 2 Findlay (1986:40–78) notes that the culture of the nineteenth-century United States supported a speculative, risk-taking ethos. The tendency to see gambling as a business made it fit somewhat easily with the secular side of our culture, despite any moral qualms to the contrary. While individual gamblers suffered at the hands of outraged citizens and some forms of gambling, such as lotteries, could be effectively prohibited, gambling adapted to American circumstances and flourished. 3 Prior to the 1930s, only pari-mutuel wagering on racing was allowed in limited jurisdictions, and until the 1960s and the rebirth of the lottery in New Hampshire, Nevada casinos and California card rooms were the only other legal betting alternatives. Nevertheless, casinostyle gambling, ‘numbers’ policy games and sports betting were widely available— particularly in urban areas—courtesy of illegal operators. When the legalisation of some of these activities, beginning with lotteries and spreading to casino gaming, was proposed by various jurisdictions, inevitably one justification was to compete with and thereby thwart illegal suppliers. 4 See Abt et al. (1985:211–22) for analysis of the relationship of political jurisdictions to gambling and gamblers, noting the status quo and offering an alternative scenario in which the state’s interest is to protect the public interest regarding gambling. 5 For a discussion of the specific rituals and settings of two popular forms of ‘social gambling’ in America, racetrack and casino gambling, see Abt and Smith (1983). The particular gambling cultures discussed place the recreational gambler in the mainstream of cultural values even though the gambler may appear to circumvent the work ethic. 6 From the swashbucklers and cavaliers of the seventeenth century, through the frontiersmen and cowboys of the eighteenth and nineteenth, to the athletes, soldiers, spies, cops and private-eyes of the twentieth, heroic figures have emerged in US life and literature. As Joseph Campbell (1956) suggests, heroes venture from the world of common dullness to the region of fleeting wonder, armed essentially with courage, an innate sense of justice and what is right, and the technical skill and composure to do what must be done in spite of all

Gambling cultures

104

obstacles. As all heroes, the popular heroes in the United States are human icons representing basic cultural myths, self-reliance and noteworthy accomplishment. In recent times, however, heroic personae are often the target of the tabloid press or debunking biographers who strive to reveal their flaws (or simply their human foibles). As a result, Americans turn more and more to fiction and fantasy for heroic types whose character is unimpeachable. 7 Elsewhere (Smith 1990) I have discussed the portrayal of these ‘outlaw’ characters. In the ‘serious’ films, gamblers generally fall into two types: the romantic gambler, who fits most easily with the heroic image discussed here, and the pathetic/tragic gambler, who reveals the underside of the gambling world and reinforces negative connotations. In either case, the demands of cinematic portrayal create ‘supercharged’ gambling situations where enormous—or at least critical—amounts of money are wagered or where a ‘title’ or distinction is at stake. Films such as Robert Rosen’s The Hustler (1961), Norman Jewison’s The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Robert Altman’s California Split (1974), Karel Reisz’s The Gambler (1974), Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986), and Ben Bolt’s The Big Town (1987) present distinctly American interpretations of gambling settings and action. It also seems no accident that the treatment of gambling themes in film has become more frequent in recent years as gambling has been mainstreamed in American popular culture. 8 Quoted in Alvarez (1983:117). For the record, it should be noted that Butler’s crime was supplying weapons to the South by running a Union blockade at sea. This, surely, was a more significant gamble than five-card draw, but in many ways it was more economical to reveal Rhett’s character traits over a card table! 9 Lottery sales more than quadrupled between 1982 and 1991, and accounted for more than US$20 billion in handle in 1991. Slot-machine handle increased by 486 per cent during the same period to a total of nearly US$85 billion in 1991. The money wagered at casino table games, in contrast, increased at the more modest rate of 72 per cent during these years (Christiansen 1992a:25). 10 This assertion has been shown not to hold true. Lottery players not only defy objective knowledge of the odds, but winners who are lucky enough to overcome the odds persist in their play despite newfound wealth and sometimes negative experiences after winning (Kaplan 1984:105). In the world of coin-operated gaming devices, one can argue that video blackjack and video poker machines allow for player choice and strategy; consequently, player knowledge and money management can influence the outcome of the game. Nevertheless, the machines’ payback/hold ratios are manipulated to comply with regulations (in New Jersey) or to live up to advertising claims of ‘looseness’, in terms of optimum player strategy. Thus the ‘best’ a knowledgeable player can do is play against the nominal fixed percentage of the machine; weaker players are disadvantaged even more. 11 Boorstin goes on to elaborate on the distinction between celebrities and heroes: heroes are distinguished by their achievement; celebrities by their image. Heroes create themselves through their actions; celebrities are created by the media. Heroes are ‘larger than life’ people; celebrities have big names (1972:57–61). Heroes symbolise and even defend the basic values of a civilisation; celebrities represent immediate cultural interests which are far more transitory. 12 Clotfelter and Cook (1989: chs 5 and 6) note that while instant game tickets may be impulsive purchases, on-line games, such as lotto, may have a higher proportion of planned purchases. Moreover, the larger the jackpot of the game, the more sales result. Therefore, jurisdictions have manipulated the game structure and, in some cases, joined multi-state pools, to ensure larger jackpots by increasing the chance for roll-overs and broadening the population base. Also Clotfelter and Cook define four types of players: the investor (who chooses when to participate by weighing odds against the jackpot); the plunger (who sees a win as the only hope of escaping a bad situation); the believer (who exercises the illusion of

When it's bad it's better

105

control by choosing lucky numbers); and the participant (who enjoys playing the game, particularly in pools or other ‘social’ settings). 13 In the on-line lottery games (lotto, numbers), many players allow the computer to select random numbers for their tickets, acknowledging the lack of any real control over the outcome of these games of pure chance. ‘Serious’ slot-machine players usually restrict their socialising to breaks in the action. While playing, they concentrate on their machines, protecting both their claim to a particular machine and their coins; they may even be mesmerised by the machine into a trance-like state until their money runs out or a loud signal and ‘frozen’ machine indicate that they have won a jackpot. 14 Huizinga defines play as follows:

Play is superfluous. The need for it is only urgent to the extent that the enjoyment of it makes it a need. Play can be deferred or suspended at any time. It is never imposed by…necessity or moral duty…. It is done at leisure in ‘free time’…. Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’ life both as to locality and duration…. It contains its own meaning. (1955:7–8) Abt and colleagues present a structural analysis of the major forms of contemporary commercial gambling in the United States, including casino games, lotteries and pari mutuel betting (Abt et al. 1985:35–51). 15 Clotfelter and Cook note that as lottery games ‘mature’ there appears to be an inevitable decline in player interest, presenting a challenge for managers to manipulate the games to keep the market strong (1989:114–15). Mature games tend to flatten their performance curve over time, and some decline. However, the introduction of a lottery in a new jurisdiction inevitably produces dramatic growth, which may cause observers to assume incorrectly that the growth will continue at the same rate. Christiansen notes that the introduction of video lottery terminals has rejuvenated ‘mature’ lottery games, and early figures suggest that a new wave of lottery growth will accompany the proliferation of this form of play (1992a:32). 16 In 1991, casino slot machines earned US$5.2 billion in Nevada and New Jersey, compared to US$3.2 billion earned by authorised table games. Lotteries earned even more in the same year than all casino games combined: US$10.2 billion (Christiansen 1992b:16). 17 Target marketing, in which segments of the population are ‘targeted’ for promotion, is used rather than mass marketing. The revenue-maximisation objective causes promoters to focus on increasing the play of established players and attracting likely players from identified pools within the general population (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:189–99). 18 Abt et al. (1985:191–210) discuss in more detail the relationship of gambling and American values. 19 Baritz contends that wealth has replaced all other cultural values in modern America (1990:307–9), and the existence of Leach’s programmes—not to mention their popularity for more than half a decade—seems to support this proposition. Leach himself has become a celebrity by means of his television shows, which do little more than allow viewer-voyeurs to ogle the possessions, homes, clothes and favourite resorts of wealthy celebrities.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V. and Smith, J.F. (1983) ‘Playing the game in mainstream America’, in F.Manning (ed.) The World of Play, West Point, NY: Leisure Press.

Gambling cultures

106

Abt, V., Smith, J.F. and Christiansen, E.M. (1985) The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Alvarez, A. (1983) The Biggest Game in Town, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Baritz, L. (1990) The Good Life: The Meaning of Success for the American Middle Class, New York: Harper & Row. Boorstin, D.J. (1972) The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, New York: Atheneum. Caillois, R. (1979) Man, Play and Games, trans. M.Barash, New York: Schocken Books. Campbell, J. (1956) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, New York: Meridian. Chafetz, H. (1960) Play the Devil: A History of Gambling in the United States from 1492 to 1950, New York: Clarkson N.Potter. Christiansen, E.M. (1992a) ‘The gross annual wager of the United States—Part I: Handle’, Gaming and Wagering Business (July-Aug.): 22. ——(1992b) ‘The gross annual wager of the United States—Part II: Revenue’, Gaming and Wagering Business (Aug.–Sept.): 16. Clotfelter, C.T. and Cook, P.J. (1989) Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Findlay, J.M. (1986) People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Hayano, D.M. (1982) Poker Faces: The Life and Work of Professional Card Players, Berkeley: University of California Press. Huizinga, J. (1955) Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Boston: Beacon Press. Kaplan, H.R. (1984) ‘The social and economic impact of state lotteries’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:91–106. Lasch, C. (1979) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, New York: Warner Books. Slater, P.E. (1970) The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point, Boston: Beacon Press. Smith, J.F. (1990) ‘Where the action is: images of the gambler in recent popular film’, in P.Loukides and L.K.Fuller (eds) Beyond the Stars: Studies in American Popular Film, vol. I: Stock Characters in American Popular Film, Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press.

6 REPRESENTATIONS OF GAMBLING IN AUSTRALIAN POPULAR CULTURE Peter Williams1 For myself, I will continue to take on the warriors of academia in the world of literary ideas and to write from the standpoint of the victims of the crisis which characterises our times. Frank Hardy (1983b:14)

SOCIAL USES OF LITERARY STATEMENTS This chapter discusses gambling practices in terms of their social relations and outcomes as these are treated in some recent Australian popular writing, primarily in the fiction and journalistic work of Frank Hardy. Compared with the frameworks and substance of more sociological, historical and political-economic analyses of gambling, this may seem like a trivial pursuit. However, persuasive literature presented to particular readerships can be used to address and, in certain limited ways (that is, not as direct ‘expressions’ or ‘representations’ of other prior and external realities), even help organise consideration and government of specific cultural and socio-political questions and policy issues such as gambling (Hunter 1984a, 1984b, 1991).

FRANK HARDY’S WRITING ON GAMBLING: AN INVENTORY OF STATEMENTS As Ken Inglis has demonstrated, the fiction and much of the journalistic and critical writing of Frank Hardy since the late 1940s significantly contributed to the repetition and survival of a particular populist and leftist version of the radical-nationalist ‘Australian legend’ (Inglis 1985:8–11). The erstwhile democratic, social-realist precepts which inform the political and cultural strategies mobilised by Hardy texts challenge the dominance of elitist and metaphysical literary-critical practices and values precisely over conceptualisations of popular cultural activities in Australia such as radical politics and gambling. Such challenges have regularly been met with elegant and powerful, but arrogant, classifications and effective critical marginalisations of Hardy’s writing (Mitchell 1981:130). Hardy’s writing selectively and intertextually quotes elements from the texts of, among others, Henry Lawson, A.B.‘Banjo’ Paterson and Katherine Susannah Prichard to establish plausible credentials as purveyor of the frameworks and values of an increasingly besieged democratic, popular cultural tradition (Hardy 1966). This chapter

Gambling cultures

108

attempts to summarise the array of statements in Frank Hardy’s writing that concern Australian gambling practices and the social dynamics they involve.

POWER WITHOUT GLORY: A QUESTION OF INTERESTS As Al McCoy has observed, Hardy’s first novel, Power Without Glory (1950), hypothesises the causes and effects of certain forms of ‘Australian political corruption’ between 1880 and 1950 (McCoy n.d.: 36). The novel’s narrative identifies a discontinuous but strategically interconnected apparatus, how what might be termed a ‘rhizome’ of power is initially capitalised by the proceedings of an illegal betting shop located in the inner-city, working-class area of ‘Carringbush’. Via the cynical assumption that everyone has their price, through consequent acts of bribery and violence, and despite resistance from certain sections of the police force, Protestant ‘wowser’ groups offended by the challenge of games of chance to Puritan disciplinary forms of government and doctrines of predestined certainties, some employees, equalitarian radicals in the labour movement and state and federal parliaments, the novel’s central character and anti-hero, John West, moves from poverty-stricken Irish-Catholic workingclass beginnings, and municipal machine politics, through relentless economic accumulation, to a formidable extent of wealth, social and (indirect) political power from a comfortable distance: ‘Power becomes more mighty and satisfying when exercised by remote control. He did not want glory, he wanted power—power without glory’ (Hardy 1975a:390). The novel commences with the image of a spinning coin flicked a corruptible policeman’s way. Metonymically this image connotes the ‘battler’ West’s gamble on the path to an always limited and resisted approximation of class power (Hardy 1975a:25, 60, 258). Because capitalism is conceptualised as legal robbery, anything is possible and justified for West’s organisation (Hardy 1975a: 252–4). With no certainties the stakes are high. Most noticeably, this enables West’s spectacular social mobility, which is presented by the novel’s organising political-economic framework as having been financed by battling punters habitually in need of money to tide them over in mundane material matters from day to day and week to week: ‘You mean to say that you blokes are goin’ to go round takin’ money from people who’ve hardly got the price of a feed, on a race that’s rigged?’ objects labour movement activist, character Eddie Corrigan, to little avail (Hardy 1975a:40; McLaren 1988:89–91). Constituted by the novel’s narrative as a Catholic, philanthropist and faceless man in the social-democratic Australian Labor Party (ALP), the West character’s use of entrepreneurial political-economic tactics either ignores or corrupts socialist strategies and policies that compete with his individualist rhetoric of self-improvement in political struggles for working-class support and affiliation (Hardy 1975a:66, 233, 158). West’s disdain of solidarity with radical sections of the working class, and eventually with his family, is exemplified by the degree of elevation of the prosperous businessman’s gaze over the river to working-class ‘Carringbush’—the location of his constituency and market—from his mansion atop a hill in a more salubrious suburb (Hardy 1975a:265). For the patriarchal West character, poor working men are simply ‘gripped by the hope of gain that prompts…[them] to gamble’ (Hardy 1975a:98). Accordingly, West can

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

109

rationalise his affluence and power as the hard-earned reward for enterprising, even charitable provision of a range of gambling services otherwise proscribed by an upperclass ‘Establishment’. The latter is presented as supported by the luxury of inherited, landed wealth, exclusive clubs as well as such official apparatuses of legal and moral authority as the police force, judiciary and Protestant churches (Hardy 1975a:554). West prospers both economically and politically until, with the fateful inevitability of an elementary nemesis, domestic and wider social contradictions, the revenge of the novel’s—and, by implication, capitalism’s—dialectical structure and forces conspire to displace and disperse that power (Hardy 1975a:557 ff.).2 As a long and diffuse critical realist story, with all of its rich offering of references to and fictive accounts of other historically produced social realities such as the powerful historical individual, John Wren, the composition, reading and attendant legal trial over charges of criminal libel established Power Without Glory as a template for most of Frank Hardy’s subsequent writing and literary-political departures (Brennan 1971:205–24; Buggy 1977; cf. Hardy 1971c).

JOURNEY INTO THE FUTURE: A WORKABLE PROGRAMME? Legal, political and literary ructions followed the publication and circulation of Power Without Glory (Palmer 1951; Eldershaw 1950; McKernan 1984:143–4). Hardy’s next book, Journey into the Future (1952), consisted of a relatively uncritical account, or officially sanctioned witnessing, of late-Stalinist Soviet economic, social and cultural life during the Cold War era of post-Second World War reconstruction. The itinerary included a visit to the Moscow Hippodrome, and the account submits that in the USSR horse-racing was organised along ‘socialist lines’ with neither course nor SP bookmakers, only the totalisator with ‘express and doubles totes’ (Hardy 1952:119, 121; Prichard n.d.: 155). Compared with the situation in Australia, betting is said to run ‘a poor third’ to interest in the breeding of ‘good horses’ and entertainment of ‘the public’ in the USSR (Hardy 1952:119, 121). According to Hardy, this means ‘no bookmakers to “bag” horses and no big owners to plan betting coups by running their horses dead for a few starts’. It is ‘socially conscious’ trainers and drivers ‘who make very high earnings’ and share ‘the advanced social outlook and love of trotting’ more than ‘the vigilance of the stewards’ which prevents dishonest racing (Hardy 1952:122). Hardy announces a conviction that ‘one-two bets and doubles would be easier to pick here than winners in Melbourne’ (Hardy 1952:127). Journey into the Future linked these and other supposedly democratic dispositions of the Soviet socio-economic and cultural network to Henry Lawson’s 1890s writing in Australia ‘from the standpoint of the common man’ (Hardy 1952:321). This connection having been asserted and elaborated, Journey into the Future extends it to a policy dimension with a detailed call for implementation of the programme of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), ‘Australia’s path to socialism’ (Hardy 1952:329 ff.).3 The book’s argument in this regard seems to be that the gambling identified by radical-nationalist cultural historians such as Ward (1958) as intrinsic to the idealised version of Australian national character could be positively corrected by a transcendence of the bad habit of compulsive gambling and the crime of race-rigging. Such a

Gambling cultures

110

transcendence is asserted as attendant on the emergence of the assumed essence of Australian national culture and the protocols of (Stalinist) communist internationalism: national in content, international in form, to rehearse the slogan of the day. It was precisely this sort of tourist-of-the-revolution romanticism, ‘the web of Stalinism’, which Hardy finally and openly repudiated after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (Semmler n.d.: 142). That forthright rejection was made clear in Hardy’s 1968 series of articles for the London Sunday Times (reprinted in the Australian Bulletin), entitled ‘The heirs of Stalin’, working from Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s celebrated 1962 poem of that title (Semmler n.d.: 138–72). Similarly, Hardy’s later novel, But the Dead Are Many (1975b), calls for more democratically organised socialist institutions, social relations and policies.

THE FOUR-LEGGED LOTTERY: GAMBLING AS AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL TRAGEDY Following Journey into the Future, Hardy’s novel The Four-legged Lottery ([1958] 1977) took up Czech socialist, anti-fascist journalist Egon Kisch’s analysis of gambling on horse-racing in Australia as this was set out in the latter’s Australian Landfall ([1937] 1969). The Hardy text’s title echoes Kisch’s argument that ‘these days horse racing [has] ceased to be a valiant sport, and [has become]…a lottery, with four-legged tickets’ (Kisch [1937] 1969:222; Hardy [1958] 1977: epigraph and 43). Building on Power Without Glory’s indictment of a shadowy network of exploitative economic and political power financed, in the main, from the proceeds of bookmaking, The Four-legged Lottery is informed by evidence of the destructive social consequences of habitual gambling and, especially, of the inequitable socio-economic relation of power between gamblers and the local SP bookmaker (Kisch [1937] 1969:223; Marshall 1984). Presented in heroic and sympathetic terms through Hardy’s adaptation of critical-cum-socialist realist precepts, the working-class character, Jim Roberts, is almost an embodiment of major elements of ‘the Australian legend’ (Hardy [1958] 1977:9–10; Blakey 1979:10). He is situated as being exploited by capitalism in general and corrupted by an increasing dependence on the professional gambler’s regimen in particular. Through the technique of a split retrospective narrative, Roberts, like Power Without Glory’s West in his youthful phase, rejected active commitment to the work (as distinct from the argot) involved in radical social transformation (Hardy [1958] 1977:109). Roberts is finally hanged for murdering unremitting bookmaker Pittson in a fit of rage at the economic and social injustices involved in gambling transactions (Hardy [1958] 1977:218–19). Earlier in the novel, middle-class narrator Paul Whittaker gravitates to Roberts’s drinking and gambling group in search of both companionship and extra money to cater for what are presented as the excessive but socially ingrained consumerist desires of the woman to whom he is married. She is identified as a prime cause of Whittaker’s eventually compulsive gambling and consequent social disgrace.4 Consigned to prison for embezzlement of funds in his capacity as a bank teller, the Whittaker character enunciates his own and Roberts’s socially differentiated but gradually intersecting life histories. This narrative strategy is situated within a wider socio-political commentary and argument on the inter-sections of habitual gambling, imprisonment, ‘deformed’ sexuality and

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

111

(in)justice in class-divided Australian society (Hardy [1958] 1977:9). Gambling is discussed as a collective addiction which induces debilitating levels of guilt and a desire for confession and expiation, an ensemble of cultural practices and spiritual exercises to which male, working-class Catholics of Irish extraction are particularly prone, according to the novel and much of Hardy’s other writing (Hardy [1958] 1977:18–20, 61, 115, 27– 8, 41, 43, 67–8, 78, 112, 118, 221). According to the novel’s narrative, the ‘degradation of unemployment and the dread of the dole’ during the socio-economic depression of the 1930s coincided with the proliferation of racing and football tipping competitions and other small games of skill and chance (Hardy [1958] 1977:100, 45–6). This articulation of poverty with inexpensive games of skill and chance is located as a cause of habitual gambling among the depression-bred generation of working-class and lower-middle-class Australians such as the Roberts and Whittaker characters respectively. Their generation is said to sustain a Micawberish optimism and ‘the desperate hope of increasing …earnings’, relying on luck to compensate for inadequate social conditions, becoming victims of the tyranny of the law of averages over the laws of probability (Hardy [1958] 1977:51, 73, 126, 182). Media-circulated accounts of what counts as popular memory of such historical events as the Australian colonies’ Gold Rush of the 1850s and its ‘gamble for gold’ has ensured that, as in the United States, ‘[g]ambling is part of our national psychology’ (Hardy [1958] 1977:74). But the novel affiliates itself with members of culture’s civilising mission of enlightenment who argued that the ‘mania’ of gambling ‘is a perversion of the daring and spontaneity of the Australian people’, ‘an expression of the cultural barbarism imposed on the people by our society, that will die only when the system which gives rise to it also dies’ (Hardy [1958] 1977:75, 77). Racing and all forms of gambling are classified as, more often than not, hegemonically corrupt components of ‘big business’, so that even a punter who manages to devise a marginally successful gambling system would have, in crypto-Faustian manner, ‘given his soul over to the devil of gambling. He would lose the taste for the fine things of life. He would be dehumanised by his very success’ (Hardy [1958] 1977:170–82). The ‘joyous expectancy of the gambler’ is diagnosed as a ‘symptom of [the battler’s] revolt’, an imaginary line of flight from the pressures and limits of past and current social predicaments (Hardy [1958] 1977:162). The populist, masculinist evaluation of gambling as a site par excellence of struggles between ‘battlers’ and ‘the system’ is followed by the prescription of a remedy; a condensed version of Journey into the Future’s nationalisation programme is invoked as the only viable alternative to a relentless social dialectic, constituted as symphonic in form and otherwise inevitable, of ‘the dreadful Australian tragedy’ of gamblers incarcerated and even executed (Hardy [1958] 1977:170, 224).

LEGENDS FROM BENSON’S VALLEY: LEARNING FOLKLORIC HABITS As a contribution to a then burgeoning, politically inflected folkloric movement, Hardy’s collection of interrelated short stories, Legends from Benson’s Valley (1963), repeats many of the evaluative statements put forward in The Four-legged Lottery concerning the

Gambling cultures

112

propensity to gamble as a profitably exploited aspect of what is ascribed as Australian ‘national character’, especially among depression-stricken, itinerant rural workers of the 1930s (Hardy 1966:242; Ward 1958; Wannan 1954; Smith 1985). In this collection’s first short story, ‘Cocky in Bungaree’, the no-risks tight-fistedness of the ‘cocky’, or small farmer, as both employer of labourers and spouse, is contrasted with hired potato digger Arty MacIntosh’s proclivities for women, ‘beer and horses’ and racing, here styled as the sport of both ‘the needy and the greedy’ (Hardy 1963:23–4). The MacIntosh character enshrines the ‘work and burst’ drinking, gambling and socialist attributes ascribed in ‘Australian legend’ mythology. In the collection’s story entitled ‘The Load of Wood’, Darky Nolan, virtually the only major ‘positive’ socialist-realist hero in any Hardy text, gambles against the likelihood of detection in transgressing the trespassing laws as well as the dogs and shotgun of an authoritarian squatter (or pastoralist) to appropriate and distribute firewood to towns-people generally out of wood, work, warmth and luck (Hardy 1963:42–3). The comically registered moral of ‘When Sandy Mitchell won the lottery’ is that ‘[n]o good ever came of a working man winning the lottery. He can’t solve his problems that way’ (Hardy 1963:149, 161). The story presents an account of the conflict between class solidarity with fellow workers and the use of the proceedings of a lottery win to provide conditions for accelerated social mobility (Morrison 1984:85–6). Sandy Mitchell’s winnings are spent on food and alcohol for his (male) mates and on their tactics for initiating a workers’ insurrection in the depression-divided rural town of ‘Benson’s Valley’. The revolt has to be abandoned because of their drunkenness and confusion (Hardy 1963:55, 63, 77, 80, 82). ‘The gambler’ is the collection’s story of a povertystricken, working-class household’s mounting excitement and eventual despair around the race broadcasts on the wireless on a Saturday afternoon. The story comprises indications of the domestication of gambling during the 1930s through the new communication technology of radio.5 It also suggests practical, material ways in which such a socially disadvantaged household forms and educates its younger members to potential dispositions for gambling through the tutelary examples of parental habits, routines, needs and pleasures. As Wittgenstein proposed, ‘the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules’ (Wittgenstein 1979: no. 95, 15e; Wilson 1990:3–23).

THE HARD WAY: A DIVISIVE SUBJECT Hardy’s The Hard Way: The Story Behind ‘Power Without Glory’ (1961) chronicles the research, writing and publication of Power Without Glory by pseudonymous autodidactic writer ‘Ross Franklyn’, together with the notorious legal consequences of these processes for ‘Franklyn’s’ double, Frank Hardy (Hardy 1981; Fricke 1984:5, 8, 144–52; Doogue 1982:110–11, 131–3; Pollak 1990:227–60). The Hard Way provides a statement of record of the ‘real-world’ documents (from Royal Commissions, state and federal parliamentary debates, notebooks, diaries, newspapers, library research and memories of oral interviews) as well as the literary-political doctrines and writing strategies deployed in Power Without Glory’s narrative and its purported ‘exposure’ of economic, political and domestic corruption. Printing of that novel had been partly financed by a ‘stroke of

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

113

gambler’s luck…an inside tip’ that produced £200 and the recitation of a piece of folkloric wisdom: ‘take you a long time to make that kind of money with an axe’ (Hardy 1971a:128; Frow 1982:34). But, to complicate matters, gambling is also bound up with the contradictory constitution of the authorial figure ‘Franklyn’–Hardy as divided between responsibilities to both professional writing and communist politics: ‘I’m a boozer, and a mad punter, and a knock-about battler from way back, an adventurer, a borrower and a leader. We were the man for an occasion, but the true leader is a man for all occasions’ (Hardy 1971a:254; Hardy quoted in Childs 1984:76).

BILLY BORKER YARNS: ‘THEM’ AND ‘US’ The distancing from Marxist-Leninist doctrines of political organisation and subsequent recourse to populist modes of address are clear in Hardy’s The Yarns of Billy Borker (1965) and ‘The Great Australian Lover’ and Other Stories ([1967] 1972b, published in some editions as Billy Borker Yarns Again). Initially devised for performance on (the then) Australian Broadcasting Commission television channel, these anecdotal yarns are presented as dialogic transcriptions of urban and rural folklore: ‘from my own experience or the experience of men I drank with in pubs up and down the coast’ and from ‘the first and best Australian yarn-spinner I ever heard…my father Tom Hardy’ (Hardy 1965:5–7, 149–52; Semmler n.d.: 63–70). Overwhelmingly, the anecdotes work in the demotic with the figure of ‘the Australian battler’—from racecourse tipsters and bagmen to seamen and wharf labourers—whose stoic motto is ‘you can’t win, but you’ve got to battle’ (Hardy 1965:152; Hardy 1975c:9, 38, 42, 49, 67, 80, 86, 99, 102, 107, 111–13, 123–5; Morrison 1984:18–34). Usually without class specificity, the populist ‘archetype of the Australian battler’ asserts as typical a character ‘ironic, democratic, suspicious of authority, contemptuous of pomp and privilege… [and] an inveterate liar’ (Hardy 1965:153). The 1930s depression practices of rigged hotel raffles, horse-races and betting coups are treated as continuing aspects of a unitary financial and social ‘system’ in which ‘[t]here’s no more thieving goes on [on the wharf] than on the Stock Exchange’, ‘Banks gamble with other people’s money, when you look at it right, and so do stockbrokers’ (Hardy 1965:62–9; 70–2, 22, 130; Hardy 1972b:76–80, 89–92, 93–8, 17–24, 140–3, 99). The reductive and oppositional populist demarcation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ allows, inevitably in such narratives that, in Hardy’s title, it is They [who] are the trouble’: I’ve been trying to find out who they are for years…. They are the trouble. …They throw heads when you back tails at the two-up. They run their horse dead. They rob you in the Parliament. They charge high rent. They start depressions. They cause wars. What they do is bad enough, but why can’t they ever learn? They’ll never learn. They wouldn’t wake up if an Adelaide River dunny fell on ‘em. They wouldn’t know horse dung from clay unless they tasted it. They can’t see any further than their noses. They’re sending the country broke. They say we’ve never had it so good. They won’t give a man a fair go. They conscript the twenty-year-olds. They sell the country out to the Yanks. They couldn’t run a raffle, mate; that’s for sure…. They start a lot of gossip, too. They say he married her

Gambling cultures

114

for her money. They say she had to get married. They say their marriage is on the rocks. They say he’s a bad pay. They say she’s a cupboard drinker…: Have another beer before they close the pub. (Hardy 1972b:150–2) Despite, or perhaps because of, such crudely conceptualised social relations of power, the ironically named ‘great Australian lover’, incarnation of the widely circulated 1970s figure of the ‘ocker’, prefers betting, shorts and thongs, fights, drinking, male mates and alcohol-induced vomiting to his wedding ceremony and honeymoon (Hardy 1972b:53, 1– 3; Harris 1974; Horne 1975). At best, some of Hardy’s Billy Borker yarns can be read as satirical criticisms of aspects of racism, economic exploitation and sexism as these practices are prevalent in various domains of popular culture, sites of gambling not least among them.

THE UNLUCKY AUSTRALIANS: POLITICAL WRITING AS THERAPEUTIC Hardy’s documentary-fictional The Unlucky Australians ([1968] 1972a) contrasts Borkertype ‘Australian gregariousness that leads a man to loneliness’ with the plight of Gurindji Aboriginal people on strike over conditions and rates of pay against the Vestey pastoral company’s organisation at Wave Hill in Australia’s Northern Territory (Hardy 1972a:1). Starting with the narrator’s ‘shame at the gambling debt’, the existentially formulated question ‘TAB or not TAB?’, the socially informed gambler’s Utopia of the Territory’s then legal betting shops where ‘there’s no racial prejudice’, and memories of a local wartime two-up school, the book comprises a narrative of transformation of introspective ‘guilt’ into energy for alignment with the Gurindji political struggle and for writing about ‘what has been done’ to Aborigines since white invasion and colonisation of the continent (Hardy 1972a:2, 8, 13, 20, 39, 68, 238; cf. Hornadge 1976:48–51). Socialist politics contest the gambling obsession by addressing dispossession, racism and cultural differences in both socio-economic and political terms. This political and cultural activity, made possible in Hardy’s case by a temporary resolution of the apparent contradiction between gambling and socialist practices, contributed to significant policy repercussions at a national level (Horne 1978; Whitlam 1978; Hardy 1978:319–40).

THE OUTCASTS OF FOOLGARAH: CARNIVAL OF THE OUTSIDERS The Outcasts of Foolgarah (1971b) is Hardy’s fictionalised and scatological story of a strike of garbage and night-soil carters. They are the workers involved as, in Marcuse’s words, ‘underneath the conservative popular base [in] the substratum of outcasts and outsiders’ (Marcuse 1964). Unincorporated into ‘the system’, they intrinsically oppose and resist that ‘system’ as ‘a rigged game’ (Hardy 1971b: epigraph). Such marginalised workers and lumpenproletarians are said to lack even the jockey’s benefit of ‘the percentage punter’ (Hardy 1971b: 8). Like Billy Borker, strike leader Chilla adheres to a

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

115

populist rhetoric which demarcates ‘us’ and ‘them’ so it is once again ‘they’, including bookmakers and corrupt trade-union officials, who cause all economic trouble and social inequities (Hardy 1971b:189, also 129–30). Another major character in the novel is writer F.J.Borky, who is identified as an intellectual worker and soul-tortured by socialist history’s Stalinist vicissitudes. He is in solidarity with the strikers’ cause and enunciates the narrative’s Marcusian analysis. Borky is contextualised as typically surrounded by ‘racing paraphernalia’ which is used in an attempt to ‘supplement his income with racing systems’ (Hardy 1971b:98). Borky is beset by debts to, among others, bookmakers, and repeatedly distracted from literary and political commitments and work habits by an ostensibly irresistible attraction to TAB (that is, semi-independent state totaliser) establishments (Hardy 1971b:101). The novel’s narrative summarily diagnoses Borky as misled and divided by ‘the myth that he could make a big killing on the horses’ as well as by the, in many respects, sexist cultural mythology of’ Australian mateship’ and the Stalinist political mythology of ‘the just Communist society’ (Hardy 1971b: 167–8; Barthes 1973:145–8).

BUT THE DEAD ARE MANY: GAMBLING WITH SOCIALISM AT CHECKPOINT CHARLIE But the Dead Are Many: A Novel in Fugue Form (1975b) entails Hardy’s most fully elaborated critique of Stalinist political and social doctrines and policy arrangements, such as those concerning cultural and political mechanisms of representation, as these operated in both the Soviet Union and the increasingly fragmented Australian communist movement. The narrator-writer (the novel is formed and organised by multivocal narrative techniques), Jack, is ‘a compulsive gambler’, indulging in habits said to contribute to and enhance a writer’s creative capacity for alienation’: Jack was a compulsive gambler—but never played poker machines (never run up stairs, back odds-on favourites, take advice from a barber or play poker machines). Many of Jack’s characters were gamblers; he returned to the problem again and again. Of course, the test-of-fate theory of gambling came from one of Jack’s books. How did it go? A gambler fears to be rejected, so he tests fate. Jack claimed that a revolutionary shares this with the gambler: he fears rejection yet desires to be rejected by the society which has rejected and hurt him. He believed that the ambivalent psychological link of the revolutionary to the society he desires to destroy reflects the psychological link he has had with his parents. (Hardy 1975b:115–16)6 The intertextual resonances with complexly combined aspects of The Four-legged Lottery and The Outcasts of Foolgarah are evident. In the case of But the Dead Are Many, the nominated tensions between socialist politics and gambling practices are reconciled by the psycho-sociological mediating category of ‘creative…alienation’, as though the revolutionary-writer-gambler can somehow, at least intermittently, transcend

Gambling cultures

116

all social contradictions, pressures and limits other than the supposedly primary and determinant parental ones. In effect, But the Dead Are Many can be read as arguing that ‘the ultimate prize of life’s lottery’ is ‘the right to be transcended into memory’ (Hardy 1975b:116). This is presented as a democratically socialist alternative to existential liquidation and erasure of all material traces from official history, the fate of tens of millions of Stalinism’s victims (Hardy 1975b:270). For the Jack figure, a progressively more urgent ‘obsession’ with researching and writing about local and specific political issues, such as the suicide of his comrade John, ‘had long ago over-powered the gambling habit’ (Hardy 1975b:158–9).7 This sort of cultural and political integrity is contrasted with the character of Australian Stalinist functionary Trevor Duncan’s forging of strategic trade-union electoral ballots for the supposedly higher cause of progressive communist politics. Stalinism is thus shown as countenancing and even demanding corruption of various political and industrial forms of democracy as insurance against the (arrogantly ascribed) ‘false consciousness’ of those large sectors of the working-class constituency the historical best interests of which it claimed to represent.

LATER WRITINGS: LIFE’S A GAMBLE The catalogue of selected Hardy notations and statements concerning a plurality of different material cultural practices and social relations in which gambling is inscribed can be continued by noting the commentary of the comparatively recent short story, ‘Daily double’, on gambling as a sexually and economically compensatory obsession (Semmler n.d.: 218). According to this fictive account, gambling practices once again comprise an almost ritualistic consultation of ‘fate’—regarded as an unavoidable, fixed end—in order to divine its revelation as indicating either acceptance or rejection of the individual gambler (Semmler n.d.: 220, 227–9; Neumann and Eason 1990). At a less metaphysical level, the story may also be read as identifying successful gambling with the potential realisation of an intensely desired escape from restrictive limits of class and other social relations. Structured around patriarchal fantasies of flight to an idealised cosmopolitan lover, the short story articulates gambling with male-dominated heterosexuality in a witless and destructive politics of desire which elides any consideration or calculation of possible effects on those exploited by such a finally individualistic form of politics and pleasure. With different emphases, Hardy’s novel The Obsession of Oscar Oswald (1983a) suggests that ‘[d]ebt collection had become infiltrated by gangsters so that it had become the fourth biggest racket after drugs, prostitution and illegal gambling’ (1983a:132–3, 75). The short story, ‘The secret of Bandit Bertie’, positions the social ‘outcasts’ and ‘creatively alienated’ cultural workers as robbed by poker machines in ‘a game at which you’re not allowed to win’ (Semmler n.d.: 195, 200; cf. Lynch 1990). Despite the possibility of short-term successes, there is ‘never a perfect system’ (Hardy 1982:34). The group of short stories assembled under the title The Loser Now Will Be Later to Win (1985) restates the connections between gambling and other socio-political relations and practices. As almost an article of faith and antidote to the motif of ‘loss’, the

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

117

collection uses as its epigraph some lyrics from a popular folk-song of the 1960s, Bob Dylan’s ‘The times they are a-changing’: And don’t speak too soon For the wheel’s still in spin And there’s no telling who that it’s naming ’Cause the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changing. As a corrective to the Australian worker-battler’s perceived loss of control over the production of the future and prevailing accounts of the past, the stories assert that the ‘wheel’ of social fortune has not yet named its eventual victors. The ‘losers’ of the socioeconomic depressions of the 1890s, 1930s and 1970s to 1980s are nominated as the potential winners in a gamble of social change and transformation at the predicted end of capitalism’s history. The likely outcome of a national history of social contradictions and conflicts is thus calculated and bet on in Hardy’s politicised gamble of communication. The ideologies and rhetorics of 1890s radical nationalism, 1930s pro-Soviet Marxism, 1940s anarchism, 1960s Aboriginal cooperative cultural protocols, 1970s Eurocommunism and 1980s pro-feminist Trotskyism are presented as successively flawed but nevertheless indicative ‘form guides’ to a final triumph of the perpetual social ‘losers’ and resistant victims of a rigged capitalist ‘system’ (Hardy 1985:200). Worker characters are once more constituted as outcasts, as if outside a corporate capitalist system, and as having only a limited range of options of resistance and defiance. Hardy’s populist Marxist narrative strategies and explicitly politicised characterology connote fictive means of social transformation. In this making of books, they mortgage existing cultures to a future, more equitable polity and society. Frank Hardy continued to pursue gambling issues in his more journalistic writings for such popular and textually diverse ‘girlie’ and sensationalised ‘human interest’ magazines as People, Australasian Post and the Melbourne Herald-Sun newspaper, together with various plays. These widely read publications are overwhelmingly directed at and read by working-class male audiences in Australian cities and, in the case of the magazines, rural areas.8

CONCLUSIONS Power Without Glory and The Four-legged Lottery, respectively, are literary accounts of the power accrued by those organisations which manage gambling and the disastrous effects to which habitual gambling can contribute, from poverty and embezzlement to murder. They can be read as fictive supports of Hardy’s Journey into the Future call for Soviet-style public regulation of gambling and equitable distribution of those rewards paid out to gamblers. Thereby, it is contended, corrupt, illicit and manipulative bookmakers such as Power Without Glory’s West and The Four-legged Lottery’s Pittson would be displaced to the benefit of those working-class and other ‘battlers’ who engage

Gambling cultures

118

in gambling as a means of supplementary economic resistance to the depredations and exploitation of wage labour. However, these Utopian propositions beg the question of how state regulation of gambling procedures also deploys disciplinary powers through the techniques by which they individuate and police gamblers as, for instance, part of a ‘social problem’ to be addressed and governed medically and psychoanalytically. Despite Hardy’s relatively progressive notations and formulations on gambling, there is a less than socially equitable linking of gambling success to the assertion of patriarchal forms of (hetero)sexuality. For example, in Power Without Glory there is West’s tyrannical ‘after-all-I’ve-done-for-you’ household subordination of spouse Nellie and their daughter Mary; habitual gambling practices take place in exclusively male social groups in most of The Four-legged Lottery, with Jim Roberts and narrator Paul Whittaker justifying their gambling propensities as necessary to provide the women they are married to with what they deserve and what they crave respectively; in the short story ‘The system’, Australian artist Jack Cameron’s success at the roulette wheel in a European casino is presented as a precondition for the attraction, allurement and sexual conquest of both the Ruth and Collette characters; in the short story ‘Daily double’, gambling wins would make possible the male socialist artist character’s flight from a vauntedly stifling domestic and sexual relationship and to a European lover. Often in Hardy texts, accounts of the relations of gambling and art with household economic and other domestic arrangements presuppose socially produced gender differences and politics as simply the outcomes of ‘natural’, inevitable, irresistible and usually nonnegotiable desires (see, for example, Hardy quoted throughout Ridge 1982). These sorts of discriminations and emphases in the constitution of female and male characters, together with usual narrative and plot relations of subordination/ domination between them, quite precisely gamble with Hardy’s accumulated cultural and political capital as a notorious, egalitatian, socialist author writing at times when, increasingly, socially organised gender differences feature prominently in debates and political agendas of many institutional campaigns for changes in organisational and social policies. The texts, in dealing with gambling as a major theme, are also inseparable from ‘bets’ on how they will be made sense of and used by different readerships. They consist in compositional and distributional calculations or wagers on the likelihood of particular cultural and political effects and outcomes. That is to say, in the vernacular, the communicative gamble of the text is the risk incurred by the action of investing cultural capital, commitment and energy, of ‘putting your money where your mouth is’. For Hardy texts, when the politico-cultural lines of credit and credibility that had been available in the past, such as the plausibility of Soviet Marxism and Zhdanovite socialistrealist aesthetics during the 1940s, are no longer viable in the present, lines of flight are pursued. Fugitive tactics require the traverse of definite tracks leading to uncertain destinations and necessitating new estimations and mappings of different possibilities. For instance, But the Dead Are Many’s polyphonic form can be read as stressing the relative fluidity and possibility of equitably democratised institutional and wider social relations within and between classes, genders, cultural groups and political organisations. Frank Hardy’s writings have actively contributed to the repetition, with certain differences, of the selective and politically inflected tradition and mythology of ‘the Australian legend’, especially its emphases on collective egalitarian democracy and gambling proclivities. Overall, this work of composition has been carried out within a

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

119

populist way of seeing the world’s historically produced realities, gambling practices among them.9 This way of seeing, or framework of techniques and assumptions concerning such popular cultural practices as gambling, demarcates an economic ‘base’ of state-supported monopoly capitalism that profits from its administration of gambling, and psychological ‘superstructures’ which impose relations of dependence on social individuals who become obsessed with gambling and its offerings of the elusive hope of financial security outside the pressures and demands of orthodox forms of wage-labour, taxation and capital accumulation (Dark 1966:13–14). From within such a framework, it can only be the ‘outcasts’ or ‘outsiders’ operating in the interstices of various institutions who battle to resist and evade incorporation into the allegedly pervasive and savagely functional socio-economic, political and cultural ‘system’. For all the problems of idealism, essentialism and residual Leninist politics entailed in this framework, at least Hardy’s writings address the ways in which gambling practices and social relations and differences are associated with cultural industries such as the media, the gambling of sport with the body, and tourism.10 Surrounded as it is by other accounts, especially in the press, his detailed attention to and intervention in the classdifferentiated but broadly popular cultural activities of gambling have earned Hardy literary-critical praise as ‘the chronicler of the turf’, on the one hand (Semmler n.d.: 11), and literary-political disdain as the creator of ‘the apotheosis of the racecourse urger’, on the other (Beasley 1979:55, 82, 88–91). Competing aesthetic and moral evaluations and judgements aside, however, Hardy’s consistently rewritten notations and statements (cultural hypotheses, proposals, propositions, deployments of particular rhetorical devices) suggest some significant social questions and knowledges about gambling as an item for cultural and policy agendas. In a career of living dangerously, Hardy’s writing has sustained as one of its conditions many calculated cultural strategies or gambles. Despite its popularity, but perhaps not surprisingly, such work has elicited more official denunciation than approval. In the end, readers are left with the unstably reconciled contradiction of But the Dead Are Many (and, to some extent, The Hard Way). Learned, habitual gambling affords socialist writer Jack a degree of ‘creative alienation’ from certain exploitative social relations, yet Stalinist functionaries such as the Trevor Duncan character can short-circuit forms of workplace democracy by ballot forgery. While there is an element of conscious voluntarism in Jack’s gambling activities, Duncan’s trade-union constituency loses without even knowing that it was in effect gambling in a rigged game where the die is already cast and certainty of outcome relatively assured.11 But if, as Jack Blake has argued, romantic voluntarism is a component of Stalinist and vanguardist insurrectionary politics, the other side of its ‘base’-‘superstructure’ model of social totality or ‘system’, then perhaps it is these voluntaristic practices and values which generate the contradictions and differences between gambling and socialist politics in Hardy’s writings (Blake 1971:49–73; and 1991:80–91). As with Stalinist politics, ‘means’ and ‘ends’ are functionally separated because of the uncertainty of the outcomes of gambling’s calculations.12 Yet, gambling is an attempt to overcome economic and social uncertainty just as Stalinism operated through the attempted erasure of political and historical uncertainty. A substantial gambling ‘killing’ on the horses or lottery or casino may comprise the undoubtedly pleasurable basis of a radically individualised social redistribution to relative wealth, security and status. However, this is a breach of anything

Gambling cultures

120

that can be classified as social solidarity because restricted access to the means of economic self-improvement through privatised economic expropriation does little to ameliorate or transform other social inequities of affluence and power. Indeed, it may serve to intensify them by focusing on the redistribution of wealth to thus privileged or ‘lucky’ individuals rather than on the social production, accumulation and use of it. The obsessive repetition, rewriting and intertextual echoes that mark Frank Hardy’s (re)presentations of gambling in popular cultural texts can be read as registering that the cultural practices and social relations involved in gambling are power-inscribed in terms of battling ‘punters’ acting to challenge an ostensibly rule-governed apparatus in the form of particular licit or illicit gambling establishments and authorities. Such social struggle entails relations of power between contradictory but necessarily connected positions, usually self-seeking and often tormenting, in differing and inequitable ways, for the different parties involved. The certainty of gambling’s uncertainty, its widely and often unconsciously learned conventions and rules, its enactment of socially grounded techniques and hopes—all of these culturally active factors are different from but not unrelated to the democratically organised forms of political and cultural work necessary for transformations that will produce more equitable social conditions and a halt to government of populations that brings with it very real material risks and threats of poverty, further disempowerment and cultural denigration. What Hardy’s writings on the politics of gambling practices and their effects enable us to conclude is that, socially and politically at least, there can be no last big bet, no absolute closure or final solution. As Polan has argued so convincingly, ‘the gamble is not a once-for-all attempt at liberty’ but, rather, the strategic condition for constant and never certain outcomes of incessant negotiations between different institutions, social agencies and groups (Polan 1984:193).13 For resilience and courage in promoting fairness and social justice in this and other regards, Frank Hardy should not be forgotten. After all, he may very well have taught his readers many valuable political and history lessons.

NOTES 1 Other, more historically and theoretically elaborated versions of this chapter were published in McMillen n.d.: unpaginated; in Williams 1987a; and in Williams 1987b: 564–622. For their constructive critical comments and bibliographical advice on this work I am very grateful to Catherine Greenfield, Noel King, Frank Hardy and Ian Hunter, also to Jan McMillen, Chilla Bulbeck, K.K.Ruthven and John Frow. Responsibility for the chapter’s final formulations is my own, of course. 2 In the novel’s straightforward dialectical structure the third section, ‘Decline of power’ (synthesis), is the narrative product of interaction between the second section, ‘Abuse of power’ (antithesis), and the first section, ‘Road to power’ (thesis). 3 This notion of the political correction of gambling habits and other diversions from forms of social solidarity was also put forward in the early Hardy short story, ‘A stranger in the camp’ (1944 in Hardy n.d.; see also Dutton 1991:40). 4 On the masculinist inflections of presentations of gambling milieu and ambience in Power Without Glory and The Four-legged Lottery, see Lees and Senyard (1987:26, 87–8). More broadly and historically, on the effects of gambling on women in Australia, see Summers (1975:70–4) and Morris (1992:40).

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

121

5 On the popular cultural adjacency of gambling and radio, see Kisch ([1937] 1969:224), Andrews (1979:44) and, especially, Johnson (1981:168, 171, 175). 6 Connections between gambling practices, doctrinal certainties and fugitivity are also illuminatingly discussed in Robert Bradshaw’s autobiography (1986:102, 104, 222, 235, 243, 245). 7 On the formation and regulation of institutionally inscribed individual conduct in relation to ‘obsessions’ and dreams, see Hirst and Woolley (1982:137). 8 Many of these often recycled and rewritten pieces have been collected and assembled as books; see, for example, Hardy (1986:11–13, 28–30, 37–40, 67–71, 78–81, 123–5, 165–7, 186–9, 193–6) for repetitions of the Billy Borker populism and the figure of the Australian ‘battler’. On various cultural, economic and political forms and instances of gambling and associated corruption, see Hardy (1988:2–4, 7, 26, 39–40, 48–50, 52, 67, 74, 92–5, 107–8, 146–52, 157, 176–81; 1990:vii, 23–5, 55–9, 103–24, 146–60, 183–91; 1991a; 1991b; 1991c; 1991d; 1991e). Regarding Hardy the play-wright on gambling, see the tribute to his late sister (Hardy 1992:16–18, 52, 59, 66). 9 See Greenfield (1985) on the constitutive elements of populism. 10 This is a significant advance on, for instance, prevalent and generalised notions of gambling as a social leveller in the liberal cultural criticism of Horne and Beal (1967:41) and McGregor (1966:125–7, 148–9; cf. Crisp 1987). 11 On the ‘dual standards of morality’ that ‘substitute the party’s experience for that of backward and prejudiced workers’ through techniques of ‘ballot adjustment’, see Gollan (1980:323–4). See, also Hardy (1988:176–81; 1990:187–91). 12 On Stalinist separations of ‘ends’ from ‘means’ and the authoritarian political consequences, see Hirst (1986:27–47). 13 Concerning the material social conditions in which everyday and mundane decisions are made, the relations of power and styles of reasoning involved, see Hindess (1989).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Andrews, B. (1979) ‘The willow tree and the laurel: Australian sport and Australian literature’, in R.Cashman and M.McKernan (eds) Sport in History: The Making of Modern Sporting History, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press: 43–67. Barret, R.G. (1987) The Boys from Binjiwunyawunya, Sydney: Pan. Barthes, R. (1973) Mythologies, trans. A.Lavers, Frogmore: Paladin. Beasley, J. (1979) Red Letter Days: Notes from Inside an Era, Sydney: Australasian Book Society. Blake, J.D. (1971) Revolution from Within—A Contemporary Theory of Social Change, Sydney: Outlook. ——(1991) ‘Perestroika and the Stalinist legacy’, Journal of Australian Political Economy 28:80– 91. Blakey, G.G. (ed.) (1979) The Gambler’s Companion, New York: Paddington. Bradshaw, R. (1986) The Fugitive Years, Ringwood: Penguin. Brennan, N. (1971) John Wren: Gambler—His Life and Times, Melbourne: Hill of Content. Buggy, H. (1977) The Real John Wren, Camberwell: Widescope. Cantrell, L. (ed.) (1977) The 1890s: Stories, Verse, and Essays, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Cappiello, R.R. (1984) Oh Lucky Country, trans. G.Rando, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Carey, P. (1988) Oscar and Lucinda, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Carroll, J. (1977) Puritan, Paranoid and Remissive: A Sociology of Modern Culture, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Gambling cultures

122

Childs, K. (ed.) (1984) A Month of Lunches: Twenty-eight Lives Celebrate Melbourne, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Crisp, L. (1987) ‘To share an obsession’, Times on Sunday (15 March): 24–5. Cusack, D. (n.d.) Picnic Races, Melbourne: Readers Book Club. Cusack, D. and James, F. (1988) Come in Spinner, North Ryde: Angus & Robertson. Dark, E. (1966) Lantana Lane, Sydney: Humourbook. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1981) ‘Rhizome: Introduction’, trans. P.Foss and P.Patton, I & C 8:49–71. Docker, J. (1984) In a Critical Condition: Reading Australian Literature, Ringwood: Penguin. Doogue, J. (1982) The Writer and the Law, Geelong: School of Humanities, Deakin University. Dutton, M. (1991) ‘The force of words’, Australian Left Review 125:39–41. Eldershaw, F.S. (1950) ‘Bastardry, bastardry, bastardry’, Meanjin 9(3):222–5. Fox, C. (1988) ‘In search of a fair bet’, in V.Burgmann and J.Lee (eds) Constructing a Culture: A People’s History of Australia Since 1799, Ringwood: McPhee Gribble/ Penguin: 77–95. ——(1990) ‘Hedging their bets: street bookmakers and suburban space’, Westerly 4: 18–25. Fricke, G. (1984) Libels, Lampoons and Litigants: Famous Australian Libel Cases, Melbourne: Hutchinson. Frow, J. (1982) ‘Who shot Frank Hardy? Intertextuality and textual politics’, Southern Review 15(1):22–39. Gollan, D. (1980) ‘The memoirs of “Cleopatra Sweet-figure”’, in E.Windschuttle (ed.) Women, Class and History: Feminist Perspectives on Australia 1788–1988, Auckland: Fontana/Collins: 313–29. Gordon, H. (1988) An Eyewitness History of Australia, Ringwood: Penguin. Greenfield, C. (1985) ‘“In the people’s name”: populism as a political form’, Australian Journal of Cultural Studies 3(2):89–103. Hardy, F. (n.d.) ‘The Man from Clinkapella’ and Other Prize-Winning Stories, Auburn: Capricorn. ——(1952) Journey into the Future, Melbourne: Australasian Book Society. ——(1963) Legends from Benson‘s Valley, London: Werner Laurie. ——(1965) The Yarns of Billy Borker, Sydney: Ure Smith. ——(1966) ‘Environment and ideology in Australian literature: a personal view’, in C. Semmler (ed.) (n.d.) A Frank Hardy Swag, Sydney: Harper & Row: 237–48. ——(1971a) The Hard Way: The Story Behind ‘Power Without Glory’, Hawthorn: Gold Star. ——(1971b) The Outcasts of Foolgarah, Melbourne: Allara. ——(1971c) ‘The life and hard times of John Wren revisited’, The Review 20–6 (Nov.): 186–7. ——(1972a) The Unlucky Australians, Hawthorn, Melbourne: Gold Star (London: Pan, 2nd edn, 1978). ——(1972b) ‘The Great Australian Lover’ and Other Stories, Melbourne: Thomas Nelson. ——(1972c) It’s Moments Like These, Melbourne: Gold Star. ——(1975a) Power Without Glory, Frogmore: Panther. ——(1975b) But the Dead Are Many: A Novel in Fugue Form, Sydney: The Bodley Head. ——(1977) The Four-legged Lottery, Sydney: Fontana. ——(1981) Who Shot George Kirkland? A Novel about the Nature of Truth, Port Melbourne: Edward Arnold. ——(1982) ‘The system’, Australian Short Stories, Christmas issue: 33–43. ——(1983a) The Obsession of Oscar Oswald, Carlton: Pascoe. ——(1983b) ‘Self-portraits’, Australian Book Review 52:13–14. ——(1985) The Loser Now Will Be Later to Win, Carlton: Pascoe. ——(1986) Hardy’s People, Fairfield: Pascoe. ——(1988) Great Australian Legends, Sydney: Hutchinson. ——(1990) Retreat Australia Fair and other Great Australian Legends, Sydney: Hutchinson. ——(1991a) ‘Tabaret’s a rort!’, Australasian Post (19 Jan.): 38. ——(1991b) ‘Casinos spell crime and doom’, Australasian Post (26 Jan.): 39.

Representations of gambling in australia popular culture

123

——(1991c) ‘Punting is a health hazard’, Australasian Post (9 Feb.): 39. ——(1991d) ‘Who’s behind the SP boom?’, Australasian Post (23 Feb.): 38. ——(1991e) ‘Me and me puntin’ mates’, Australasian Post (9 Nov.): 42. ——(1992) Mary Lives, Sydney: Currency. Hardy, F. and Mulley, A.G. (1975) The Needy and the Greedy: Humorous Stories of the Racetrack, Canberra: Libra. Harris, M. (1974) Ockers: Essays on the Bad Old New Australia, Adelaide: Maximus. Hayllar, T. and Sadler, R. (eds) (1982) Aussie Humour, Melbourne: Nelson. Headon, D. (1988) ‘Given by God, sport of kings, or a mug’s game: horse racing in Australian literature’, Sporting Traditions 5(1):30–50. Hindess, B. (1989) Political Choice and Social Structure: An Analysis of Actors, Interests and Rationality, Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Hirst, P. (1986) Law, Socialism and Democracy, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Hirst, P. and Woolley, P. (1982) Social Relations and Human Attributes, London: Tavistock. Hornadge, B. (1976) The Yellow Peril: A Squint at Some Australian Attitudes towards Orientals, 2nd edn, Dubbo: Review Publications. Horne, D. (1975) ‘Ockerism’, Meanjin 34(4):462–7. ——(1978) ‘Foreword’ to Hardy, The Unlucky Australians, London: Pan. Horne, D. and Beal, D. (1967) Southern Exposure, Sydney: Collins. Hunter, I. (1984a) ‘Literary discipline’, Southern Review 17(2):129–34. ——(1984b) ‘After representation: recent discussions of the relation between language and literature’, Economy and Society 13(4):397–430. ——(1991) ‘From discourse to Dispositif: Foucault and the study of literature’, Meridian 10(2):36– 53. Ikin, V. (1984) Untitled review of D.Stivens Jimmy Brockett, Westerly 29(1):91–3. Inglis, K. (1985) ‘Gambling and culture in Australia’ in G.Caldwell, B.Haig, M. Dickerson and L.Sylvan (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm: 5–17. Johnson, L. (1981) ‘Radio and everyday life: the early years of broadcasting in Australia, 1922– 1945’, Media, Culture and Society 3:167–78. Kisch, E. ([1937] 1969) Australian Landfall, trans. J.Fisher, I. and K.Fitzgerald, South Melbourne: Macmillan. Kramer, L. (1985) ‘The media, society and culture’, in S.R.Graubard (ed.) Australia: The ‘Daedalus’ Symposium, North Ryde: Angus & Robertson: 293–310. Lees, S. and Senyard, J. (1987) The 1950s: How Australia Became a Modern Society and Everyone Got a House and a Car, Melbourne: Hyland House. Lynch, R. (1990) ‘Working-class luck and vocabularies of hope among regular poker-machine players’ in D.Rowe and G.Lawrence (eds) Sport and Leisure: Trends in Australian Popular Culture, Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 189–208. McCalman, J. (1984) Struggletown: Portrait of an Australian Working-Class Community, Ringwood: Penguin. McCoy, A. (n.d.) ‘Sport as modern mythology: SP bookmaking in New South Wales 1920–1979’ in R.Cashman and M.McKernan (eds) Sport: Money, Morality and the Media, Kensington: New South Wales University Press: 34–67. McGregor, C. (1966) Profile of Australia, London: Hodder & Stoughton. McKernan, S. (1984) ‘“Literature in a straitjacket”’, in A.Curthoys and J.Merritt (eds) Australia’s First Cold War, 1945–1953, vol. 1: Society, Communism and Culture, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin: 137–52. McLaren, J. (1988) ‘Poets against novelists—Cold War courts and crusades’, Journal of Australian Studies 22:83–93. McMillen, J. (ed.) (n.d.) Gambling in the 80s: Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies (NAGS), Nathan: School of Humanities, Griffith University.

Gambling cultures

124

Marcuse, H. (1964) One-Dimensional Man, Boston: Beacon Press. Marshall, A. (1984) ‘The bicycle race’, Australian Short Stories 2(6):1–5. Mitchell, A. (1981) ‘Fiction’, in L.Kramer (ed.) The Oxford History of Australian Literature, Melbourne: Oxford University Press: 27–172. Morris, M. (1992) Ecstasy and Economics: American Essays for John Forbes, Sydney: E M Press. Morrison, J. (1984) Stories of the Waterfront, Ringwood: Penguin. Neumann, M. and Eason, D. (1990) ‘Casino world: bringing it all back home’, Cultural Studies 4(1):45–60. O’Hara, J. (n.d.) ‘The Australian gambling tradition’, in R.Cashman and M.McKernan (eds) Sport: Money, Morality and the Media, Kensington: New South Wales University Press: 68–85. Palmer, V. (1951) ‘Australian letter’, Landfall 5(4):292–5. ——(1954) The Legend of the Nineties, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Phillips, A.A. (1958) The Australian Tradition, Melbourne: Cheshire. Polan, A.J. (1984) Lenin and the End of Politics, London: Methuen. Pollak, M. (1990) Sense and Censorship: Commentaries on Censorship Violence in Australia, Balgowlah: Reed. Prichard, K.S. (1926) Working Bullocks, London: Jonathan Cape. ——(n.d.) The Real Russia, Sydney: Modern Publishers. Richardson, H.H. (1946) The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, Melbourne: William Heinemann. Ridge, V. (1982) ‘“I know ALL about women”’, Prime Time (Nov.): 2–3. Semmler, C. (ed.) (n.d.) A Frank Hardy Swag, Sydney: Harper & Row. Smith, G. (1985) ‘Making folk music’, Meanjin 44(4):477–90. Stivens, D. (1951) Jimmy Brockett: Portrait of a Notable Australian, Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Stoddart, B. (1986) Saturday Afternoon Fever: Sport in the Australian Culture, North Ryde: Angus & Robertson. Summers, A. (1975) Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonisation of Women in Australia, Ringwood: Penguin. Vamplew, W. (1988) ‘Tales we win: recent works on the history of gambling in Australia’, Sporting Traditions 4(2):234–9. Wannan, B. (ed.) (1954) The Australian: Yarns, Ballads, Legends, Traditions of the Australian People, Adelaide: Rigby. Ward, R. (1958) The Australian Legend, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ——(1978) ‘The Australian legend re-visited’, Historical Studies 18(71):171–90. Welcome, J. (1967) ‘Nat Gould novelist of the turf’, London Magazine 7:54–9. Whitlam, E.G. (1978) ‘Introduction’ to Hardy, The Unlucky Australians, London: Pan. Wilkes, G.A. (ed.) (1980) A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, Melbourne: Fontana/Collins. ——(1981) The Stockyard and the Croquet Lawn: Literary Evidence for Australian Cultural Development, Port Melbourne: Edward Arnold. Williams, P. (1987a) ‘Gambling with socialism: a Hardy obsession’, Southern Review 20(1):69–87. ——(1987b) ‘Writing, reading, politics: an analysis of some debates within and around the institution of literature in Australia with particular reference to the work of Frank Hardy’, two volumes, Unpublished PhD thesis, Griffith University. Williams, R. (1981) Culture, Glasgow: Fontana. ——(1989) Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism, R.Gable (ed.), London: Verso. Wilson, R.R. (1990) In Palamedes’ Shadow: Explorations in Play, Game and Narrative Theory, Boston: Northeastern University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1979) On Certainty, G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H.von Wright (eds), trans. D.Paul and Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell.

7 BINGO IN BRITAIN An analysis of gender and class Rachael Dixey1

The 1960 Betting and Gaming Act can be claimed as the most significant landmark in the history of commercial bingo in Great Britain. The Act was designed to clear up the confusion and anomalies which existed in Britain’s gaming laws. It was warmly received by both public and media as bringing legislation into line with the times. ‘Sense at last’, wrote the News Chronicle, whilst the Daily Telegraph exclaimed, ‘Betting and Gaming laws are a nettle which at last the Government—to its credit—has grasped’ (Newman 1972:4). The Act may have been successful in its primary objective, that of legalising and controlling ‘off-course’ cash betting, but it created a number of loopholes and opportunities such that the initial optimism surrounding its introduction quickly faded. The Act, it was felt, had two undesirable consequences. First, according to Levin, ‘although the blameless housewife and the deserving vicar had indeed benefited from the legislation, so had others far less innocent’ (Levin 1970:13). In other words, the gambling industry underwent rapid expansion and there emerged a highly respectable entrepreneurial sector. Perfect businessmen like Cyril Stein of Ladbroke’s with his accounting and banking background, took over from Rogue Honest Joe as the men behind the emergent safe industry of huge turnovers and high profits and low overheads…the legalised gambling entrepreneurs had come to stay. (Fuller 1974:43) Betting turnover increased by 154 per cent in 1961; by 1 June 1961, 13,340 licences for betting shops were in operation (Cornish 1978:22). Second, the Act appeared to encourage more people to gamble. In the absence of reliable research, it is not known whether this is the case; certainly cash betting turnover did increase. But as betting activity was more visible and more thorough records were kept it is difficult to assess accurately the increase in the numbers of people taking part. The Act did have a dramatic effect on the increase of people playing bingo. Bingo was a well-established feature of life in the working men’s clubs, trades clubs and other forms of social clubs used by the working class. It was previously controlled under the Small Lotteries and Gaming Act of 1956, which forbade private gain. Rather, clubs and other organisations used bingo to raise funds for charitable or communal purposes. This legislation was strictly enforced. For example, The Daily Express (3 February 1962) reported that police swooped on a primary school at night and caught more than 300

Gambling cultures

126

people playing bingo in a gymnasium. The headmaster was calling the numbers; the aim was to raise money for a new Roman Catholic school. The headmaster and others were fined. More importantly perhaps, the Huddersfield Friendly and Trade Societies Club was also prosecuted around the same period. This ruling affected potentially approximately 5,000 clubs around the country. With the 1960 Act, club organisers had the option of escaping the restrictive power of the 1956 Act by organising bingo under what was in effect a loophole of the 1960 Act. Under the new legislation members of private clubs could gamble. Thus, flawed legislation was a major factor in facilitating the dramatic development of bingo, with clubs reacting to the petty rules of the earlier legislation and the poor draftsmanship of the later Act. Soon after the introduction of the 1960 Act, Newman notes that ‘the first sets of [bingo] premises started to appear with astounding, and to many observers, highly alarming rapidity’ (Newman 1972:74). In September 1961, The Times wrote, ‘the bingo craze has taken almost everybody by surprise…. Cinemas, dance halls, piers, unemployment assembly halls have gone over to it wholesale.’ By 1963, a national opinion poll indicated that 12 per cent of the adult population was involved in commercially organised bingo, and by 1966, 24 per cent. The declining cinema industry in particular seized the opportunity to put their existing premises to more profitable use. Whilst there was general concern that Britain had become a nation of gamblers, bingo was singled out for particular concern and derision. ‘The amount we spend on bingo is equal to the entire national budget of Uganda’, moaned the magazine Nova, whilst with typical disdain The Times asserted, ‘those who hopefully scan the social scene for growing evidence of the “creative use of leisure”, one of the promised fruits of universal education, are bound to be depressed by the success of this cretinous pastime’ (14 September 1961). In response to such concerns, the government acted again, passing the 1968 Gaming Act, in an effort to check the uncontrolled growth of gambling. This established the Gaming Board, to act as a watchdog over all forms of gaming. Every aspect of bingo became subject to strict regulations. The ‘Golden Age’ of frantic competition between bingo clubs, daring promotional stunts, large prizes and the unrestricted mixing of bingo with other forms of gaming were over. The Gaming Board was clear that bingo had come to stay, but also it had definite views on how it wished to see the game developed in the 1970s and beyond. In an early report, it wrote: Bingo is a very popular game, especially among housewives and it soon became apparent to the board that the half a million or so women who play each day should not be exposed to the temptations of hard gaming. Parliament had taken a benevolent view of bingo provided it remained a neighbourly form of gaming played for modest stakes…. We felt that having separated bingo from hard gaming we should encourage the bingo proprietors to develop the social side of the activity…. Well run bingo and social clubs were already beginning to meet a need for organised recreation and social life which had not previously been catered for. (Gaming Board Report 1969:9)

Bingo in britain

127

Thus in the space of a decade, commercial bingo had firmly established itself in British working-class life. A number of questions can be asked: Why did bingo become so popular? Why is commercial bingo a peculiarly working-class and predominantly a female activity? Was this actually a new trend, or an old pattern in disguise? Taking the last of these questions first helps to answer the question of why bingo became so popular. It can be argued that commercial bingo fitted into the traditions of commercial provision of leisure and female gambling. From the 1880s in particular, both traditions accelerated. Meller notes that by 1905 in Bristol, ‘popular taste was being formed by commercial entertainment’ (1976:222), whilst Wild notes that in Rochdale, ‘leisure provision was increasingly removed from any kind of popular control’ (1979:160). Mecca, one of the first commercial organisations selling leisure as a product, started by selling coffee to men on their way to work—the name Mecca derives from the blend of coffee used—and through catering the company entered dance halls, variety theatres and then was the first to run bingo on a commercial basis. Thus by the late Victorian age the British working class had become consumers of organised, commercial pursuits rather than producers of their own informal, community-based leisure. During the transition from the Victorian to the Edwardian period, the cinema became a focal point of the neighbourhood; in Leeds, for example, 107 cinemas were built, 69 per cent of them before 1920 and 98 per cent before 1939. Each community would have its cinemas within walking distance from home. In 1946 a survey showed that 35 per cent of women visited the cinema once a week or more; only 25 per cent never went. Going to ‘the pictures’ was particularly important for women: It is not at all unusual for women to attend the cinema unaccompanied. For many women with young children the cinema is the sole relaxation outside the home and they often come alone while the husband looks after the children…. Going to a show is an occasion for active neighbouring; it expresses an established relationship. (Kuper 1953:120) Research in 1946 showed that 71 per cent of cinema-goers were not influenced in their decision whether or not to go to the cinema by the nature of the film being shown—the important thing was to be going out, with the cinema as the destination (Box 1951:231). This established a social pattern which was repeated in the use of bingo a decade later, with women meeting in the same physical space, undertaking an activity with some important similarities to film watching. Both activities focus on events external to relatively passive participants, in an atmosphere of non-intimate companionship. Cinema attendance had begun to decline by the end of the 1950s, explained by popular conception as due to the growth in television ownership. Thus, women meeting outside the home, paying for leisure so as to engage in neighbourliness and ‘a night out’ was an established practice by the 1960s. Likewise, there is a long tradition of female betting, which the invisibility of women in leisure studies and social history generally has failed to fully recognise. Booth’s social surveys of London at the turn of the century reported, ‘All must bet, women as well as men. Bookies stand about and meet men as they come to and from their work’ (Booth 1903:57). In 1910 alone, £52 million was staked on horses and £48 million on football.

Gambling cultures

128

During the First World War, there was a rapid increase in betting, ‘mainly among women’ (Burns 1932:78, his emphasis). By 1932, £200 million was bet on horses and 10 million people did the football pools. Gambling was a normal part of working-class life; Newman’s study of a working-class community describes the gambler as the norm and the non-gambler as the ‘deviant oddity’ (1972:74). McKibbin’s work on gambling before 1939 shows that money spent on gambling was a ‘recurrent but strictly controlled element in such disposable income as the working class had’ (McKibbin 1979). Only small amounts of money were used, which, if saved, would not have made much impact on the family fortunes. Rather, gambling offered the poor a chance to supplement the family income. Systematic betting of the women…is in many cases…a deliberate effort to add to the income. A man comes to the door of a woman who, either from her own thriftlessness, or from stern necessity, is hard pressed for money, and presents her with the possibility of spending a shilling and winning five pounds. How should she not listen to him? (Bell 1911:12) Gambling is prosaic, part of constant efforts to make the best of one’s existence. In contemporary times: Gambling is not really, for [the working class], an attempt to redress the balance of destiny, a small dream of escape, fame or fortune…winning the pools is a remote mirage deep in the back of a working man’s mind. Winning on horses or bingo just doesn’t bring in enough money to make any difference. And when people do win, the money is fed straight back to bring small comforts or gifts into their ordinary lives. (Harrison 1975:722) A community study carried out by the author in a working-class community, Armley, in Leeds (1980–82), found that 44 per cent of women and 67 per cent of their husbands did the football pools, 30 per cent and 42 per cent respectively bet on horses, 47 per cent and 30 per cent played bingo, and 56 per cent and 40 per cent bought lottery tickets. When asked whether bingo was regarded as a form of gambling, 42 per cent of the sample (all women) said that it was not. Not only is this form of gambling an ordinary feature of life for these women, then, but it is so ordinary that it is not even seen as ‘gambling’. To summarise thus far, it can be argued that commercial bingo slipped into an existing context. There was also an acceptance of small-scale gambling together with an established practice of purchasing leisure in commercial premises that were located within the community. There was a tradition of women going out together, unaccompanied by husbands to cinemas. The bingo club filled the nascent social void caused by the reduction in the appeal of the cinema. However, there were also some new features of the early 1960s in Britain which affected the emergence of bingo. First, there was increased affluence for many (though not all). This ‘and the increasing tempo of change was creating a rising appetite for excitement throughout England…. The bright lights were indeed reaching the provinces—and not just the bingo palaces and the

Bingo in britain

129

striptease clubs and steak houses, but the Chinese restaurants and the taste for Spanish holidays’ (Booker 1969:49). As much as social change, however, it was physical restructuring of working-class neighbourhoods which affected those neighbourhoods. The slum clearance programmes of the 1950s and 1960s, with communities being removed to new housing estates, often on the edge of town, with high-rise flats rather than street-level housing, dramatically changed the spatial structure around which the community organised itself. The neighbourhood in its old form, a central institution of working-class culture which provided the setting for social interaction, was destroyed. Williams and others have argued that although the social classes can be distinguished by speech, dress, values and so on, ‘the crucial distinction is between alternative ideas of the nature of social relationship’ (Williams 1961:312). Lockwood presents a picture of ‘traditional working class’ life: The existence of such closely-knit cliques of friends, workmates, neighbours and relatives is the hallmark of the traditional working class community. The values expressed through these social networks emphasise mutual aid in everyday life and the obligation to join in the gregarious pattern of leisure. (Lockwood 1966:251) The effect of the reduction of semi-public space, crucial to traditional patterns of working-class interaction and the ‘gregarious pattern of leisure’, is reflected in the comments of respondents from the 1980–82 Armley survey: Before they knocked the houses down a lot of people used to pass my gate, and it was ‘Oh, how are you?’ ‘What are you doing?’, you know, if you were hanging your washing out. The community was here—you didn’t have to go and look for it. In Armley, the wash house, an important focal point for women, was demolished and, many years later, a sports centre was built on the site. Although the policy of rehousing has changed since the 1960s such that new homes are built on the sites of the old, attention still tends not to be given by planners to community buildings. The British working-class home traditionally was not—and is not—used as a locale for non-family interaction. The privatisation of leisure, with home consumption of television and video to the fore, is not an adequate substitute for socialising. Moreover, for women, the home is also a workplace, even if they also have paid work outside home: ‘Television isn’t getting you out of the house. And you’re sat there watching television and you’re thinking, “well, I should be doing that”, and you feel guilty, you know, you can see it [housework] all around you.’ ‘Neighbouring’ and interaction with both extended family and others takes place outside the home, such as in working men’s clubs and pubs. These places, however, are essentially masculine; entry for women is legitimate only when accompanied by men. For married women in particular the options are limited. Typical comments from women in Armley about bingo were:

Gambling cultures

130

It’s one place where you can go without a male escort; there’s no question of ‘oh, what’s she doing here on her own?’ I’ve got three kids and I’ve nowhere else to go. For some people it’s the only way to get company. It is important to point out that bingo is more exclusively working class than it is exclusively female. Downes et al. (1976) claim that as many men play bingo as women, if all venues for bingo playing are included, whereas ‘not being working class was practically enough to predict virtually no bingo playing’ (1976:180). Players are overwhelmingly drawn from manual occupation backgrounds. Although men play at working men’s and other clubs, they usually play a game or two of bingo as part of an evening’s entertainment doing other things—playing pool, drinking—and thus bingo is not the predominant activity. However, the clientele of commercial bingo clubs is overwhelmingly female (85 per cent) where bingo is the predominant activity.

THE GAME Whereas bingo was identified strongly as the ‘only’ thing to do for women in the Armley study, there are elements of the game itself and its structure in bingo clubs which make it uniquely placed to meet the needs of its female working-class players. The concept of games of chance with numbers dates back centuries, to tumbule in seventeenth-century Italy, lotto in Britain in the 1880s, housey-housey and tombola to the British army and navy respectively. The first commercial appearance of bingo was in the United States in the depression of the 1930s, where people played in the hope of ‘taking home a ham, a box of groceries, a tin of coffee or one of the rare money prizes’ (Dulles 1965:377). In commercial bingo clubs in Britain, there is none of the caricatured calls of ‘legs eleven, number eleven’ and so on. There is complete silence apart from the voice of the caller whilst the game is in progress; the atmosphere is serious. Whilst there is skill involved in playing several books simultaneously, often as many as six, the game nevertheless does not require a lengthy initiation period in order to understand how to play. It can be suggested that one ingredient of its success is that it is a game of pure chance. That is, as it requires no special skills, there can be no criticism for failing to win; the absence of competition or the opportunity to show skill minimises the possibility of conflict, and the game can proceed in an amiable manner. If one of its functions is to create neighbourliness and consolidate friendships, this is important.

SOCIABILITY Nearly 6 million people in Britain play bingo in commercial bingo clubs; daily admissions are just short of half a million. A national survey carried out by the author questioned 7,166 bingo players in clubs throughout Wales, Scotland and England. Of these 44 per cent gave their primary reason for playing bingo (from a given list) as ‘to

Bingo in britain

131

win some money’; in practice, however, players found it difficult to disentangle their various motives. The majority gave reasons which were to do with being with people. Bingo is used deliberately at times to organise regular contact between the female members of the extended family, or to find female companionship: The reason I come in the afternoon is to get women to talk to. I’ve got a house full of men. I like bingo. It cheers you up, keeps your mind off anything troubling you, keeps you in touch with your family when you don’t live near them. Being a widow, I come to bingo to meet people, and have a good laugh and a chat. It is also used simply to be among other people, without necessarily interacting with them: If you’re not a person who does mix easily, you can sit down and you don’t have to mix. Some women like the fact that it is possible to be more or less sociable according to mood; women with young children enjoyed playing on their own, not having to talk to anyone. I usually go for a bit of sanity. Of the national sample, 55 per cent of the 76 years and older age group played three times a week or more, compared with 18 per cent of the 18–25-year age group. It can be argued that in a society where other caring networks have failed, the bingo club provides a focus for a ‘moral community’. In many clubs the management takes its welfare role seriously, sending flowers to members when ill or bereaved. Many elderly people arrive up to two hours before the game starts, to eat, knit, read or play cards with others in a warm place (particularly in winter). I like the club because it is warm, comfortable and I think it is more of a social club rather than just a place to play bingo. Where one can go and feel content at my age and feel that one is among friends. It’s the best thing to happen for lonely people. Remarks made by women during the course of fieldwork suggest that the club is seen as a ‘home from home’. In social research ‘at-homeness’ refers to a state of being comfortable and cosily familiar with a physical place. The attitude has a reverse side, that of feelings

Gambling cultures

132

of territoriality which may involve aggression. Territoriality involves the organisation of space into ‘clearly demarcated territories which are made distinctive and considered at least partially exclusive by their occupants’ (Soja 1971:19). Inside the club, 76 per cent of the national sample said they like to sit in the same seat. This can cause arguments: ‘People do moan if you happen to sit in their seats. It’s the older generation who do that’ This defence of space allows greater control over social contact. If one purpose of bingo playing is to interact with specific others, or to interact minimally, such control is important. Of the national sample, 35.7 per cent played bingo with a friend, 20.6 per cent with a group of friends, 23.6 per cent with relatives, 8.9 per cent played ‘alone’, and 11.2 per cent played with their husbands. (These groups are not mutually exclusive.) Players are often introduced by parents, and for there to be three generations of players is not uncommon. Although the stereotype of the bingo player is a middle-aged woman, significant numbers of younger people play; 64 per cent of players have started to play by the age of 45; 18 per cent of players are under 35 years of age.

WINNING AND LOSING They do come socially, but they all come to hope to win some money, you know, it all balances out—it’s not a question of winning money or losing money, it’s more somewhere to go.

In this seemingly confusing statement, this woman sums up the difficulties of distinguishing social and gambling reasons for playing, instrumental from expressive functions. Players do not expect to win. When asked how important winning was, women replied: Not at all. You go for a night out. The money is just an added thrill on the very rare occasion that it happens. It’s a night out and an added bonus if you win. Only place a woman can go on her own without raising eyebrows. Certainly the possibility is exciting and encourages people to return: It’s a great feeling when you win. Say they won £1000 on Wednesday night, right, so they’ll go back next Wednesday and say ‘Maybe I’ll get it again’. Well that’s human nature. Winning is infrequent, however:

Bingo in britain

133

I think I’ve won once. (Laughs) No—I’ve been going in here for two years and I’ve only won twice and it’s only been a couple of pounds each time. But it’s just a bit of excitement…. If I win then it’s going to make me feel good but I don’t go out to win. I don’t see how anybody can expect to win when there’s hundreds of people there. Players are thus realistic about their chances. The relatively small, irregular winnings are usually shared, which is a further way of sustaining special networks. One 20-year-old said she would always share with her mother: I don’t know when I get older when I’ll be needing her, if I get married and that, but I’ve always looked after me Mam. The cost of bingo is not usually offset against winnings. Players know that they are not likely to recoup their outlay. The cost is frequently compared to that of other activities, such as going to the pub. Many women asserted a right to spend money as they wished, as long as they were not spending money which they could not afford. The employment rate (that is, involvement in the workforce of women aged 18–60) is higher for bingo players than for the general population. Downes and colleagues’ (1976) data also show bingo playing to be higher for women in paid employment. Having their ‘own’ money means that women feel more entitled to their own leisure expenditure. A significant difference between players and non-players which emerged in the Armley study and that of Downes et al. is that those with ‘even the slightest promotion prospects’ (Downes et al. 1976:181) or those who view themselves as upwardly socially mobile and see the virtue of saving, do not play.

RITUAL Any participant observer is struck by the ritual of bingo, if ritual is defined as a ‘striking or incongruous rigidity…some conscious regularity’ (Goody 1961:156). The repetitiveness of bingo and the fact that it is always known what will happen next is seen as an asset. One player explained the function of the rituals in bingo as seen by her: I think people feel safe. I think people get frightened at too much change. … People tend to want to stay as they are. Everybody wants more money and to live a bit better, but they don’t want to see things change too much. You get all these computers and things like that and it frightens people because they are losing control. Writing of other leisure activities, this common desire for social predictability has been explained thus: Through this constant repetition of the same kinds of activity it seems that people find satisfaction in consolidating the world they know rather than expanding it, in making secure their old roles rather than seeking new

Gambling cultures

134

ones. It is thus, by keeping ‘still’…that the individual can avoid the impact of the powerful and unknown forces of ‘society’. (Rich 1953:361) In their everyday lives, bingo players as a group are among the least likely to be in control of such forces. Wishing to expand one’s world anyway is perhaps a specifically western, middle-class value, ‘Safety’ and ‘feeling safe’ were mentioned many times in discussion with players: It’s a pleasant evening, you have a chat, you have a laugh, and you’re sort of safe with people. I mean, with little kids, the ones that cry and carry on are the ones with no routine, whereas if you know what’s coming next you feel a lot safer. There is a material dimension to this apart from any psychological considerations. It is important for women with families, chores and buses to catch that they know exactly when the session will start and finish. This routine is relished; one woman explained the appeal of the regularity in the structure of the game: It’s routine. You know exactly what’s going to happen. What time this is going to finish and what time that is going to finish. You can sort of plan your night out, you know, because you know there won’t be any change. Another reason for routine is to do with luck. It is commonly asserted that a distinguishing feature of the British working class is its fatalism. Luck is almost tangible, and if ‘you’re right good, you’ll get the luck put on you…. If you do your work and you don’t do anything bad, the luck comes on.’ Courting luck results in a superstitious adherence to particular routines, such as wearing the same clothes which were worn when getting a full house, buying cards in a certain order, at certain times, after certain people, sitting in particular seats, using particular pens. Finally, there are important issues surrounding women’s safety, in a physical sense. The commercial bingo club is a largely female environment, where women are freed from the unwanted attention of men. A large crowd leaves at the same time, giving safety in numbers on the street. Inside the club, women have control over sexual innuendo, such as that often directed at a male caller. More generally, there is a feeling that: ‘It’s [the club is] run by the customers mainly’. The caller bears the brunt of players’ jokes and criticism: [The callers] have got to be thick skinned because they can really shout you down…. Colin’s a fairly weak one…and they like to pull him to pieces. If you get a caller you can’t hear the numbers right, or if he calls too fast, they don’t like it. The customers tend to rule in a place like that.

Bingo in britain

135

THE CLUB Players did not display sentimental attachment to their club, but acknowledged a pragmatic, symbiotic relationship based on practical needs. Players were blunt about the motives of club owners—to make profits. Of one owner, a player said: Well, they say he’s just been to Israel on our money, when he comes back with his lovely tan. It’s just a joke…we know that we spend our money here of our own free will—it’s just a standing joke. When asked for what reasons they would change clubs, only a quarter said that they would ‘never’ change. The remaining three-quarters were equally divided between changing clubs if prizes were larger, if it were cheaper, or if it were closer to home. Twothirds of the national sample played at the club nearest their home, and a quarter played at more than one club. Younger players were the most likely to bypass their local club to travel to a city-centre venue where prizes would be larger. A quarter of players played at more than one club, and players in general could talk knowledgeably about the costs, prizes, staff and atmosphere of other clubs in the vicinity. Managers are very conscious of the need to maintain attendance rates—they did not assume club loyalty. Players identified the staff and manager as the main ingredients which make an attractive club. Potential operators go through a strict legal process to obtain a licence and have to establish that there is a demand in the area; existing operators can contest the granting of a licence in court. Within the commercial sector there are enormous variations in levels of decor, comfort and amenities. The equivalent of ‘sawdust and spittoon’ pubs can be found in the tombola clubs of the north-east of England, whilst the refurbished clubs of some of the major companies are visually stunning, giving quite a different experience. Many clubs in former cinemas have a more humdrum appearance, often with unit seating (pre-moulded tables and chairs) in the ‘stalls’ and retained cinema seating in the balcony. The ambience of clubs varies too, depending on their size, location and so on. On a Saturday night there is a feeling of ‘having a night out’, with women getting dressed up for a special occasion; this contrasts with the feeling of routine in the afternoon sessions when a bingo game, for some, is fitted around shopping or household tasks. The younger players were also more likely to play in the evenings, whereas of the older age groups, 66–75 and over, 52 per cent play in the afternoon sessions. Of the money staked on cards by the players, 90 per cent is returned in prizes and 10 per cent given in tax to the government. The club therefore makes its living from entrance charges (usually a small amount, less than a pound), the sale of drinks and food, the fruit machines (each club is allowed two), and interval games. The 10 per cent tax was resented by players. The ‘real’ gamblers are perceived by players as those who play on the fruit machines (26.5 per cent of the national sample) and parti bingo (38.5 per cent of the sample). (Parti bingo is played on machines similar to those found in amusement arcades. It is a very fast game, played for prizes.) The fruit machines and parti bingo are vital to the profitability of the club. They were seen by non-participants as a way to lose a

Gambling cultures

136

lot of money. Bingo itself is not usually seen as a gamble in the sense that the outlay is known and is not exceeded. The same amount is spent at each session and can therefore be budgeted for. Cost varies with the number of books (cards) played. The majority, 72.5 per cent, played three or four books (that is, have three or four cards in front of them for each game.) If six books are played, all the numbers from 1 to 90 are present, and the player knows they must cross off a number on each call; they therefore know that they cannot miss a number, which makes this number of cards popular. Strictly, this means that the game is not one of equal chance, as those playing more books have a greater chance of a ‘full house’ (that is, crossing off all the numbers and therefore winning, if they are the first to do so). During the 1980s the bingo industry became concerned about declining admissions. Although many people (from all classes) gained from the economic situation of the 1980s, many working-class people in Britain faced increasing hardship. Of the national sample, 25.2 per cent said that they played less bingo at the time of the survey than they had a year previously, and 80 per cent of these gave a financial reason for this change. The bingo industry has responded by introducing a national game, which means that participating clubs can link for certain games to pool the prize money, and therefore make possible a few very large prizes. They have also rationalised clubs, and attempted to attract a younger, more affluent clientele. The evidence would suggest that the industry is in healthy shape for the 1990s.

A WOMAN’S PLACE… Bingo is played by those in the least powerful positions in British society. In one sense the game parodies the socio-economic situation in which many players find themselves, in their lack of economic power and reliance on luck or patronage. It clearly demonstrates who is controlled and who is controlling. However, it can also be seen that working-class women have taken the opportunity to fashion this activity in positive ways which suit them, and which offer some recreation for themselves, within the constraints which restrict their leisure options (see Dixey 1982, 1988; Deem 1986; Wimbush and Talbot 1988). As a working-class game, it can be seen as a rejection of the ‘municipal paternalism’ (Bacon 1980: personal communication) offered by public provision of leisure. It is also a flagrant refusal by the working class to spend time in in a ‘productive’ way. Thompson argues that ‘one recurrent form of revolt within Western industrial capitalism…has often taken the form of flouting the urgency of respectable time-values’ (Thompson 1967:95). Bingo players are heavily criticised for this ‘waste’ of their time. The Chairman of the Labour Party’s Scottish Council in 1973 remarked: It is high time we did something to woo working class mothers away from the bingo halls, clubs and casinos…people go there just to pass the time. We want to try to encourage them into better ways of using their so called leisure time.

Bingo in britain

137

Downes et al. comment that bingo has come to epitomise the ‘dead end use of leisure to which the newly “affluent” working class have resorted in the absence of anything better to do with their time’ (1976:174). The South Wales Argus in 1965 wrote that ‘to the uninitiated, bingo seems utterly dull and pointless, yet people still flock to it in their thousands; in many ways the only way of filling a huge vacuum in their lives’. Those uninitiated outsiders are not party to the social interactions which take place and therefore only see the game, not the larger ritual, with its communal consolidating processes. The need for places in which women could meet has long been acknowledged: Both young and middle aged women need some form of recreation; they need opportunities to use the leisure they have, and to indulge interests outside the home. They need to meet their fellows, to form social ties, to laugh…in short they need a club to which they can go at any time on any day for a few hours’ rest and recreation. (Spring-Rice [1939] 1981:201) Consistent with the pattern of leisure provision in contemporary capitalist society, the clubs to which women go are provided by profit-making concerns, the commercial bingo clubs. Whereas Spring-Rice in 1939 might have envisaged the emergence of working women’s clubs on the same lines as working men’s clubs, women have not had the politico-economic power or resources to establish such clubs for themselves, and neither have they infiltrated the ‘maleness’ of those clubs. In 1977 the Royal Commission on Gambling wrote that bingo clubs ‘fulfil a valuable social function’. The clubs introduce an element of pleasant diversion into the lives of their members, nearly 85 per cent of whom are women, mostly middle aged or elderly, and many of whom are of limited means…. They provide places where people can meet at very little expense…and the intervals between play provide plenty of opportunity for chatting with neighbours. These qualities are particularly apparent in the smaller establishments where the players know each other and are often known to the management. (Royal Commission on Gambling 1977:341–2) For a minority of players, the bingo club provides their only source of companionship. This is particularly important for those older players who do not belong to the Church or other organisations and who may have no family or lack regular social contact. Comments from elderly people such as ‘Bingo is my lifeline’, ‘Bingo is the only thing that keeps me going’ were frequent in this survey. Some were concerned that an aim of the research was to close the club—‘You’re not going to take it away, are you? It’s all we’ve got.’ For 89 per cent of the 76 years plus group in the sample, bingo was the main activity outside the home, and this was so even for half of the 26–35 age group. To accuse these women as the press consistently does, is an example of victim blaming. There is no evidence that ‘Wages, housekeeping, everything goes when addicts hear the call’, as one magazine asserts in its headline for a feature on bingo. As the survey showed, for the majority of women players, the amount spent on bingo is part of a tightly

Gambling cultures

138

controlled budget. Moreover, there is no reason to suggest that there are any more ‘problem’ bingo players than there are problem horse-race bettors or problem drinkers. For the majority of players the problems are not that they are ‘addicted’ or that they ‘spend the housekeeping’; their problems are to do with powerlessness and lack of control over their destinies, with poverty, discriminatory gender roles, lack of personal time and space (particularly for those with growing children), and increasing solitude and loneliness in old age. Large groups of people in Britain remain unaffected by the supposed opportunities of the ‘leisure explosion’ and the expansion of leisure-time choices. In the 1980s in Britain an estimated 10 million people lived in poverty and a quarter of all households consisted of elderly people, many of whom have limited means and three-quarters of whom left school without any qualifications. A leisure future conjured up by the futurologists in which ‘only a small percentage work…while the rest of us get on with home computing, Open University degrees, learning foreign languages and other edifying pursuits’ (Observer, 4 July 1982), will apply only to a small minority and reflects the dominant middle-class values and the wider cultural hegemony. The need for cheap, sociable entertainment outside the home for large sections of the population still exists. Until alternatives to bingo have been established, bingo will remain a central means of satisfying working-class women’s needs. The significance of bingo lies not in the game itself-a simple game of calling out numbers and ticking them off, with a prize to the first person to tick off all the numbers. Rather, bingo is a cipher to which different classes attach meaning and content, in a particularly class-based society. To members of the middle and upper classes it may be pernicious, symbolic of the decadence and apocalyptic powers of popular culture. To the government, bingo represents a substantial source of revenue and an incalculable value in terms of social containment. To the players, bingo is an unremarkable and beneficial fact of life, a home from home, an invaluable source of companionship, a refuge which offers excitement, and an opportunity to celebrate ‘traditional’ working-class values, such as neighbourliness, non-intimate companionship, the right to entertainment and so on. It is not surprising that so many women show such a strong preference for bingo, given the options bestowed on them by virtue of their gender and class. The future of bingo is dependent not only on changes in the leisure market and in the state of the economy but also on changes in the allocation of gender roles. For the present, bingo is an activity fashioned within the limitations of an imposed structure by those not in an economically, politically or socially dominant position. Bingo is used by these women to give expression and meaning to that position; it is also a most important means of coming to terms with that position and making it more attractive.

NOTES 1 This chapter is based on research carried out by the author in the early 1980s as part of a larger project on women’s leisure. A one-year community study (1981–82) was carried out in Armley, Leeds, a working-class community. It investigated women’s leisure opportunities in general and bingo in particular. A national survey was then carried out, which questioned players in eighty commercial bingo club sessions across Britain, with 7,166 players completing a questionnaire. The data referred to in the paper relate to these two studies; quotations are from players interviewed during the course of the research.

Bingo in britain

139

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bell, F. (1911) At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town, London: Nelson. Booker, C. (1969) The Neophiliacs: A Study of the Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties, London: Collins. Booth, C. (1903) Life and Labour of People in London, London: Nelson. Box, K. (1951) in B.S.Rowntree and G.R.Lavers, English Life and Leisure: A Social Study, London: Longmans, Green & Co. Burns, C. (1932) Leisure in the Modern World, London: Allen & Unwin. Cornish, D.B. (1978) Gambling: A Review of the Literature, London: HMSO. Deem, R. (1986) All Work and No Play: The Sociology of Women and Leisure, London: Open University Press. Dixey, R. (1982) Women, Leisure and Bingo, London: Trinity & All Saints College Press. ——(1988) ‘A means to get out of the house: working class women, leisure and bingo’, in J.Little, L.Peake and P.Richardson (eds) Women in Cities, London: Macmillan. Downes, D.M., Davies, B.P., David, M.E. and Stone, P. (1976) Gambling, Work and Leisure: A Study across Three Areas, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dulles, F. (1965) A History of Recreation. America Learns to Play, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall. Fuller, P. (1974) ‘Introduction’, in J.Halliday and P.Fuller, The Psychology of Gambling, London: Allen Lane. Gaming Board (1969) Report of the Gaming Board for Great Britain, London: HMSO. Goody, J. (1961) ‘Religion and ritual’, British Journal of Sociology 12:142–64. Harrison, P. (1975) ‘The gambling class’, New Society (20 March): 720–2. Kuper, L. (ed.) (1953) Living in Towns, London: Cresset Press. Levin, B. (1970) The Pendulum Years: Britain in the Sixties, London: Jonathan Cape. Lockwood, D. (1966) ‘Sources of variation in working class images of society’, Sociological Review 14:249–67. McKibbin, R. (1979) ‘Working-class gambling in Britain 1880–1934’, Past and Present 82 (Feb.): 147–78. Meller, H. (1976) Leisure and the Changing City, 1870–1914, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Newman, O. (1972) Gambling: Hazard and Reward, London: Athlone Press. Rich, D. (1953) ‘Spare time in the Black Country’, in L.Kuper, Living in Towns, London: Cresset Press. Rowntree, B.S. and Lavers, G.R. (1951) English Life and Leisure, London: Longman. Royal Commission on Gambling (1977) Final Report, 2 vols, London: HMSO. Soja, E. (1971) ‘The political organization of space’, Commission of College Geography, Resource Paper No. 8, Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers. Spring-Rice, M. ([1939] 1981) Working Class Wives, London: Virago. Thompson, E.P. (1967) ‘Time, work discipline and industrial capitalism’, Past and Present 38:57– 97. Wild, P. (1979) ‘Recreation in Rochdale 1900–1940’, in J.Clarke, C.Critcher and R. Johnson, Working Class Culture, London: Hutchinson. Williams, R. (1961) The Long Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wimbush, E. and Talbot, M. (eds) (1988) Relative Freedoms: Women and Leisure, London: Open University Press.

8 WHY ‘SLOTS’ EQUALS ‘GRIND’ IN ANY LANGUAGE The cross-cultural popularity of the slot machine Mark Dickerson

Any visitor to a contemporary casino would be surprised if they found that there were no slot machines available to play, even if they were a member of the more traditional casino clubs in London where there is a limit of four machines per casino. As there has been growth in the international casino business, so also has there been a parallel growth in the market for slots. They are available in casinos throughout Europe, with growth particularly in Spain and Holland, around the Pacific from New Zealand and Australia to Japan, in the American continent from Bolivia to Canada, throughout resorts in the Caribbean, and finally many hundreds of machines afloat aboard a variety of cruise ships operating out of Europe, the United States and Australasia. Recent growth in the United States has been stimulated by the development of casinos on Indian reservations and on river boats. The dominant concern of the following discussion is whether these ubiquitous machines have the same characteristics from Las Vegas to Wagga Wagga— that is, do the machines have to be specially designed to suit each particular national or cultural context and do they require modification whether the player is a visitor on vacation or is a resident with over 1,000 hours’ playing experience? It is argued below that machine characteristics are essentially the same for all countries and players and therefore that the psychological processes that underlie player attraction to, and persistence at, machine play may be common to all players regardless of culture or nationality. There is a significant problem concerning the lack of a good descriptive database which will assist analysis of the psychological basis of the international popularity of slot machines. Although it is well known that slots players in casinos and clubs around the world generate a greater take than all the traditional table games put together, there exists little or no published material on player characteristics, their patterns of gambling and their preferred machines. In this chapter the starting point focuses on gamblers who play slots in the registered club environment in New South Wales (NSW) where they have been legally available for over thirty years.

PSYCHO-SOCIAL THEORIES OF GAMBLING In attempting to explain the universality of human involvement in gambling, some historical sociological perspectives provide a helpful conceptual framework for a review

Why 'slots' equals 'grind' in any language

141

of contemporary psychological research. For example, Thomas (1901) emphasised the functional and evolutionary importance of the capacity to manage unpredictable events. He considered that gambling was instinctive to humans and as society became more organised and predictable, so the need to gamble would be greater. Certainly, most general theories of gambling assume some sort of human deprivation or dissatisfaction as a motivating force together with the subjective satisfactions associated with the gambling itself (Caldwell 1972; Downes et al. 1976; Cornish 1978). When applied to gamblers in a New England bar (Zola 1964), betting was interpreted as hitting out at the system by exercising some control over fate and by providing peer recognition of those who were skilful. Similarly for the workers in a small mining community, gambling and the possibility of a big win represented the only means of escape from the heavy, dirty and dangerous job below ground (Dennis et al. 1969). Cornish (1978) provided some conceptually important distinctions and a valuable theoretical framework which has been adopted throughout the following argument. Rather than assuming that gambling was a homogeneous set of games or activities, he emphasised that it was important to separate the factors that influenced the choice of a particular form of gambling from the factors that determined the manner in which the person came to use that particular form. The broad themes of his theoretical model therefore suggested that there was initially a sense of dissatisfaction (reduced or enhanced by individual differences) which led to attempts to seek out compensatory activities, one of which might be gambling. Factors that might influence the choice of a particular form of gambling could include availability, the gambling behaviour of parents and friends, social class and chance events that brought the person into contact with one form of gambling rather than another. Cornish emphasised the common-sense view that the ready availability of a particular form of gambling was a significant factor influencing a person’s choice. In the second stage of the model it was proposed that once a form of gambling had been chosen then the person learned to use that leisure activity in a manner that gave satisfaction to the individual, whether by way of excitement, skill, entertainment or escape. This two-stage model outlined by Cornish (1978) provides a framework for the consideration of the following questions: why do so many people select slot machines as their preferred form, why and how do they learn to continue to play them, and why do some show such persistence that gambling-related problems may result, affecting the player and their family?

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SLOTS’ POPULARITY WITHIN AUSTRALIA If availability is a crucial element in a person’s choice of a particular form of gambling, then the state of New South Wales provides a good case example with a thirty-five-year history of slot-machine play. By 1990s the state’s population of around 4.5 million have ready access to approximately 50,000 slot machines in registered clubs and hotels, and 4.11 per cent of the population play them once a week or more often (Dickerson and Baron 1992). Charles Le Fey is credited with the invention of the slot machine in the United States in 1895. The original machine had three drums on which were painted symbols, not from

Gambling cultures

142

playing cards as gambling on these was illegal, but of fruit and the famous BAR symbol which acted as a ‘wild’ card and was associated with the big payouts. After putting a coin in the slot, the pull of a lever would set the drums spinning at random, and as they came to rest, one symbol from each drum appeared side by side in a window. Specified combinations paid out different amounts to the player, delivered with a clatter and a crash of coin. Contemporary electronic versions of this original mechanical gambling device are called ‘slots’ in the United States and by international operators of casinos and gambling clubs, ‘poker machines’ in Australia and ‘one-armed bandits’ or ‘fruit machines’ in the United Kingdom.1 Prior to the Second World War, registered clubs within NSW comprised sporting and business clubs and those of the Returned Services League (RSL), originally formed when wounded soldiers returned to Australia from Gallipoli from 1916 onwards. Caldwell (1983) attributes the significant growth in the number and membership of NSW registered clubs from 1946 onwards to changes in legislation that permitted members to purchase alcohol and to play ‘poker machines’ or slots. The latter occurred in 1956 and was considered by Caldwell to be a crucial factor leading to a rapid expansion in the club industry from 452 clubs in 1954, to 1,052 in 1957 and 1,570 by 1988. Lynch (1990) has emphasised that the revenue from slots created well-furbished clubs in contrast to hotels, where drinking remained male-dominated involving swilling and fighting. The inclusion of women members in the clubs ensured that they too had access to slots as a readily available form of gambling. Membership of these registered clubs has always been relatively easy and cheap to achieve and guests may accompany members. Thus for over thirty years men and women within NSW have had ready access to slot machines in comfortable, secure, social environments. The technological development of the slot machines themselves has also been an important factor as the gambling market has matured (Table 8.1). Not only have the machine’s characteristics changed, but related computerised player and machine recording and control systems have influenced marketing strategies.2 They have also contributed to the view that governments can securely control the slots industry, thereby encouraging other Australian states to legislate for introduction of slots.

Table 8.1 Frequency of gambling by form by adults in one Australian state (NSW) where all three forms had been available for at least ten years(%) Frequency each month Bought lottery Played slots Bet off-course Once 8.5 2–3 times 7.9 4 times 19.2 More than 4 times 3.4 Total 39.2 Source: Adapted from Caldwell et al. 1988

9.8 10.5 3.3 3.7 27.7

4.0 2.3 0.9 1.7 9.2

A case can be made that slots players in Australia have the greatest experience and are the most sophisticated in the world. One major machine manufacturer in Australia claims that their machines have become increasingly complex in order to ensure that local

Why 'slots' equals 'grind' in any language

143

players with perhaps over 1,000 hours of practice in playing the machines do not become bored. Tracing the move from the original mechanical three-reelers that were first legalised in NSW in 1956 to the video six-reelers which entered the market in the 1990s merits a chapter of its own in a history of gambling. In brief, what has remained the same throughout is the time taken for the reels to spin (at or just under 3 seconds) regardless of the number of reels or even whether the machine has reels (called a ‘stepper’) or merely has the appearance of reels on a video screen. Similarly, the average number of plays between wins has remained roughly the same at around six. It is possible that even Charles Fey himself would feel at home in front of a video six-reeler once he had realised that without a handle to pull, a button had to be pressed. Then the ‘reels’ would spin and the sound effects faithfully reproduce the noise of the traditional mechanical stepper. Charles might have wondered about the three lines of symbols displayed at the end of the spin and missed the opportunity to bet on up to five lines (multiline) and to raise his stake for each play by up to a multiple of five (multiplier). The most significant change would appear to be the ‘failure’ of the machine to pay out coin for a win. In contemporary NSW, player credits accumulate as coins are entered into the machine, reduce play by play according to the amount wagered, and accumulate when a win occurs—all being displayed as an available credit total. At the completion of a game a button press pays out the player’s credits as coin unless the sum is large enough to require payout from a staff member. Finally, just to further confuse Charles, after every twenty or so plays the whole screen might change to a cartoon feature where, for example, the player may ‘choose’ one of five symbols to open to find the size of the win they have made. A range of other types of machines using a video screen enable the player to enjoy games of draw poker and blackjack and also games where bingo or keno cards are filled out at random. The completion of certain lines or sections of the card results in wins. A similar game called ‘Lucky envelopes’ displays a lotto ticket with obscured symbols that are ‘wiped’ or ‘scratched’ by the player one at a time to see if the displayed sequence results in a win. Related developments in the computerised monitoring of slots have made possible additional choices for the player. First, a group of machines may be linked together to enable large jackpots of thousands of dollars to be paid at random, contingent upon a play at any one of the machines. Second, club members may be provided with an electronically coded membership card which, placed in a scanner beside each machine, records or tracks all their plays and rewards them on a points system according to their turnover. These accumulated points can be cashed, and represent a second level of financial motivation for regular, persistent play. These tracking systems, and the computerised monitoring of all machines, provide a very sensitive data stream for club management and machine manufacturers to evaluate the effectiveness of both machines and the marketing of slots to players. Similar computerised monitoring systems have been incorporated into the control and taxation systems in other Australian states, as Queensland and Victoria passed legislation in 1992 permitting the introduction of slots. In the former state the metered win per day of every machine in the state is recorded daily by the Division of Machine Gaming, and in Victoria a costly real-time control recording system of all machine plays is operating.

Gambling cultures

144

The development of these systems has enabled governments to render impotent the predictions that the introduction of slots inevitably would lead to increased criminal activities (Board of Inquiry into Poker Machines 1983). One aspect of contemporary slot design impossible to do justice to in a chapter of this nature is the artwork. The panels on the machine, particularly the one immediately below the reels, the belly panel, gives the name of the ‘game’, such as Wild Bar or Top Dollar, and may feature casino chips, a couple dancing or even flamingos all completed in exquisite artwork. Manufacturers’ research has demonstrated that the artwork fine-tunes the attraction of a particular machine to players. In some cases where errors have been made with certain target markets—for example, using a Japanese rather than Chinese dragon—the machine has been a complete failure. The shift away from using coins to activate play for every pay-out has been extended in Victoria to enable players to buy credit entered on a magnetic account card, which then activates the slot machine chosen and onto which are credited any wins at the termination of play. Account cards offer player convenience and increase the speed of play, but also help to resolve security concerns for both staff and player. Where previously coin theft from the pay-out tray was trivial, the use of A$1 and $2 dollar coins and larger denomination tokens in some casinos has magnified the problem. Club operators are equally concerned with the purely financial consideration of having the hoppers of some hundred or more machines in a single club being kept full with a total of several thousands of dollars.

Table 8.2 Average stake of adult gamblers in one Australian state (NSW) on lottery, slots and offcourse betting (A$) Lottery Slots Off-course betting All 9.22 19.22 19.90 Males 12.44 22.42 23.75 Females 5.74 9.03 4.92 Source: Adapted from Caldwell et al. 1988

The first thirty-five years of the slots market in NSW is clearly an idiosyncratic development where slots have become readily available to potential players throughout the entire state (Table 8.2). For over thirty years, however, the other state governments strongly resisted the legislation of slots. The recent about-face on this issue by the rest of Australia has been the result of a complex interaction of fiscal imperatives and technological developments, in particular where the latter have facilitated regulatory mechanisms. Access to NSW slots also varies from the pattern of machine gambling in other countries. In NSW there was no legal casino throughout the period 1956–94 when slots were widely available in registered clubs; and only in the last three years have slots, restricted to electronic video draw-poker machines, been available in hotels. Superficially this may appear very different from most other venues around the world where slots are usually available in casinos. However, on closer examination, slots in NSW clubs are typically in large, purpose-built gaming areas which are increasingly advertised as

Why 'slots' equals 'grind' in any language

145

‘casino’ areas. These club ‘casinos’ contain a wide range of types of machines and promotions, and in nearby club areas the player can access food, drink, entertainment and banking facilities. Although the timeless divorce from reality achieved in contemporary theme casinos in Las Vegas may not be achieved, the gaming areas in clubs have no exterior windows and opening hours are long. Yet a strong argument can be sustained that the experience of slots players in NSW and more recently throughout Australia is in most respects typical of players world-wide. Limited generalisations from the empirical database comparing Australian slots players to players in other cultures and nationalities is therefore justified. From this overview of slots development in Australia, it may be possible to begin to answer the question about the machine preferences in different countries.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES UNDERLYING SLOTMACHINE PLAY Little published research has focused on the first stage of Cornish’s (1978) conceptual model of gambling as a leisure activity; that is, the initial choice of slots as the preferred form of gambling. Most players say they play ‘to be sociable’ and ‘for entertainment’, and motives concerning excitement and the possibility of winning money also feature in the answers of almost half the players questioned (Dickerson et al. 1985). None of these motivations have much valency unless slots are easily available. In 1991, when slots were only legally available in NSW, 4.11 per cent of the adult population of that state were regular players: once per week or more often. Population samples taken at the same time in other states such as Queensland detected only a few isolated cases of slots players, those who either played the video gaming machines at one of the two Queensland casinos, or who travelled interstate to NSW or internationally to casinos outside Australia. Since the introduction of gaming machines into clubs and hotels in Queensland from February 1992 onwards, the availability of the machines has increased and so has their popularity. The first two years saw the introduction of 14,000 machines and a total state-wide metered win of A$1 million per day, 15 per cent of turnover. Availability is clearly a crucial factor in the initial stage of a person’s choice of a form of gambling. Within the Australian context the increased availability of slots may well have greater significance for women than men. In Queensland prior to the introduction of slots the only generally available ‘hard’ or continuous forms of gambling (Dickerson and Hinchy 1985) were bingo and off-course betting, where the latter remained essentially a maledominated leisure activity. In considering the factors that influence a gambler’s choice of type of gambling it is important to note the way in which the recent technological developments blur the boundary between lotto/lotteries and slots games, thereby utilising the popularity of the former. Lotteries are the most commonly preferred form of gambling even in Australia, where most other types of legalising betting and gaming are available (McMillen and Eadington 1986). The linking of slot machines within and across different clubs has enabled the additional major jackpots to approach the size of those offered by lotto and lotteries. This has widened the initial appeal of slots to more players.

Gambling cultures

146

Although initial attraction to slots is important, it is the second stage of Cornish’s model, the ways in which a person learns to use slots to satisfy longer-term needs—the ways in which a player persists and becomes a regular player—that is of particular interest to psychologists. The validity of conceptually separating attraction and persistence is evidenced by the way in which the ‘same’ factor may have the reverse effect from the first stage of attraction to the second of the developed, regular habit. For example, the perception that slots play is part of socialising in a leisure venue is initially attractive, but once play is established as a habit most players do not play in company or with friends. Regular play is typically a solitary activity. Second, the initial perception that the likelihood of winning on the randomly generated outcomes of a slot machine permits the novice to start on an equal footing with the experienced player may attract people to try out gambling on slots. However, it is intriguing to note that this, too, changes for the regular player; up to 60 per cent of regular players express the belief that the way they play the machine can influence their likelihood of winning (Table 8.3). The psychological processes involved in regular slots play has been the focus of research at the Australian National University since 1986. More than 200 slot-machine players volunteered and were interviewed, tested and observed while playing. A methodology was developed that permitted recording of a variety of data streams on a real-time basis with relatively little intrusion into the player’s usual pattern of play on their preferred machine in their usual social-club setting (Dickerson 1991). The following discussion attempts to collate those findings relevant to the present concerns. In structuring this summary, three different levels of player involvement will be considered: low/medium frequency, high frequency, and problematic or excessive levels of play. Some of the more striking characteristics of these groups are given in Table 8.3. Low/medium-frequency players This category of player ranged in experience from those who had only played once in their lives to those who played once per month. Given the infrequent nature of sessions of play, it is not surprising that there seem to be few predictors of the start of a new session. If a person was experiencing moods such as frustration and disappointment, then they were less likely to go and play. Personality characteristics such as extroversion, neuroticism and sensation-seeking were not associated with the frequency of sessions although the latter construct has previously been linked with gambling (Zuckerman 1979). At this level of experience players typically persist for about 17 minutes but the range is large (5–107 minutes). The more frequent the sessions by a particular player, the longer they tend to play. As frequency and duration increase, so the player moves from a slow, erratic manner of play to a faster, regular, rhythmic pattern where there are consistent increases in speed of play after small wins and slowing or pausing after large wins (50 credits or more). For these players, persistence when losing was linked with the subjective reports of excitement prior to, and/or during the early stages of the session, and with the belief that the machine was about to pay out. Persistence was less likely when the player had debts and when he or she reported feeling depressed.

Why 'slots' equals 'grind' in any language

147

Table 8.3 Gambling characteristics of low/medium, high-frequency and problem slots players Low/medium frequency Playing time (average hours/month) Session expenditure (range A$) Total expenditure (average A$/month) Considered a ‘big win’ Way of playing influences chance of winning (% occasionally/usually) Can predict when pay-out due Reasons for playing

0.75 0.4–20 6.00 ‘A$50, or less’ 40

Group High frequency

Problem players

7.75 38.0 2–16 25–250 63.00 1,336 ‘A$100 or more’ 60 35

40 35 70 ‘for entertainment’ ‘to forget troubles’ ‘to be sociable’ ‘to win a major pay-out’

High-frequency players For people playing once a week or more often there are cues that regularly predict the onset of a new session, such as large sums of cash and the club environment itself. As one might expect, players say they often have a session when they feel lucky or are celebrating. Session length is on average 40 minutes but ranges from 6 to 127 minutes. Whereas the less experienced players average one play every 8 seconds throughout their session, these more experienced players average one play every 6 seconds. They have a highly stereotypical pattern of play, speeding up and slowing down following small and big wins respectively. Despite the apparent importance of player expectations and arousal, neither seems to be consistently associated with these rhythmic patterns of play. It is as if the player ‘shadows’ the machine events, playing in tune with the machine. Persisting with a session when losing was associated with how large was the player’s idea of a big win—the larger the ‘big win’, the longer the period of loss was tolerated. Excessive or problematic players This group was composed of people who had sought help for the impaired control of their slot-machine play. Although they all satisfied the DSM IIIR criteria for ‘pathological gambling’ (American Psychiatric Association 1987), it is important to note that to differentiate them from frequent players on any characteristic of their gambling behaviour may be difficult (Dickerson 1985). Problem players often report starting a session to ‘forget their troubles’ and to ‘win a major pay-out’. Quite congruent with this is the fact that the onset of a new session is associated with negative moods such as frustration, disappointment and the presence of debts or recent gambling losses. Given that these players were seeking to abstain from gambling, no observations were carried out of their actual sessions of play but it seems likely that their patterns of play are very similar to those of the high-frequency players. Persistence when losing may be

Gambling cultures

148

increased by both depressed mood and by the existence of financial pressures such as bills to be paid and debts.

CONTROL OVER EXPENDITURE BY THE INDIVIDUAL When slots players at a registered club in Australia were asked how often they had spent more on play than they could afford, a third answered that they had done so on two or more occasions. To the question of how often they had spent more than planned on the last five sessions of play, 17.7 per cent said ‘every time’, 21.5 per cent said ‘three or four times’ and only a quarter said ‘never’ (Dickerson et al. 1985). With regard to the latter question it may be said that people simply do not plan or budget their leisure activities in the same way that they do their household expenditure and other commitments. However, in the context of the answers about spending more than they can afford, it does seem reasonable to conclude that it is relatively common for players to sense that their slots playing behaviour is out of control on occasions. A similar experience is described by slots players who seek psychological help with problems associated with their excessive gambling. The only difference seems to be that the problems arise from more frequent loss of control involving larger sums of money. Loss of control of gambling behaviour, with the associated personal problems, is considered to be the essential common ground with the other addictive behaviours such as alcoholism, smoking, drug abuse and eating disorders. Thus, in exploring the psychological causes of impaired control in regular slots players there is opportunity to examine a factor central to the addictive behaviours but without the complications of drug effects.

SOME POSSIBLE CAUSES OF IMPAIRED CONTROL OF SLOTS PLAY The more often a person plays slots the more likely they are to report aspects of losing control such as spending more time and money than they had planned or more money than they could afford (Corless and Dickerson 1989; Dickerson et al. 1985). None the less, there is not an inevitable progress from lower levels of involvement to higher. Many people at all frequencies of play report having played at one particular level for several years. On the basis of our own fieldwork studies it seems likely that the establishment of a habit learnt over hundreds of hours of playing a machine may be the necessary and sufficient cause of occasional experiences of impaired control of expenditure. However, contrary to Skinner’s assertions about ‘pathological’ slots play (Skinner 1953, 1972), it seems unlikely that regular loss of control arises from a habit component per se but rather from an interaction between learning and negative moods such as depression and frustration. In addition, it seems that beliefs and expectations must make a contribution particularly to the choice that the player makes to return to start a new session. ‘Chasing’ and the illusion of control are two aspects of beliefs that play a central role in persistent

Why 'slots' equals 'grind' in any language

149

slots play. The former is typified by statements such as ‘it [the machine] owes me’ and ‘I’ve lost the last few times, it must be my turn for a win today’. In the very experienced player the belief that it is the ‘correct’ strategy to continue when significant losses have been incurred seems almost rational. If the player stops, then the probability of recouping those losses from the machine is zero, whereas if he or she continues there is at least some chance of winning. Such a belief and the behaviour of continuing to play may in the past have resulted in a major pay-out. Even one such win may make a significant impact on the strength with which such beliefs about chasing are held. Players’ beliefs that they can predict when a machine will pay out are similar but best categorised under the illusion of control (Langer 1975). This illusion is concerned with the belief that chance-determined events are somehow under the control of the player. Thus a typical frequent player will have a favourite machine (that is, one they believe is more likely to pay out to them), will believe that the manner in which they play the machine will influence their chances of winning (for example, playing to a steady rhythm, playing out all credits before putting in more cash and a whole range of what are best described as superstitious behaviours) and, finally, will claim to be able to tell when a machine is about to pay out. Our observations have produced a few instances of how a sudden increase in the player’s estimate of the likelihood of the machine paying out is in fact followed by a large win. Even to experience this on a single occasion may have a strong impact on the extent to which the player believes in the illusion. Even if all these psychological factors play a part in causing experienced, regular players to lose control of session length and expenditure and to return to have another session, very little is known about quite what factors influence longer-term patterns of uncontrolled expenditure and increasing debt. The longer-term tracking of regular slots players is only just beginning, and is being done from the commercial viewpoint of the operators in much the same way that casinos track the gambling patterns of their premium players of table games. From the perspective of psychological research, factors such as life-event stressors, depression and lack of problem-solving coping strategies might well be associated with the development of significant personal problems arising from the regular loss of control of slot-machine expenditure.

CONCLUSIONS If the persistent playing of slots is associated with the learning of a stereotypical habit that mirrors the machine events then it is reasonable to expect this factor to be common to all human beings and provides us with some understanding of the universal use of these games in casinos and clubs around the world. This is supported by one negative finding, that persistent play is not associated with any one type of personality. The psychological basis of the popularity of slots is also associated with beliefs and illusory expectations of winning. There is very little cross-cultural evidence about such beliefs. Wagenaar (1988), in an excellent series of studies of blackjack players in Dutch casinos, found very similar beliefs and expectations, and it is tempting, if premature, to suggest that all human beings tend to develop such beliefs when faced with long sequences of independent, randomly determined gambling events. The conclusion that the popularity of slots is a function of the intermittent reinforcement of play combined with the player’s erroneous beliefs about

Gambling cultures

150

predictable machine characteristics merely scratches the surface. Why do some kinds of slots—for example, multiline versus multiplier—attract some players but not others? Why does one rate of pay-out lead to player persistence on one machine but not on another? From among regular players, can distinctive sub-groups be found with specific machine preferences? Remarkably little is known about human learning where the person has had what amounts to training trials over hundreds of hours over several years. The psychology of slots playing merits much closer study than hitherto. As a sub-plot to this chapter it has been noted that regular slots players commonly experience difficulty in controlling their expenditure. Recent work suggest that 15 per cent of regular slots players may have significant personal, financial and family problems arising from their gambling. Such players may account for up to one-third of the total take or metered win from slots. In the development of new slot-machine games and characteristics, the manufacturer’s bottom line is player persistence (Daley 1986). It is more properly a concern for governments that any slots development that increases player persistence also generates more impaired control and thereby increases gambling-related problems. From a social standpoint, government legalisation of slots creates a situation whereby the individual’s choice not to gamble is eroded. This is a realistic rather than moralistic view and goes no further than for other potentially addictive legal behaviours such as drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco. This recognition, however, underlines the need for regular monitoring of the impact of playing slots on the individual and family—of all gambling, for that matter. It also emphasises the need for a continuing dialogue between government agencies controlling and regulating the slots industry and the industry itself. A positive awareness of these concerns within the industry, the clubs, hotels, casinos and the machine manufacturers can result in policies and procedures that may lessen the negative impacts of the ready availability of slots. This is a relatively new and important development in the legalisation of slot machines but it is very similar to contemporary developments concerning the sale of alcohol in Australia—for example, the alcohol industry acting to reduce ‘happy hour’ binge drinking and to generally develop responsible marketing policies that can reduce alcohol-related personal and social damage. In Australia, the Queensland government is leading the way in monitoring the social and economic impact of the introduction of slots by establishing independent evaluative research that will provide the basis for the development of similar harm-reducing policies should they be required. Whether other state governments will adopt a similar approach is uncertain, but in the long term it is essential. Slots are an important component in the significant leisure industry of gambling. In Australia in 1992 slots generated a total win of about A$5.25 billion, much of which went to state governments (Sykes 1994). In NSW slots accounted for 64.3 per cent of the total win from all forms of gambling. A similar economic outcome is predicted in other states where slots are being introduced. Not included in the economic balance sheet is the recent estimate that the prevalence of problem gamblers in NSW is approximately 1.0 per cent of the adult population, of whom 50 per cent have slots as their preferred main form of gambling (Dickerson and Baron 1992). In contrast, the same study failed to detect any problem players whose single preferred form was lotto. These findings complement similar survey work in New

Why 'slots' equals 'grind' in any language

151

Zealand (Abbott and Volberg 1992) and are slowly leading governments to the realisation that the bottom line of slots taxation revenue may need reviewing in the light of the social welfare costs associated with problem players. There is one more perspective about which very little has been written: the players themselves as consumers. Although in Australia slot machines must be labelled giving their percentage payback, there are no guidelines concerning what other information should be provided to players about the machines they play. Should the odds on winning jackpots be displayed or included in advertising? Should players be warned about the possibility of becoming uncontrolled in their gambling—for example, using a tracking device to monitor regular players and flash up messages such as ‘Hello John, you have now spent $100. Do you want to continue playing?’ The line between paternalism and responsible marketing is obscure and requires the cooperation of the industry, slots players and government. Potentially the outcomes of such cooperation are far more effective than governments simply resourcing services to pick up the pieces of those who, figuratively speaking, ‘fall off the slot machine.

NOTES 1 Although the author has a chauvinistic preference for ‘poker machine’, the name ‘slots’ will be used throughout this chapter in recognition of its greater usage internationally and to prevent confusion with one particular type of slot which is a machine-based version of casino card games such as blackjack. The term ‘electronic gaming machine’ is sometimes used to describe the latter type of machine or all machines which have a video screen display. ‘Slots’ will be used to describe all coin-operated gambling devices and specific types referred to only when necessary. 2 My thanks to Lynn Oldfield, Product Manager (Casino), Aristocrat Leisure Industries, for continuing help in keeping me informed of machine developments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, M. and Volberg, R. (1992) Frequent Gamblers and Problem Gamblers in New Zealand. Research Series No. 14, Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs. American Psychiatric Association (1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 3rd edn, DSM IIIR, Washington, DC: APA. Board of Inquiry into Poker Machines (1983) Report of the Board of Inquiry into Poker Machines (Wilcox Report), Melbourne: Government Printer. Caldwell, G. (1972) ‘Leisure co-operatives: the institutionalization of gambling and the growth of large leisure organisations in New South Wales’, Unpublished PhD thesis: Canberra: Australian National University. ——(1974) ‘The gambling Australian’, in D.Edgar (ed.) Social Change in Australia: Readings in Sociology, Melbourne: Cheshire: 13–28. Caldwell, G., Young, S., Dickerson, M.G. and McMillen, J. (1988) Social Impact Study (Civic Section 19 Development and Casino), Commonwealth of Australia. Corless, A. and Dickerson, M.G. (1989) ‘Gamblers’ self-perceptions of determinants of impaired control’, British Journal of Addiction 84:1527–37. Cornish, D.B. (1978) Gambling: A Review of the Literature and Its Implications for Policy and Research, London: HMSO.

Gambling cultures

152

Daley, K. (1986) ‘Encouraging habitual gambling on poker machines’, in M.Walker (ed.) Faces of Gambling, Proceedings of the 2nd National Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies, University of Sydney, Australia. Dennis, N., Henriques, F. and Slaughter, C. (1969) Coal is our Life: An Analysis of a Yorkshire Mining Community, New York: Tavistock Publications. Dickerson, M.G. (1985) ‘The characteristics of the compulsive gambler: a rejection of a typology’, in G.Caldwell, B.Haig, M.Dickerson and L.Sylvan (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm: 139–45. ——(1991) ‘Internal and external determinants of persistent gambling: implications for treatment’, in N.Heather, W.R.Miller and J.Greeley (eds) Self-control and the Addictive Behaviours, ACT Australia: Penguin. Dickerson, M.G. and Baron, E. (1992) ‘Problem gambling in Australia’, Newsletter, National Association for Gambling Studies 4 (2):17–36. Dickerson, M.G., Fabre, J. and Bayliss, D. (1985) ‘A comparison of TAB customers and poker machine players’, in J.McMillen (ed.) Gambling in the 80s, Brisbane: Griffith University Reprographics: n.p. Dickerson, M.G. and Hinchy, J. (1988) ‘The prevalence of excessive and pathological gambling in Australia’, Journal of Gambling Behaviour 4:14–21. Downes, D.M., Davies, B.P., David, M.E. and Stone, P. (1976) Gambling, Work and Leisure: A Study Across Three Areas, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Grichting, W.L. (1986) ‘The impact of religion on gambling in Australia’, Australian Journal of Psychology 38:45–58. Griffiths, M.D. (1990) ‘The acquisition, development and maintenance of fruit machine gambling in adolescents’, Journal of Gambling Studies 6:193–204. Haig, B. (1985) ‘Expenditure on legal gambling’, in G.Caldwell, M.G.Dickerson, B. Haig and L.Sylvan (eds) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm: 71–7. Kendell, R.E. (1979) ‘Alcoholism: a medical or a political problem?’ British Medical Journal 1:367–71. Langer, E.J. (1975) ‘The illusion of control’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 (2):311–28. Lynch, R. (1985) Second Generation Club Project: Stage One, Unpublished report to the North Ryde RSL Community Bowling and Sports Club Ltd, Sydney. ——(1990) ‘Working-class luck and vocabularies of hope among regular poker-machine players’, in G.Lawrence and D.Rowe, Sport and Leisure, Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 189–208. McMillen, J. and Eadington, W.R. (1986) ‘The evolution of gambling laws in Australia’, New York Journal of International and Comparative Law 8(1):167–92. Skinner, B.F. (1953) Science and Human Behaviour, New York: Free Press. ——(1972) Beyond Freedom and Dignity, London: Cape. Sykes, T. (1994) ‘Stake of the nation’, Australian Business Monthly (Feb.): 24–33. Thomas, W.I. (1901) ‘The gaming instinct’, American Journal of Sociology 6:750–63. Wagenaar, W.A. (1988) Paradoxes of Gambling Behaviour, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Zola, I.K. (1964) ‘Observations on gambling in a lower class setting’, in H.S.Becker (ed.) The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance, Illinois: Free Press. Zuckerman, M. (1979) Sensation Seeking: Beyond the Optimal Level of Arousal, New York: John Wiley.

9 GAMBLING IN CAMEROON AND SENEGAL A response to crisis? Gabrielle A.Brenner, Martial Lipeb and Jean-Michel Servet1

While much has been written on gambling, its study, especially in the developing countries, suffers from a relative paucity of data. Much discussion is still based on anecdotal stories and hearsay. In order to fill the gap, we have undertaken studies of gambling behaviour in two African countries, Cameroon and Senegal, where lotteries are a growing source of government revenue.2 Since the 1980s in several countries there has been a large explosion of statesponsored lotteries fuelled by the need for cash of financially strapped governments. This wave has attracted its share of detractors. Some see the lotteries as preying on the poor who foolishly pin their hopes on winning and on getting something for nothing. Still others have focused their criticisms on the fact that legalising lotteries makes it easier for the compulsive gamblers to indulge, with catastrophic results.3 In spite of such condemnations, people flock to the lotteries and this is one tax they do not complain about, enabling government to raise revenues ‘painlessly’. In Africa, this feature of the lottery has appealed to financially strapped governments, which are too often faced with a non-existent or non-effective, as well as non-efficient, tax-raising system. Governments in Cameroon and Senegal have maintained monopoly power over lotteries to raise taxes. In Cameroon, for instance, government receipts have usually been disappointing and below expectations, especially since the beginning of the economic crisis in 1985. The move towards lotteries in these countries has occurred in spite of the existence of large Islamic populations in Africa and the total ban on gambling by Islam (Rosenthal 1975).4 The governments have been helped by the fact that many indigenous African cultures have a rich tradition of gambling. In his treatise on games, Caillois reports that in Cameroon and Gabon, an ancient dice game, the Abbia, had to be regulated because people were wagering their wives, and chiefs were wagering their chiefdoms to the point that wars were caused by this addiction (Caillois 1958:231). In order to identify some characteristics of gambling and gamblers associated with contemporary African gambling, we have undertaken surveys in both Cameroon and Senegal. Because of limitations of time and resources, we confined our Cameroonian survey to the cities of Douala and Yaoundé, which contain 16.5 per cent of the total Cameroonian population (and which, according to officials of the Cameroonian lottery, are a good sample of the national market). We confined our Senegalese survey to the cities of Dakar, the capital, Ziguinchor in the south, and Kaolack in the centre of Senegal. Two hundred people in Cameroon and 125 in Senegal took part in a first survey. Sixty people in the region of Ziguinchor took part in a second survey. It was not easy to obtain

Gambling cultures

154

people’s collaboration as there was a general fear in both countries regarding the use that would be made of the results, especially questions on income and average spending on gambling.5 Moreover, our questionnaire was long, a problem in countries where a significant part of the population is illiterate. As in all studies of this kind, we cannot be sure that the sample interviewed is in fact a random sample of the population; and if there exists a bias, we cannot be sure of its direction. In both countries most of the gamblers surveyed were men (70 per cent of the gamblers surveyed in Cameroon and 94 per cent of those surveyed in Senegal). It is difficult at this point to interpret this result. There could have been a bias in our survey, as most of the students who conducted it were male and tended to survey people of the same sex. On the other hand, some people surveyed in Senegal have told that women should not gamble as they are responsible for the household money, and that if a woman gambles, it shows a lack of authority on the part of her husband.6 There were no similar remarks made in Cameroon, which could be explained by the fact that it has a smaller percentage of Muslims than Senegal, especially in Douala and Yaoundé. It is also note-worthy that among the players surveyed in Senegal, where the population is mostly Muslim (more than 90 per cent of the population), 95 per cent were not ashamed of gambling and thought it was a perfectly normal activity. This reflects the differences that exist between traditional Islam and ‘African Islam’ which has been adapted to African cultural traditions (Monteil 1963, 1964).

BACKGROUND OF GAMBLING IN CAMEROON AND SENEGAL From its inception as a state monopoly in 1972, the lottery in Cameroon has been promoted to raise much-needed revenues (Njoh Soppo and Tiako 1990). But Cameroonians played games of chance before. Traditional games such as ‘three cards’— also called ‘jambo’—as well as slot machines (called Bally-Bally)7 have always been very popular.8 While the Office of the National Lottery launched several popular products in subsequent years, it failed when the public lost faith in the lottery because of the non-payment of prizes, the lowering of the probability of winning and the perception of frequent rigging. This caused a reorganisation of the state lottery that led in April 1988 to the launching of an instant lottery with a big prize of 1 million francs CFA (or about US$4,000)9 and Express Loterie, which was conceived in order to prevent the possibility of cheating. Two other games, the Pari Sportif, a pari-mutuel game based on soccer games, and lotto were recently added to Express Loterie which has nevertheless remained the more popular game: 57 per cent of the people surveyed acknowledged preferring it, whereas only 24 per cent prefer the Pari Sportif.10 The lottery games are widely advertised in the media and sold by a network of sellers, through both fixed points of sale and itinerant peddlers. The profits of the lottery are supposed to be used to finance public interest projects, such as hospitals, schools and vaccinations. But, until 1992, the profits of the lottery corporation have not yet been used as the Treasury has not allowed any project to go ahead. The only exception has been a loan to the Public Treasury and a small project to buy meningitis vaccine.11

Gambling in cameroon and senegal

155

In Senegal a greater variety of games has been played for a longer time than in Cameroon. A state monopoly, the LONASE (Loterie Nationale du Sénégal) oversees formal gambling. The LONASE was created in 1966 as a private firm. It was only in 1973 that the state acquired 80 per cent of the LONASE. The remaining 20 per cent was acquired by the state in 1978. The oldest lottery game, the Loterie Nationale, has existed since 1966. It sells either tickets (at a price of 400 francs CFA) or half tickets and gives out prizes ranging from 400 to 3 million francs CFA (or about US$12,000), again a considerable sum as the gross national product per capita was equal to US$520 in 1987 (World Bank 1989:221). In 1985, a weekly game, Loto, was launched, and its big prizes, based on the total sales, have ranged on average from 1 to 4 million francs CFA. In 1987 the Lotosportif, a pari-mutuel game based on European soccer games, was introduced. An immensely popular pari-mutuel game based on horse-racing in France was added to the list in 1986, with games scheduled for four times a week and prizes which have attained 21 million francs CFA. Among the people surveyed, the pari-mutuel game was by far the most popular (see Table 9.1): 58 per cent preferred it, and it accounts for most of the revenues of the LONASE.12 The contribution of the LONASE to the state coffers takes several forms. It must give 10 per cent of its gross sales to the state by law. The state also receives 10 per cent of the prizes that were not claimed, and 10 per cent of the prizes that would have been claimed by a winning number that was not sold. In addition to these formal games, the people in Senegal also play a roulette-type game (the Loterie congo), the Nieti Xob, a game played with three cards, and

Table 9.1 Preferred gambling type, Senegal (%) PMU (pari-mutuel Lottery game Loto Loto-Sports Other* betting on horses) (Loterie (pari-mutuel Nationale) betting on soccer) 58 4 3 19 *This category includes other legal and illegal games.

16

fraudulent games. One such game is the ‘money multiplier’, where gamblers ask a supposedly ‘holy man’ to multiply their money by his prayers. Most of the time gamblers lose everything and the ‘holy man’ disappears with their money. This game may be linked to the fact that people have interpreted modern fiduciary money as the commodity moneys they used to have in traditional societies, where for instance the means of payment which were used for ritual purposes were often endowed with magical property (Servet 1986). As a result, there is in their minds a basic misunderstanding of how money is printed or interest is earned in a modern financial system. They are then easy prey to people who tell them that they can make money by magic.13

THE GAMBLER IN AFRICA: COPING WITH LOWERED EXPECTATIONS According to the model of risk-taking presented in Brenner and Brenner (1990), participation in lotteries is explained by the fact that people’s decisions to gamble or not

Gambling cultures

156

are based on the level of their wealth and their relative place in the wealth distribution, as well as on unexplained fluctuations in this relative ranking. The incentives to buy lottery tickets in this model were shown to depend on both one’s actual position and one’s expected position in the wealth distribution. Among people whose wealth expectations are fulfilled, this model predicts that people will plan regularly to buy tickets, those at the bottom of the income scale spending a relatively greater fraction of their income than those at the top. Those whose expectations of wealth are disappointed are expected to increase their expenditures on games of chance. The calculations behind the latter group’s greater propensity to gamble is that the benefits of winning are two-fold: not only do the poorer have a chance to become richer but they also could keep up with, or even outdo, their fellows. From this model, one would expect that people will gamble relatively more in times of economic crisis, when expectations of wealth are disappointed, unless cultural and religious factors discourage this. This section presents the findings of the surveys in Cameroon and Senegal which tested this model and analyses the reasons for the popularity of games of chance in the two countries. In order to understand gambling in sub-Saharan Africa, we must comment on the changes that are currently under way there. The countries of sub-Saharan Africa are in the throes of a big change in popular culture. Traditionally, in order to cope with social and economic uncertainties, they have relied on a system of kinship and communal life, and a strong network of family and tribal ties. These traditional ties have now been weakened.14 More and more during times of crisis, instead of relying on family, kin and traditional ways of dealing with emergencies, people have recourse to individualistic solutions, especially in the cities.15 Gambling represents such a response. The main motivation for gambling is the chance to win a large prize and become rich. Indeed, 45.5 per cent of the players surveyed in Cameroon gave the chance to win as the most important variable in their choice to buy a lottery ticket, although 16 per cent of the gamblers thought that the big prize of the lottery was too small.16 Over half (58 per cent) of the players surveyed would play more if the prize of the lottery were larger. In Senegal the fact that people play to win an amount high enough to change their lives can be inferred from the fact that 54 per cent of the players would play more if the prize were bigger. This may explain the success of the PMU game, in which the prizes are larger. As already mentioned, it has been especially difficult to get answers regarding income from the people surveyed. Nevertheless, from the people who answered the question on their income, it can be inferred that in Cameroon the gamblers are somewhat poorer than non-gamblers,17 whereas in Senegal 26 per cent of the gamblers were earning either the minimum legal wage or less.18 The majority of players plan their spending and do not seem to play more than they can ‘afford’. Among the players surveyed who classified themselves as regular players, in Cameroon 54 per cent spent less than 5,000 francs CFA a month and in Senegal 45 per cent spent less than that, in spite of anecdotal stories of overspending.19 On the other hand, in both countries, the majority of the players were single (58 per cent of the Senegalese players surveyed and 57 per cent of the Cameroonian players). This suggests two interpretations: first, most people gamble responsibly, single people have generally more discretionary income, and married people do not gamble the ‘grocery money’. A second interpretation may be linked to the fact that most players are men. In order to get married a single man must accumulate financial means, to either pay ‘bride-wealth’ or

Gambling in cameroon and senegal

157

buy household goods.20 Playing the lottery may be seen as a means to accomplish just that, especially in hard economic times. Our research suggests that in order better to understand the motivations of the players, the general situations of these countries must be considered. Both Cameroon and Senegal are in the middle of a severe economic recession. The urban unemployment rate in Cameroon was estimated to be 12 per cent in 1988/89 (Economic Intelligence Unit 1990a). In Senegal, the 1980s were characterised by a freeze in government employment as well as a massive entry of young workers into the job market, creating political unrest among the young, especially those who are educated, whose prospects of jobs in the public sector have diminished (Economic Intelligence Unit 1990b). The governments, in co-operation with the World Bank, carried out structural adjustment programmes with massive lay-offs of workers from state and state-owned enterprises. Younger workers and students were among the most afflicted. Unemployment among young graduates increased and the youngest workers, having less seniority and skills, were more prone to losing their job or to the fear losing it. College graduates and those who previously would have found jobs in public administration now had to fend for themselves. This led to a decrease in expectations of the younger population who saw that they could not follow in the steps of their parents and older siblings who were assured of work in the government and a steady wage when finishing school. We would thus expect this group to gamble more. Tables 9.2 and 9.3 compare the age distribution of the gamblers to the age distribution of the urban population of Cameroon and the total population of Senegal.21 We see from these tables that the player population is substantially younger than the general population. In both countries, the older population and the young below the age of 20 are under-represented among gamblers relative to their number in the total population, while the 20–29 year age group is over-represented. There is a difference in the two countries between the representation of middle-aged people among the gamblers: in Cameroon, they are somewhat under-represented (5.1 per cent of the gamblers compared with 13.3 per cent of the total population), whereas in Senegal they are over-represented (50 per cent of the gamblers compared with 34.5 per cent of the total population). This may be due either to time lag since the census, as the population has been growing rapidly, or to the different composition of the urban population, among whom we did our survey, relative to the total population. Unfortunately, data on the age composition of the Senegalese urban population are unavailable.

Table 9.2 Age distribution: lottery players and the total Cameroonian population Age group Players (total number 156) Cameroonian urban population, 1986 Number % % (of population above 15 years) 15–19 2 1.3 20–29 109 69.8 30–39 32 20.5 40–49 8 5.1 50+ 2 1.3 No answer 3 1.9 Source: United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1989a

21.1 32.7 21.0 13.3 11.9

Gambling cultures

158

Table 9.3 Age distribution: lottery players and the total Senegalese population Age group

Players (%)

Total Senegalese population, 1985 % (of population above 15 years)

15–20 2 18.2 21–30 46 28.6 31–50 50 34.5 50+ 2 18.6 Source: United Nations Global Estimates and Projections of Population by Sex and Age (1989b:383)

The fact that younger people are gambling is confirmed by looking at additional data. In Cameroon, 32 per cent of the gamblers were students, whereas in Senegal, 37 per cent were either students or unemployed workers and 30 per cent were workers in the socalled ‘informal’ sector, which in both countries provides jobs mainly to those who cannot find better-paid jobs in the formal sector.22 Workers in this sector are generally at the bottom of the scale of earnings. Thus the people whose financial position and expectations have most deteriorated during the economic crisis, the young, the students and the unemployed, may be turning to gambling as a last recourse. The survey in Senegal has yielded an interesting finding on the gambling and savings habits of the players. The players were asked if they participate in a rotative association of savings (named ‘tontine’), a form of savings club widely used in Africa.23 The majority (78 per cent) answered ‘no’. This may be linked to our observation that younger players are trying to solve their problems in an individualistic and short-term way, instead of resorting to collective long-term solutions. Senegalese do not worry about saving for a rainy day. Neither do they save steadily, either alone or in common with their family or their kin. In times of economic crisis, they gamble in the hope of winning the big prize. This result is also confirmed by the attitudes of the people who have won money in the games. Most of them save this money: only 18 per cent spent the money immediately. Moreover, in the Ziguinchor survey, most of the people surveyed (76 per cent) said that if they won the lottery, they would keep the ticket without claiming the money for some time. This indicates that they consider prudently what to do with their money. There may be other reasons for this behaviour: in Africa the extended family has in most cases a moral claim on an individual’s resources. Each person is traditionally required to share his luck with his relatives, but this is increasingly resented as the historical basis for this sort of cooperation recedes. It is possible that some gamblers keep the winning ticket without claiming the prize so that relatives will not learn of their good luck. Also, in both Cameroon and Senegal, banks have been plagued by bankruptcies and slow payments and do not inspire confidence. So, the winner might prefer to keep the ticket instead of depositing it at a shaky financial institution. In summary, we may say that in both Senegal and Cameroon, gambling is seen by the players as a means to better one’s situation in times of economic crisis. In the next section, we will explore some public policy implications of the growth of governmentsponsored lotteries in Africa.

Gambling in cameroon and senegal

159

LOTTERIES IN AFRICA: THE LAST RECOURSE OF FINANCIALLY STRAPPED GOVERNMENTS? Lotteries and other games of chance are a growing industry in Africa, provided generally by government agencies, as is the case in Cameroon and in Senegal. In these countries, the power of the governments to collect taxes is severely limited by a combination of a weak administration, a large illiterate population which often does not use (or trust) banks or other modern financial intermediaries and whose majority still lives in rural regions often not very accessible,24 the absence of written records, and the existence of a large ‘informal’ economy where it is almost impossible for the government to determine and tax incomes earned properly. An added difficulty is the fact that the poor track records of the governments since independence have seriously impaired their legitimacy in the eyes of their constituents who probably do not feel that they have been getting good services for the money spent. In this situation, the government must either disproportionately tax the few firms and individuals in the so-called ‘modern’ economic sector, or tax imports, an item easily accounted for (although the practice of imposing very heavy import duties has given rise in both countries to flourishing smuggling activities), or turn to other means of financing. Lotteries are such a means of financing government activities. They require neither a large administrative investment nor a coercive machine on the part of the government. Moreover, the existence of a long gambling tradition in African culture that has not disappeared with the introduction (and adaptation) of Islam has made it easier for African governments to sponsor gambling. There is almost no cultural opposition to gambling, as there exists in countries where the Judaeo-Christian tradition has made the activity suspect.25 It is thus not surprising that financially strapped governments of African countries which are in the throes of recession and restructuring of the economy have introduced legal gambling, just as western governments have done. Nevertheless, some questions must be raised about the wide use of lotteries and gambling to raise revenues in these two countries. While western observers have criticised the use of lotteries to finance government expenditures instead of using the political process to impose a clear-cut tax and make the public aware of the costs of the service, such a criticism is not valid in countries where the government does not have adequate alternative means of collecting taxes. One must remember that the first lotteries in eighteenth-century America financed public expenditures when the states and the federal government were too weak to collect other taxes and financial institutions were not developed (Brenner and Brenner 1990:14). Many governments of sub-Saharan Africa have given an impression of corruption and oppressive nepotism due to abuses of government power (World Bank 1989:22). Of all sub-Saharan African countries, only a few have had even a semblance of liberal democratic institutions (Senegal being the best example), and even in the countries that have recently embraced democracy, the institutions that check the power of the government in other democratic societies are either completely lacking or are very weak. Cameroon, for instance, has had a one-party state for years, with severe censorship of the freedom of the press which has only been relaxed recently. Where checks to political abuses are lacking, governments are often sources of corruption and do not have the trust of the people. They are not then the ideal candidate to run a gambling industry which

Gambling cultures

160

depends on the trust of its customers. It is noteworthy that the first lottery in Cameroon went bankrupt after the public perceived the existence of rigged games. In our survey, 44 per cent of the people surveyed in Senegal believed that some results of the pari-mutuel betting on horses were rigged.26 Thus, the games may be even more ‘unfair’ than they seem, and this, combined with an impoverished population and the fact that government funds are often misappropriated by corrupt government officials, raises ethical problems. In such instances, the case for making the government the operator of the lottery is very much weakened.27

CONCLUSION Lotteries have sprung up during recent years in many developing countries where, in the absence of other alternatives for social mobility, they have proven to be especially attractive to the poorer segments of the population during tough economic times. This study summarises results of the first analysis of the reasons for and nature of gambling in Cameroon and Senegal. These results show that the motivations for gambling on lotteries are the same as anywhere else in the world, despite their Islamic tradition. Faced with limited means of getting richer, Cameroonians and Senegalese turn to lotteries as a potential means of significantly bettering themselves. Thus condemning lotteries as ‘exploitative’ and ‘sellers of dreams’ is misconceived. People are rational when they buy a lottery ticket and know what they do. Moreover, in countries where the administrative means of taxing are still very limited, lotteries provide a legitimate and effective way for governments to obtain essential finances, when the choice is either the lottery or no revenues. There are nevertheless some problems linked to the fact that the political process in these countries is such that it does not prevent abuses of power, in particular, the potential for corruption in the state-owned gambling sector.

NOTES 1 We thank our research assistants, Alain Tremblay at HEC and Maxime Akpaca and Ousmane Sané in the Department of Finance and Banking at the University of Lumière-Lyon 2, for their dedicated help. We thank HEC, ESSEC and Loto-Québec for their financial assistance. All errors are solely our own. 2 The studies are ongoing and data are still being collected. See Sané (1992), Akpaca (1992) and Brenner et al. (1993). 3 For compendia of the history of lotteries in the United States, see Clotfelter and Cook (1989); Abt et al. (1985). Business Week (1989) gives a good history of 1980s trends in the United States as well as the criticisms this trend has generated; see Brasey (1992) for recent trends in France. 4 This is not unique. For example, Indonesia is an Islamic country, yet the state sponsors an immensely popular lottery and some devout Muslims argue that the lottery is not a form of gambling. See Cohen (1992). We must nevertheless observe that Islam in Africa has been adapted to the local conditions. 5 This is always a problem in a survey of this kind. In this case, the lottery buyers were afraid that this survey would be used by the income tax department. This fear was especially aroused by our questions on the socio-economic status and income of the person.

Gambling in cameroon and senegal

161

6 Another point worth noting is that the attribution of spending on different household items between husband and wife differs among tribes. This suggests that there could be different patterns of women’s participation in gambling among tribes, a point we want to investigate further. 7 These machines were introduced in Cameroon about fifteen years ago. They were initially tolerated, but were later banned. 8 Among the informal games, we note the existence of ‘Russian roulette’, a game similar to roulette. As it involves wagering substantial amounts, it is reserved to the higher classes of society and is very difficult to investigate. People are reluctant to acknowledge that they play at it and an outside investigator has almost no chance of being invited to participate at one of the sessions. 9 This is a considerable amount in a country where the GNP per capita was estimated to be US$970 in 1987 (World Bank 1989:221). 10 This may be because the survey was taken shortly after the introduction of this last game. 11 The director of the lottery corporation has broad power to decide how to use the money, but must get the authorisation of the Finance Ministry for any project. To date, the ministry has not given such permission. 12 Some of these revenues have been cannibalised from the other games, as lamented by a lottery ticket seller in Dakar: ‘I have lost two thirds of my sales since the PMU was introduced!’ (Minangoy 1988). In Ziguinchor, the director of the LONASE acknowledges that 90 per cent of revenue comes from the PMU horse-betting game. 13 Except for a small westernised elite, populations in numerous African countries try to reconcile their concept of money with the new instruments at their disposal. Their problems in understanding a modern monetary system may be similar to those expressed by a Pacific island chief after a trip to Germany at the beginning of the century. He described a bank as follows:

Many white men hoard the money earned for them by others, bring it to a well-guarded place, and continue to do so until one day they don’t have to work any more, the money working in their stead…. I never understood how this was possible without black magic…the money is multiplied like the leaves of a tree and the man becomes richer even when he sleeps. (Translated from Scheurmann 1981:125, quoted in Servet 1992, where this problem of understanding the modern money concept is developed) 14 These changes have been linked to the effects of the demographic growth of these countries which has strained the traditional system and forced it to change. See Brenner (1983). 15 For instance, now they rely on government transfers and private formal insurance in cases of unemployment or emergency medical needs, whereas before they relied on kin and the extended family. 16 Similarly, a survey conducted by the New York state lottery found that the typical ticket buyer was motivated by the hope of winning a big prize, and another by the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission found that the public overwhelmingly favoured a single top prize of US$100,000 over a large number of small prizes (Sullivan 1972:111). 17 In our Cameroonian survey, 61.4 per cent of the gamblers acknowledged a monthly income of less than 100,000 francs CFA while 54.2 per cent of non-gamblers were in this category. On the other hand, 3.2 per cent of the gamblers had incomes above 400,000 francs CFA per month while 8.5 per cent of the non-gamblers were in this category.

Gambling cultures

162

18 Most Cameroonians and Senegalese surveyed, however, did not answer the question on income. 19 We must nevertheless report that another study undertaken in Senegal found that the typical pari-mutuel bettor spends up to 20 per cent of his income on gambling (Minangoy 1988). Moreover, one of the people surveyed in Ziguinchor acknowledges that his wife almost left him because he was gambling too much money. He won, built a new house with his winnings and she came back to him! 20 Bridewealth, or the payment of money by the groom (or his male kin) to the male kin of the bride, is a traditional means of transferring property at marriage in most African societies. Dowries, the payment to the groom by the family of the bride, has only come as an influence of Mediterranean law, either Muslim or Christian (Goody 1976:8). 21 In Senegal, the categories of our sample are somewhat different from the reported categories of the census. We have thus provided two parts in Table 9.3. But the comparison is valid as the categories are quite similar. 22 The ‘informal’ economy in African countries accounts for more than half of the GNP (World Bank 1989), and in some countries provides 50 per cent of urban jobs (Albagli 1991:141). 23 This scheme consists of having a group of people either from the same family or the same tribe or neighbourhood contribute a small surn of money at regular intervals. The total pot is given to each member in turn, to use as he wishes. This is a traditional method of saving in Africa where the use of banks and other western practices is rather limited now because of a loss of credibility (Lelart 1991). 24 In Cameroon, for instance, only 40.4 per cent of the population were urban dwellers in 1987/88. In the same year, there were only 3,070 kilometres of paved roads against 31,623 kilometres of non-paved roads. Rural regions are thus not yet very accessible. In Senegal, the extent of urbanisation is somewhat lower, around 36 per cent, and the road system is not much better. 25 While Protestant Churches have always been opposed to gambling, so were, to a lesser extent, the Catholic Church and the Jewish religion. See Brenner and Brenner (1990:52–5). 26 They suggested that once the winning combination is known, the organisers fake new winners so as to reduce the pay-out. The racés themselves are taking place in France, so are not believed to be rigged. 27 These problems are recurrent in the history of lotteries. In the United States in 1818, the Baldwin libel case unveiled systematic cheating against the public. Baldwin, the editor of New York’s Republican Chronicle, published in September 1818 a series of articles in which he accused the lottery of rigging the results, which worked against the poorer population disproportionately (since they were the principal buyers of tickets). The directors of the lottery sued Baldwin for libel and the resulting trial (in which Baldwin was acquitted) exposed all the opportunities for cheating that were used to rig the lottery (Ezell 1960:180 ff).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V., Smith, J.M. and Christiansen, E.M. (1985) The Business of Risk, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Akpaca, M. (1992) ‘Loterie et jeux d’argent au Sénégal: enquête à Ziguinchor’, Document de recherche, HEC-CETAI, 92–03. Albagli, C. (1991) ‘Les mauvais comptes du développement’, in J.-L.Lespès (ed.) Les Pratiques juridiques, économiques et sociales informelles, Paris: PUF. ‘America’s gambling fever’ (1989) Business Week (24 April): 112–20. Brasey, E. (1992) La République des jeux, Paris: Robert Laffont.

Gambling in cameroon and senegal

163

Brenner, G.A., Lipeb, M. and Bikanda, P. (1993) ‘The lottery player in Cameroon: an exploratory study’, Journal of Gambling Studies 9 (Summer): 185–90. Brenner, R. (1983) History: The Human Gamble, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brenner, R. and Brenner, G.A. (1990) Gambling and Speculation: A Theory, a History and a Future of Some Human Decisions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Caillois, R. (1958) Les Jeux et les hommes, Paris: Gallimard. Clotfelter, C.E. and Cook, P.J. (1989) Selling Hope, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cohen, M. (1992) ‘Indonesian sin: Muslims addicted to the Lottery’, Wall Street Journal (7 Jan.): A8. Economic Intelligence Unit (1990a) Cameroon, CAR, Chad—Country Report 1990–91, London: EIU. ——(1990b) Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde—Country Profile 1989–90, London: EIU. Editors of the Gazette (1986) ‘Gambling is the fastest-growing addiction but victims get no help from employers’, Gazette (9 Aug.): j3. Ezell, J.S. (1960) Fortune’s Merry Wheel: The Lottery in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goody, J. (1976) Production and Reproduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lelart, M. (ed.) (1991) La Tontine. Pratique informelle d’épargne et de crédit dans les pays en voie de développement, Paris: John Libbey Eurotext. Minangoy, R. (1988) ‘Le pari mutuel urbain… Ticket choc au Sénégal’, Jeune Afrique Magazine (Nov.). Monteil, V. (1963) Le Monde musulman, Paris: Horizons de France. ——(1964) L’Islam noir, Paris: Seuil. Njoh Soppo, A. and Tiako, M. (1990) ‘Le profil d’un joueur de loterie au Cameroun’, Mémoire de fin d’étude, ESSEC, Douala. Passel, P. (1989) ‘Lotto is financed by the poor and won by the states’, New York Times (21 May). Rosenthal, F. (1975) Gambling in Islam, Leiden: Brill. Sané, O.B. (1992) ‘Loterie et jeux d’argent au Sénégal: premières enquêtes’, Document de recherche, HEC-CETAI, 92–02. Scheurmann, E. (1981) Le Papalagui. Les discours de Touiavii, chef de tribu de Tiaéra dans les mers du Sud, Paris: Aubier-Flammarion. Servet, J.-M. (1986) ‘Pièces, billets et monnaie primitives’, Economies et Société, 30: 7–18. ——(1992) ‘Occidentalisation du monde et rencontre des imaginaires monétaires: une double illusion’, in Roger-Pol Droit (ed.) Comment penser l’argent?, Paris: Le Monde Editions: 44–57. Sullivan, G. (1972) By Chance a Winner—The History of Lotteries, New York: Dodd, Mead. ‘Tale of two cities: Volkswagen project boosts German unity’ (1991), Wall Street Journal (12 Dec.): A1. United Nations (1989a) Demographic Yearbook, New York: United Nations. ——(1989b) Global Estimates and Projections of Population by Sex and Age, New York: United Nations/Department of International Economic and Social Affairs. World Bank (1989) Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, Washington, DC: World Bank.

10 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE EXPANSION AND GROWTH OF COMMERCIAL GAMBLING IN THE USA Vicki Abt1 There is a fundamental difference between gambling at games of equal chance and commercial gambling games that by definition ensure collective player losses. Children tossing a coin for the last seat at a rock concert are gambling at a game of equal chance; their parents buying a lottery ticket at the corner convenience store are buying chance from a commercial business, in this case their state governments. The difference between these two games is that one of the children is going to get to see the concert, while the lottery players collectively are going to lose a very substantial percent-age of their investment to the state. (Abt et al. 1985:ix–x)

THE TRANSFORMATION OF GAMBLING CULTURES This chapter is an analysis of the history of commercial gambling in the United States and its relation to the state. The contemporary explosion in US commercial legal gambling is a result of a radical shift in government policies over the past several decades. For almost a century, gambling had been largely proscribed by all of the states either by constitution or by statute (Dombrink and Thompson 1990). Today the states are primary forces in the radical transformation of gambling from self-limiting indigenous ‘play’ activities to profit-making ventures on a vast commercial scale. The operators of all commercial gambling games have a guaranteed advantage or edge. Upon this edge, and the revenue interests of government, an enormous institution has been created. As leisure activities, gambling games are primarily occasions for playing at chance. The risks of ‘real’ life are, in effect, made manageable within the bounds of a structured game (Callois 1978). The possibility of winning money is only one of the many traditional appeals of these games. As symbolic constructions—that is, man-made games with rules that structure the interactions of the participants—judgements, both informal and legal, about the worth and meaning of gambling have varied (Asbury 1938; Downes et al. 1976; Martinez 1983). Cultures have taken different positions on the value of play, leisure and most especially gambling games (Abt et al. 1984). Largely on religious

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

165

grounds, the United States has traditionally been ambivalent about gambling. Historically, state governments have often tolerated illegal games, but until recently they have not engaged in policies designed to increase gambling. Gambling does not involve the ingestion of chemical or biological substances; therefore, as one of the ‘vices’, gambling is the most amenable to radical shifts in cultural meaning. For example, state legislators, who would never dream of legalising cocaine in order to tax its use, are now willing not just to legalise existing gambling but also to encourage new forms of gambling in order to satisfy the expanding revenue needs of government. Gambling is being commercialised and institutionalised more rapidly than at any previous era in US history. The small illegal operators who worked on a low profit margin are being overtaken by corporate big-business interests in gambling. The individual entrepreneurs—bookmakers and riverboat gamblers—who supplied preindustrial United States with gambling services, often with the disapproval of ‘nice society’, are being replaced by large-scale corporate and government operators, approved by or identical with the state. Nevertheless, the states have not yet established the ‘right’ of individuals ‘to gamble’ at the game of their choice, with the supplier of their choice. The states allow gambling by exception. In this way they can justify their extraordinary tax on the games ‘selectively decriminalised’. This privilege tax or ‘sin tax’ is at a much higher rate than ordinary state taxes on consumer goods or luxury activities. The government’s claim on gambling profits of legal operators, in effect, drives up the price of gambling in the form of higher odds against winning or lower pay-offs. Despite this high tax, by controlling the legalisation and licensing of certain games and operators, the states contribute to a monopoly situation that makes the new commercial ventures highly profitable. Clearly the states’ legalisation policy grows out of their own revenue needs rather than any moral or constitutional ground. The states operate from the premise of selective decriminalisation which makes sense only in terms of a revenue imperative. Perhaps the reason for this policy lies in the fact that if all gambling were made legal there would be no way to justify punitive taxes on commercial gambling, and these extraordinary revenues would disappear. The question remains whether gambling is wrong because it is illegal, or illegal because it’s wrong. Even when the government does allow gambling, however, it does not respond appropriately to society’s desire to gamble. (Abt et al. 1985:219–20) This continues to be true as the traditional attraction of risk is combined with sure corporate profits and public revenues. For example, legalised commercial gambling games are often less advantageous to the player than illegal games, and the extent of illegal gambling has often been exaggerated by state officials to rationalise their policy of selective decriminalisation and monopolistic control (Reuter and Rubenstein 1978). State-operated lotteries are changing rapidly so as to stimulate demand, and hence create more gambling losses that can be converted into public revenues. Lotteries are among the most aggressive and least desirable forms of gambling in terms of the players’ inability to influence the outcome of their wagers through any strategy or exercise of special

Gambling cultures

166

knowledge. The rationale that state lotteries are merely legal substitutes for illegal numbers and fulfil an existing ‘unstimulated demand’ does not fit the facts. Ever since the advent of the fiscally unsuccessful 1964 New Hampshire lottery, lotteries have become increasingly lucrative and have aggressively created new markets of potential gamblers. The illegal numbers market actually represented a small percentage of potential players; new players had to be recruited (Focus 1984:24). The state has encouraged player losses rather than attempt either to hold down the odds against the player winning or to minimise and control gambling. The current ‘selective decriminalisation’ of various forms of gambling seems less explainable in terms of any ground-swelling of popular opinion than that these particular games are more desirable and more easily attributable to economic and political considerations of the vendors and the state itself. The state is a key player in the contemporary gambling scene rather than merely a respondent to constituent market demand. The larger, more centralised forms of gambling are being commercialised and institutionalised, while those games that are less amenable to such controls are still proscribed. The play element is being denigrated, and commercial forms of gambling guarantee that the players as a group cannot win. In the old-style craps game under the boardwalk one of the players could walk away with the pot, but at Caesar’s Casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk, only the house is certain to win. This rapid transformation of gambling from leisure play to commercial corporate enterprises is best explained by the role of the state and its historical relation to gambling in America. Since the earliest colonial lotteries, government has played a crucial, if often paradoxical, role in shaping American gambling patterns. Seventeenth-century attempts to colonise the ‘New World’ were often financed by private lotteries chartered by the British government. These commercial ventures included the Virginia Company of London (1612) that underwrote the colony of Jamestown. The colonists at Jamestown exported far too little to vindicate the company’s promises. All the revenues raised by the schemes went immediately to meet the debts of the Virginia Company. Living hand to mouth, the proprietors became dependent on the lottery as their only reliable source of capital for replenishing company coffers. Early critics of the lottery accelerated their attacks (Findlay 1986:13–14). But it was the Puritans who attacked gambling itself and not just the undesirable side effects of overdependency on lottery money. The Stuart kings, who were not Puritans, attempted to control and regulate gambling but not to outlaw it. English Puritans, however, objected to popular recreational gambling on moral grounds. The Puritan indictment of traditional recreations was transported to the new American colonies. According to Puritans, gambling had no place in the work week. Lotteries, however, continued to finance public improvements such as roads, hospitals and schools in eighteenth-century colonial cities. By 1776 all but two colonies, Maryland and North Carolina, required that state lotteries have legislative authorisation. Historically the new states (former colonies) worried about a too strong federal government and gambling remained a state-regulated activity. The US federal government has largely stayed out of the regulation of gambling. According to the Bill of Rights, ‘the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states’ (US Constitution, Amendment X). Gambling has remained a ‘states rights’ issue. Alternating between encouraging various forms of gambling for revenue purposes and proscribing gambling for moral/religious as well as

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

167

social reasons, the states have not been content to merely allow naturally occurring indigenous gambling. Through the policy of ‘selective decriminalisation’ and with the creation of modern state-owned lotteries, gambling remains a most politically sensitive activity. Recent years have seen the creation of new outlets for legal gambling, most notably in the forms of state lotteries, the 1976 introduction of casino gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey and most recently in two more states, South Dakota and Colorado. In addition, state courts, including those in Connecticut and Michigan, have been involved in litigation concerning Indian gaming rights arising out of the Federal Indian Gaming Act of 1988 which in effect allows Indian gambling on reservations in states which do not proscribe the existence of such activities within their jurisdiction. The Act delineates levels of government control over each type of gambling. Casino gambling is to be controlled by the state, not the federal government. The 1988 Act divides gambling into three classes, with the greatest contention over casino and pari-mutuel wagering, both Class Three games, where the state has total control. While the states do not have a direct revenue interest because of the sovereignty of Indian lands, they certainly have a political interest in Indian gaming (Public Law 100–497, 100th Congress, 17 October 1988). Throughout this period of increased legalisation, illegal forms of gambling—for example, numbers games, betting on football games—have continued to flourish. Gambling is today expanding more rapidly than ever before in US history, and there is every reason to believe that it will continue to do so. To date, however, governments have failed to develop a coherent gambling policy independent from their revenue potential: Government’s need for new, ‘painless’ sources of revenue, private industry’s ingenuity in supplying ever more attractive opportunities to gamble, changing public mores and attitudes, and…the gambling propensities of mainstream America—has combined to make legal commercial gambling, with gross wagering estimated at nearly $135 billion in 1983, one of the largest industries in the United States. (Abt et al. 1985:15) By latest estimates, this figure has grown to over US$286 billion in 1990. The 1990 gross annual legal wager in the United States represents a 14 per-cent increase in the total for 1989. Up until 1988, when Treasury declined to make further estimates of illegal gambling, on the grounds of completely unreliable data, legal gambling increased 14 per cent over 1987 while illegal gambling was estimated to have increased by 30 per cent. In other words, despite government rationales to the contrary, the illegal share of commercial gambling increased even more rapidly than legal pari mutuel, casino gaming or even state-owned lotteries. Legal revenue (the dollars lost by players) was over US$25 billion in 1990 (Christiansen 1991a:32–43; 1991b:32–43). By 1990 government’s desire to increase its share of growing gambling revenues resulted in the legalisation of ‘Riverboat Gambling’ in Iowa, Illinois and Mississippi, implementation of off-track betting (OTB) in Pennsylvania, as well as the previously mentioned expansion of casino gambling and the opening of several new state lotteries. The expansion of off-track betting is ironic given the recent closing of Liberty Bell Racetrack which, when it opened in 1963, was the first legal commercial gambling

Gambling cultures

168

enterprise in Pennsylvania. In the late 1970s Liberty Bell began to suffer losses with the growing popularity of the state’s lottery and the state’s unforgiving tax policy on gross track handles (Abt and Smith 1986). Legal commercial gambling clearly generates a significant portion of the tax revenue for the various states. Direct taxing of over US$25 billion in player losses (gross revenue), combined with the indirect revenue contribution of commercial gambling, in the form of federal, state and municipal income taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, and miscellaneous local taxes and licence fees, while impossible to estimate precisely, makes gambling seem the golden goose for revenue depleted states and municipalities. Those who are critical of the revenue value of legalised gambling are fond of pointing out that, except in Nevada, gambling revenues constitute small percentages of government budgets; but this criticism grossly underestimates their significance, both economically and politically. The billions government derived from the direct taxation of gambling translates into thousands of incremental increases in state sales, income and local property taxes that were not made, and filled thousands of budget lines that otherwise would have required funding from some other sources. At a time when all usual tax resources are being tapped to the point of risking taxpayer revolts, the small incremental percentages of government budgets supplied by gambling revenues take on the character of political necessities. State lottery or off-track betting dollars that constitute, for example, 8 per cent of state aid to education or 5 per cent of county or municipal budgets, can easily be the equivalent of a 10 per-cent increase in sales or property taxes. No one should underestimate the political suasion of such calculations on state and local elected officials. Much of this growth of the gambling industry has been interpreted as a consequence of the progressive weakening of cultural obstacles to its acceptance, particularly the decline of the ‘Protestant ethic’. The Protestant ethic implies a pattern of systematic behavioural and emotional control, routinisation of one’s work life, and strict observance of ascetic consumption standards along with systematic saving. In a broad sense, it is a deferred gratification pattern, and is inconsistent with behaviour that seems to be orientated strictly to the rewards of the moment, and that depends strictly (or mostly) on chance or luck. Historically, the main opposition to gambling in the United States has had a powerful fundamentalist religious foundation (Findlay 1986). Contemporary opposition by secular critics, such as the National Council on Problem Gambling, has been weakened by the government’s licensing of professional addiction counsellors whose jobs are, to some extent, based on increasing numbers of problem gamblers. In addition, the states often give direct grants of money to these types of groups, ironically from lottery revenues in many instances. In effect, government co-opts its opponents. While the erosion of the Protestant ethic has been a general cultural transformation without which gambling could never have become established—let alone institutionalised, as is happening today—this alone is not an adequate explanation for the growth and transformation that gambling has recently experienced in the United States. It has been the policies of state governments, as they have faced fiscal crises, powerfully conditioned by transformation in the economy, that have been critical factors in this history. Economically, the post-Second World War period has been one of expansion and concentration of American capital in two particularly important forms: the uncontrolled

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

169

growth of multinational corporations and the increasing importance of the conglomerate. Against these forms of capital, labour has been rendered progressively less powerful, a fact reflected in the decline of both union membership and real wages since 1965, while corporate profits, despite some momentary setbacks in manufacturing industries (autos, steel, coal) have been skyrocketing. The power of capital in these new forms is reflected also in the fact that the proportion of taxes paid by corporations as a percentage of the entire tax bundle has declined dramatically from about 33 per cent in 1950 to less than 20 per cent currently. During this period the budgetary burdens on state and local governments increased dramatically. Despite huge increases in the federal budget between 1957 and 1970, state and local taxes increased over 100 per cent (O’Connor 1973:211), a rate more rapid than that of federal taxes, despite the cost of the South-east Asian war (much of which was deficit financed, because of its growing political unpopularity in the late 1960s). One result of this was the proliferation of tax revolts, beginning in California with Proposition 13, and growing rhetoric denouncing the federal deficit. Federal spending levels, despite efforts to reduce this deficit, beginning with the Carter administration, have resulted in a cumulative federal debt of an almost incredible US$3 trillion (FY 1992 Budget Hearings, House Appropriations Committee, February 1992). The fiscal demands placed on the state, however, seem to grow in proportion to the stridency of the rhetoric denouncing them. The Reagan/Bush administrations, ostensibly perhaps the most fiscally conservative governments in modern US history, and certainly since the Hoover period, greatly accelerated both the deficit and the national debt. At the same time, federal funding of state programmes has been drastically reduced under these administrations (Barlett and Steele 1991; Lowy 1991). The history of modern state lotteries is the best example of the role of government in commercial gambling markets to ease their fiscal crisis.

THE FISCAL CRISIS OF THE STATES, AND THE CREATION AND EVOLUTION OF STATE LOTTERIES Radical political theorists such as O’Connor (1973), Alford (1972) and Offe (1972) have argued that modern structural conditions in the capitalist economy have led to the expansion of state functions. State expenses fall into two categories: social capital, increasingly necessary to maintain at least minimum conditions for private sector growth (for example, road construction, financing of education, assuming costs of research), and public sector expenses (mainly, according to O’Connor, the costs of cleaning up the polluted environment, and of stabilising the social order through income transfers, maintenance of a repressive apparatus, financing capitalist ideological hegemony, and the like). Growth in capital and social expenses necessitate increased state revenues. The relevance of this for our problem lies in the fact that the impact has been felt with special force at state and local levels. According to O’Connor and others, small businesses and labour have been forced increasingly to underwrite the expansion of capitalism. Additionally, the growth of state and local governments has even exceeded that of the federal government, as measured in terms of employment as well as taxation. But the tax burdens imposed on the states and localities have been anything but evenly

Gambling cultures

170

distributed, a fact critical for our analysis. In the United States, federal taxes extracted from localities and states are not returned on an equitable basis. Generally, the North-east and industrial Midwest have suffered by being consistent exporters of tax revenues to other parts of the country, especially the South and South-east (Bluestone and Harrison 1982). These are the results of the interrelation of political and economic factors. Historically, the South has been favoured politically mainly because its essentially one-party system has been translated into disproportionate numbers of near-perpetual congressional committee and sub-committee chair membership for Southern congressmen under the seniority system, thus tending to turn the South and South-east into regions receiving disproportionate amounts of federal largesse, with military and space installations and pork-barrel projects heading the list. At the same time, the de-industrialisation of the North-east and sections of the Midwest, until recently partly to the benefit of the South and South-west (Bluestone and Harrison 1982), has eroded the tax base of these regions. The recent creation of state lotteries for the first time since the post-revolutionary period (private state-franchised lotteries existed until the Louisiana lottery scandal during the Civil War) marks the entry of the states into the direct business of gambling in order to help resolve this fiscal crisis (Abt et al. 1985; Clotfelter and Cook 1989). In 1964, New Hampshire introduced its initially unsuccessful lottery, and this was followed by New York State in 1966, with another monetary failure. Then New Jersey in 1970 and ten other states (Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1971, Michigan and Maryland in 1972, Delaware and Ohio in 1973, and Illinois, Rhode Island and Maine in 1974) and the District of Columbia introduced lotteries during the span of about four years. Vermont followed in 1977, Arizona in 1981 and Colorado and Washington in 1982. In 1984 four more states (Colorado, Oregon, Missouri and West Virginia) legalised lotteries. Over the past several years many additional states have instituted lotteries, bringing the total number of operating state lotteries to thirty-three. Note the pattern: the states first to legalise were in the East and North-east, the area hit hardest by economic trends (Bluestone and Harrison 1982), or in the Midwest, but in states that not only were experiencing high degrees of economic distress, but were the most urbanised in that region. (Southern states because of Baptist religious proscriptions have experienced greater difficulty in legalising any form of gambling.) State lotteries have developed strategies aimed at directly influencing bettors to gamble more in order to increase their losses which translates almost directly into state revenues. Legalised commercial gambling is something the general public is coming to accept and in this sense gambling authorisations respond to a real change in public attitudes. Yet the economic logic of gambling markets has driven US governments in the direction of authorising price-insensitive games, of which state lotteries are the pre-eminent example. While state governments take about 6 cents from every dollar bet at racetracks and about 7.5 cents from every dollar lost at casinos, they keep from 40 cents to 45 cents of every dollar spent on lottery tickets. Government’s claims on gambling revenue are a powerful incentive for them to encourage (or allow private operators to encourage) people to participate in all legal games. But the state’s enormous stake in state lotteries is an irresistible temptation: because the cost to operate a lottery is typically only 8 or 9 cents on the sales dollar, and moreover falls as sales rise, the states have every reason to encourage lottery gambling. From their point of view lotteries offer an ideal economy;

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

171

every dollar spent to run a lottery returns four or five in ‘voluntary’ taxes—and then the player’s winnings are taxed into the bargain. State lotteries do not necessitate the overhead of a plant such as a racetrack or casino. In addition, the states were able to rationalise taking over private illegal lotteries following the debacle of the Louisiana lottery during the eighteenth-century Civil War. The Louisiana lottery (a state franchisee but privately owned) never returned the prizes it promised to the confederacy, giving impetus to state proscription of further lotteries until the 1964 New Hampshire stateowned and -operated lottery. It is therefore not surprising that the states have tendered legitimacy—literally, in the case of lotteries, the state seal of approval—to gambling. At the same time, they continue to proscribe popular games, such as head-to-head sports betting, which can be difficult to control and may threaten the integrity of the sport itself (for example, by players throwing the game or shaving points) (Smith 1992). This expanding revenue imperative is revealed in the increasing take-out (revenue) rates from both pari-mutuel betting and state-operated lotteries. In the case of the latter, this has been achieved through changes in the very structure of the lottery games. The evolution of state lotteries from their beginnings as passive annual and monthly games into high-frequency, player-active gambling continues. A recent development is the ‘player activated lottery machine’, or ‘PALM’, an electronic video gaming device combining the features of non-gambling video games such as Pac-Man, video poker and blackjack that is an increasingly important feature of Nevada and Atlantic City casinos. The introduction of these video devices into state lotteries has been often delayed by questions about their legality under lottery laws. In August 1981, shortly after New York State’s lottery director announced plans to install video poker and blackjack games in hotels, bars and stores on a trial basis, the state Attorney-General said the games were of questionable legality and would possibly violate the state constitution. A year later, however, the Attorney-General of New Jersey ruled that player-operated video bingo, a video game in which an astronaut looks for buried treasure, and a five-digit video game fell within statutory and judicial definitions of slot machines, and further that there is no constitutional or statutory bar to the incorporation of a consumer-operated video games terminal into the New Jersey lottery. The award of a contract for 3,000 of these games became embroiled in allegations of conflict of interest between the vendor, Syntech International of Dallas, Texas, and the chairman of the State Lottery Commission. On 1 March 1983 the governor signed into law a bill prohibiting the use of video gaming devices by the lottery, saying it was critical that in the public’s perception the operations of the lottery remained completely above reproach. In September 1982 the AttorneyGeneral of the state of Vermont, after reviewing the conflicting opinions of the Attorneys-General of New York and New Jersey, ruled that video gaming devices resembling ‘video games of skill, like Space Invaders or Pac-Man but the outcome of [which] would depend purely on chance’ were ‘within the meaning of Vermont Law…not a lottery, and so beyond the authority of the lottery commission to operate’ (Abt et al. 1985). The state of Washington became the first jurisdiction specifically to authorise video lottery devices when, on 16 July 1982, the governor signed a bill establishing a Washington state lottery in law. The first use of video lottery devices occurred in August 1983, when the Lions Club of Ft Calhoun, Nebraska, installed four such machines in taverns under the state’s charitable lottery laws (Abt et al. 1985:60). The video devices

Gambling cultures

172

have proved extremely popular, and a number of states have since expressed interest in operating video lotteries. The problems associated with these devices include their similarity to casino slot machines, the potential high extraction rate because of player/machine interaction, and, most importantly, the fact that the ‘game’ is really won or lost as soon as the player activates the machine. The game appears to utilise a mixture of chance and player skill, but in reality lotteries are games of pure chance and so the machines pay off in a pre-set pattern (or they would not fit the states’ definition of a lottery device). State lotteries gambling today bears little or no resemblance to the original New Hampshire and New York lotteries. The monthly and weekly drawings that were initially the lotteries’ principal games are disappearing from lottery menus. Like casinos, which offer games and gambling opportunities to suit every taste, modern lottery games provide rapid frequency of play. Both instant and numbers games allow a considerable degree of player participation, which has been further increased with the introduction of video lottery games. On-line computer systems, first used in 1975 to process New Jersey’s legal numbers game, have dramatically shortened pay-out intervals, enabling winners to reinvest their winnings in more lottery tickets. Lottery games and prize structures now offer a wide range of odds and pay-out ratios, from US$1 million for a single $1 to $5 ticket. Recent instances of enormous prizes in lotto games have made state lotteries the greatest purveyors of hope, albeit at astronomical odds, in US commercial gambling. Advertisements relate lottery gambling to ordinary life by emphasising the homes, cars, clothes and other material things lottery winnings can buy, and televised drawings featuring film and television celebrities add to the glamorous fantasy that was once exclusive to casino gaming. Increasingly, commercials emphasise an anti-Protestant ethic which is exemplified in the theme of quitting your job, escaping the drudgery of everyday life with an instant win. The transformation of lottery gambling has not been total. For the most part lottery games remain easy to learn. A new development is in the form of software programs by which the player can remain at home and still play the state lottery game. However, as gambling games, with the possible exception of video lottery games, lotteries are still limited in play value in comparison with casino and horse-racing. Of all lottery structural characteristics this has been perhaps the most resistant to change. This relatively low intrinsic play value has forced lottery operators to adopt a ‘product line’ strategy unique in American commercial gambling. Unlike roulette or blackjack or the Kentucky Derby, of which the public never seems to tire, state lottery games have finite and often quite short lifetimes. Novelty is an essential element in their appeal, and new games appear on a regular basis, to be succeeded by still newer games in a continuous series. In this way state lotteries substitute for intrinsic play value the constantly changing mix of games that is one of their distinguishing characteristics as well as possibilities of huge pay-offs. Another characteristic of state lotteries is that their low probability of player win, combined with the predominantly lower income demographics of many major lottery markets, make lotteries a highly regressive form of taxation. For example, a study undertaken at the University of Kansas in 1985 found that people with incomes under US$10,000 received 11.49 per cent of total household income of the people in the state but contributed 24.68 per cent of state lottery losses, and in comparing different forms of commercial gambling with sales and excise taxes concluded that lotteries were

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

173

‘considerably’ more regressive than the sales tax (Abt et al. 1985). This is due to the fact that lower-income people play the lottery disproportionately more than upper-income people. Of all commercial gambling games, the SRC found that only numbers games, historically played by the inner-city poor, and sports cards, a game for small, unsophisticated sports bettors, were even worse gambles in terms of odds and prices than state lotteries. A number of other professional studies have arrived at similar conclusions. Michael Spiro, an economist, determined from a sample of Pennsylvania lottery winners that in the early 1970s this lottery was, if losses are considered a voluntary tax, highly regressive for the subset of the population who won the lottery, and probably regressive for most income ranges of Pennsylvania’s general population (Spiro 1974:57–61). Roger E.Brinner and Charles T.Clotfelter, after reviewing Spiro’s data together with telephone surveys of Connecticut and Massachusetts residents, and also performing their own analysis of 108 Massachusetts lottery winners between 1972 and 1974, similarly conclude that state lotteries are a ‘particularly inequitable revenue base’ in as much as ‘the revenue collected constitutes a regressive tax [that] is all the more objectionable in light of the fact that many states appear to have adopted lotteries rather than implementing or expanding progressive income taxes’. These negative tax considerations are offset, in Brinner’s and Clotfelter’s view, by their social value: lotteries simultaneously impose a tax (the inevitable losses players incur at this high-takeout, commercial gambling game) and create a good (lottery gambles, which have recreational and other consumption values). In other words, lotteries are a regressive tax that produce a social gain (Brinner and Clotfelter 1975:39–41). Whether there has been any marked change in the tax incidence of the Eastern and Midwestern state lotteries since the 1970s is problematical. An analysis of the first 14,020 winners in the (November 1982) Washington state lottery shows that 18.3 per cent of claimants were from households with income of US$10,000 or less. This statistic may very roughly be compared to the 24.8 per cent of losses contributed by persons with income of US$10,000 or less reported by the Survey Research Centre, suggesting that the Washington state lottery may be somewhat less regressive. Lottery game menus almost certainly appeal to a wider range of the general population than they did in the early 1970s. It is therefore possible that participation in lottery games is more reflective of the general population than was the case two decades ago. If so, the instituting of a lottery in a state with relatively up-scale demographics might result in less regressive lottery revenues. The question, however, is complex: participation rates in different forms of gambling are affected by many variables, including the availability of various commercial gambling games, advertising, accessibility and cultural legitimacy or acceptance. It is clear that the creation and expansion of state lotteries has been essentially a response to fiscal crises faced by the government of states economically disadvantaged as a consequence of society-wide economic and political changes. Economic concentration and the capital mobility associated with this, coupled with political weakness of the North-east and Midwest in the congressional sector of the states’ apparatus, are the structural forces that encourage adoption of non-controversial forms of taxation, including state lotteries.

Gambling cultures

174

This relationship, while perhaps most obvious in the recent instance of state lotteries, would be strengthened if a comparable case could be made for the legalisation of commercial gambling that occurred primarily during the 1930s.

GAMBLING IN THE UNITED STATES: THE NINETEENTHAND TWENTI ETH-CENTUR Y REFORM The history of gambling in the nineteenth century shows the transformation of an industry comprised of private lottery companies and individual gambler-entrepreneurs— riverboat gamblers, bookmakers, gambling house operators—into illegal but profitable syndicates, a shift from a profession into a business conducted by relatively large-scale organisations. Growth from a dispersed service conducted by individuals to an organised industry was a response to a ‘natural’ demand, evidently of substantial proportions. Facing gambling prohibition, the syndicates did not attempt to achieve legislation— overall sentiment undoubtedly was opposed—but instead concentrated on mobilising political influence and gaining control over political organisations (Haller 1979), thereby assuring effective influence over municipal and state governments. The syndicates were able to maintain what were, in effect, government-protected monopolies. Anti-gambling laws selectively were enforced against non-syndicate operators, ensuring a competitionfree environment for syndicated bookmakers, race wires, numbers games and gambling houses. Canfield’s elegant Saratoga Club at Saratoga Springs, New York, was patronised by the upper classes, and the Metropolitan Turf Association of bookmakers formed upon the demise of pari-mutuel betting at New York tracks in 1988 became a respected business serving a clientele drawn from all social strata. In exhibiting this pattern, gambling conformed to the direction of major nineteenthcentury social changes in two ways. First, the transformation into syndicate form paralleled the changes occurring in many sectors of the economy. In the gambling industry, however, this change evidently did not exhibit such a dramatic peak as occurred in industries engaged in manufacturing/production, such as steel (in ‘the great merger wave’ of 1898–1902), but the direction of change was the same. Second, in their relationship to state and local governments, the syndicates reflected the normal pattern of corruption in business/government relations in nineteenth-century machine politics, a pattern in which anyone wishing to do business was invited to do so specifically by paying for the privilege (Steffens 1948). Nineteenth-century state and local government was mostly a system in which entrepreneurs purchased franchises to operate from machine-connected politicians whose principal function otherwise was order maintenance at relatively low cost among their ordinary constituents—often immigrants who spoke only their native language and who were in need of jobs and other economic emoluments. The illegality of certain business activities did not differentiate fundamentally these activities from those that were legal; in all probability, it merely drove up the cost of operating (Findlay 1986). In many states, the reforms of the progressive era, which swept from power so many of the late nineteenth-century political machines, left in their wake blanket gambling prohibitions. Numbers games relapsed into a relatively unorganised inner-city game, only eventually to be reorganised and placed on a sound financial footing by bootleggers made

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

175

wealthy through the 1919 Volstead Act that supplemented the ‘Prohibition’ (Eighteenth) Amendment outlawing intoxicating liquor. Bookmaking remained a major commercial business but was driven underground, resulting in the fact that between 1900 and the First World War some ninety-five racetracks, which had been financially dependent on fees charged to bookmakers for the privilege of taking bets on the racetrack grounds, were closed. Thus reform, reflecting the high point of organised moral indignation rooted in small-town, middle-class, puritanical Protestantism, achieved its greatest triumph in the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919. Gambling, too, felt the wrath of these crusaders. Like other vices, it flourished so long as it could be accommodated within the political machine system. With the reform movement, gambling faced the choice of either ceasing to exist or going underground. The roaring twenties and the Great Depression The period between the two great wars was one in which the two conditions basic to the modern legal commercial gambling industries first appeared, one cultural, the other economic. Culturally, the central event of the period was the start of the breakdown of the Protestant morality. Non-ascetic forms of mass culture—jazz, taxi-dance halls and the Charleston, flappers, smoking—began to transform urban middle-class life. The leading novelists of the period—Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, F.Scott Fitzgerald—found a new market writing about the contrast between the stultifying (and often hypocritical) Protestant culture of the small town and the freedom and exhilaration of the emerging mass culture of the city. The depression of the thirties, following this weakening of cultural values, expanded the climate for acceptance and legalisation of gambling in two ways. First, the economic havoc itself challenged what was most fundamental to the work-orientated side of the Protestant ethic, the principle that hard work and saving receives its reward, that sacrifice today begets the security, even the affluence, of tomorrow. Economic collapse made a mockery of such homilies. The weakening of the Protestant ethic is evident not only in the accounts of those affected by the depression—in one way or another almost everyone—but in objective indicators such as the decline in church attendance (Hofstadter et al. 1957:628–42). Second, the depression ran so deep and was so catastrophic that it destroyed the existing network of social security. This system was a patchwork of, on the one hand, private charities (churches, soup kitchens, settlement houses), and on the other, an informal dole distributed through the political machines: access to jobs, emoluments in kind (the traditional Christmas turkey), cash hand-outs. The consequence of the massive overloading of this ‘charitable’ system and the subsequent political threat to the very foundations of the system (or at least the belief that it was threatened) was the nationalisation of the local social security function, but with the states participating in important ways. The immediate recovery programmes created under Roosevelt’s administration, the enactment of social security legislation (including creation of categories designating welfare eligibility), creation of an array of regulatory agencies, and other depression-induced costs incurred by government, created a sudden massive fiscal demand on the federal Treasury that had no precedent. It was the first significant manifestation of the fiscal crisis of the state in the twentieth-century United States. The

Gambling cultures

176

age of ‘entitlement programmes’ had begun. Today many of these programmes are funded by the individual states. This shifts the burden from the federal to the state governments; hence the new fiscal crisis of the state. The fiscal needs of the states were generated by the necessity of raising capital, through measures intended both to regenerate the economy and to establish its badly weakened legitimacy, especially among the urban unemployed and farmers. The unprecedented expansion and concentration of American businesses during the 1920s, coupled with the state/private sector repression of labour that began long before the First World War culminating in the ‘Palmer Raids’ just following it, had the effect of multiplying the power of capital over labour (O’Connor 1973). The concentration of American industry continued during the 1920s while labour stood still politically and organisationally. Except for the public and private forms of social security created during the New Deal, including union pension funds and the like, labour following the Stock Market crash was driven almost entirely into the public sector for relief. Much of this was federal, but the states were required to participate in various ways as well, for example, in funding the category of general relief, as distinct from the special federal categories. To this must be added the social cost of law and order, which increased enormously during the period, the burden of which fell mostly on state and local governments (O’Connor 1973; Offe 1972). One line of response to this was the legalisation of gambling as a revenue measure. Beginning with Maryland in 1920 and Louisiana and Illinois in 1926 and 1927 respectively, a wave of pari mutuel swept the country. By the early 1980s, pari-mutuel wagering was legal in over two-thirds of the states and available to almost three-quarters of the population at almost 200 horse and other racing tracks, as well as many OTB outlets. By 1990 attendance at these events was over 100 million, producing gross ontrack gambling of approximately US$14 billion, resulting in player losses of almost US$4 billion, and was legal in over two-thirds of the states and available to almost threequarters of the population. The legalisation of casino gambling in Nevada in 1931, and in New Jersey in 1976, is of special interest in this regard because it illustrates the interplay of cultural values, business interests, and the urgency of the fiscal needs of the state. When the Nevada Territory was formed, commercial gambling was made a felony and betting declared a misdemeanour, even though gambling was clearly a fact of Nevada life. However, the prohibitions did not reduce gambling, and in 1869, five years after Nevada was admitted to the Union, the legislature enacted a law generally legalising gambling, over the veto of Governor Blasdel. During the next forty years, gambling was a legitimate business, albeit small in scope, conducted by licensed private operators, primarily in mining-town saloons and gambling halls. From the 1880s to the turn of the century, declining gold and silver production had resulted in a shift of economic and political power away from mining interests to farmers working Nevada’s river valleys. A reform movement sponsored particularly by women— who, incidentally, were excluded from all legal gambling activities—gained control of the legislature and in 1909, succeeded in enacting a comprehensive prohibition of commercial gambling. As might be expected, however, this law proved impossible to enforce effectively. Gambling continued as an illicit business, and the practical effects of the reform law were to deprive the state of its former licence fees and to attract large

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

177

numbers of underworld figures skilled in bribery and the operation of illegal gambling to Nevada. Prohibition was an obvious failure. Furthermore, the onset of the depression made the state’s need for funds acute, and in 1931 general commercial gambling was once again legalised despite the objections of reform groups. The immediate effect of the 1931 law was to legitimate existing illegal gambling operations and to convert the protection money paid by illegal operators to licence fees and taxes paid by responsible businessmen. Legalisation changed the character of Nevada gaming. After 1931, the working-class Nevadans who had patronised illegal gambling dens during prohibition were joined by wealthy tourists from California and other states who came not only to gamble, but to take advantage of Nevada’s easy marriage and divorce laws as well. Thus, the tourist industry that would prove to be the mainstay of the state’s economy had begun. Casino operators were quick to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the legislature. In 1937 Raymond I.Smith opened Harold’s Club in Reno, providing a brightly lit and colourful casino with low stakes for small bettors and offering free transportation home for players who went broke at the tables. Just as Harold’s Club was the prototype of the modern Nevada casino, the business founded by William R.Harrah in 1946 was the first example of the state’s diversified casino resort corporations. Harrah opened his casino next door to Harold’s Club and, on the basis of a profile of prospective customers developed by a research firm, he marketed casino gaming to potential gamblers of modest means by providing bus service to thirty-one neighbouring cities, most of them in California. Although as legitimate businessmen Smith and Harrah brought a new respectability to casino gaming, they were not the only ones drawn to Nevada for this purpose. After gaining interests in small Las Vegas clubs, Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Seigel invested nearly US$6 million of underworld money to build the Flamingo Hotel-Casino 7 miles from the centre of town on the highway to Los Angeles. When the casino first opened in 1946, heavy losses forced Seigel to shut down the operation; and when the hotel and casino reopened a few months later, against all the laws of gambling probabilities, it continued to lose money. Seigel’s ‘partners’ were distressed enough to remove him from control of their hotel by means of an assassin’s bullets. Shortly thereafter and under new management, the Flamingo became a success and in less than a decade the fabled Las Vegas strip was born, boasting such resort-hotel-casino complexes as the Desert Inn, the Stardust, the Dunes and the Tropicana. These establishments, all following the Flamingo style of self-contained resort, were the prototypes for modern casino operation (Findlay 1986:163–4). The Corporate Gaming Acts of 1967 and 1969 further legitimated the casino industry. By allowing major publicly held corporations to have an interest in casino gaming, the Act served to make the industry less vulnerable to arbitrary attacks from the federal government. The casino business was now answerable to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to the stockholders of the corporation. Further, public records and stockholder reports held the gambling enterprises just as accountable. With Holiday Inn, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Union Pacific Railroad entering the field of gaming, casinos began to take on the image of just another kind of corporate business (Eadington 1982).

Gambling cultures

178

In 1974 and again in 1976, casino gambling was brought before the voters of New Jersey as a proposed cure for the ailing tourist business and state economy. A relatively obscure corporation, Resorts International (once the Mary Carter Paint Company) which operated gambling casinos in the Bahamas, invested heavily in Atlantic City property and backed the casino gaming referendum of 1976 (Mahon 1980). Resorts banked heavily on the successful legalisation of casino gaming, and in terms of gross revenues the bet certainly paid off. Once nicknamed ‘the Queen of Resorts’, Atlantic City had skidded to the status of decayed resort. Casinos were not really new to the city—the Bath and Turf Club, the Millionaires Club, and other establishments attracted high-rollers, celebrities and mobsters during the first half of the twentieth century. It was hoped that legalising gambling could be part of a larger pattern of converting vice into a source of state revenue (Mahon 1980). The primary stimuli for establishing the two industries that were to dominate legal American commercial gambling for nearly half a century were clearly the revenue needs of the state, in concert, of course, with the always-present commercial interests of the gambling establishments. The state enfranchises privately owned and operated parimutuel betting and casino gaming industries to conduct commercial gambling on the condition that the government derive ‘reasonable’ revenue from this newly decriminalised activity. From the beginning, however, this has been an extraordinary tax. Like other legitimate businesses, racetracks and casinos were subject to both federal and state income tax. In addition, however, state governments imposed gambling privilege taxes, generally percentages of handle from racetracks and of gross win from casinos. Theoretically, as levies on gross gambling, these privilege taxes are extracted from gamblers rather than operators and are examples of sumptuary taxation, like taxes on alcohol and tobacco. In other words, private enterprise was allowed to conduct commercial gambling in exchange for a revenue contribution over and above the normal tax liabilities incurred by other profitable businesses. Ultimately, of course, these costs are extracted from the bettors. This extraordinary claim on gambler revenues by the states became a justification for aggressively transforming previously proscribed activities— that is, of commercialising ‘sin and deviance’. State governments set their own regulations of pay-offs, control over percentages allowed for advertising and money paid to lottery outlets and vendors. It is a little like the fox guarding the hen house. There is little constraint, for example, over lottery advertising. Some states allow at least 1 per cent of revenues for advertising; the Pennsylvania state lottery buys more advertising in the media than any other commercial enterprise in the state. Generally states return 5 per cent of their share of lottery sales (usually the state’s share is 50 per cent) to local vendors. Proposed legislation for video lottery machines in taverns often allows 25 per cent to go to the store-keepers. These conventions are largely a result of political and industry considerations as to what will keep everyone happy and not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

CONCLUSION The events of the 1930s and the 1970s can be seen to exhibit a parallel in at least some respects with regard to gambling legalisation. Both were clearly fiscal measures enacted

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

179

in times of crisis or great strain on the budget of the states; both were periods of a weakening of basic cultural values and of the expansion and concentration of capital in new forms. The ever-increasing fiscal needs of the states have led them into a direct and expanding involvement in the economy, despite the Reagan/Bush years of deregulation and so-called privatisation of the economy. Nowhere is this clearer than in the government monopoly over legal gambling. The consequence of this is indeed momentous. From colonial times to the depression, gambling was defined as deviant, while undergoing a complicated history. Gambling was an asocial act, a violation of the Protestant ethic. The range of ills attributed to this single activity was truly impressive. Gambling was blamed for corrupting morals, and those who engaged in it were labelled as sinners. Gambling was perceived as impairing the work ethic and weakening the Puritan values of thrift and industry that are supposedly the foundation of American capitalism. It was seen as a destroyer of the bonds of social cohesion of family, Church and community. It corrupted branches of government. Until the twentieth century and the Great Depression, the growth of labour unrest and the Second World War, the state could afford generally to prohibit or proscribe gambling and support existing cultural assumptions. The geographically isolated racetracks, illegal numbers and bookmaking of earlier generations satisfied what might be termed the naturally occurring or (in British legal usage) ‘unstimulated’ demand for gambling activities. Spontaneous gambling constitutes true, voluntary, non-obsessive play, and is therefore a self-limiting leisure activity. There are natural limits to the losses that are generated from such spontaneous and unstimulated gambling as people stop playing and return to their everyday worlds. Gambling in this condition remains a safety valve, a special-occasion activity. The small-scale and ambiguous legal status of the gambling operations of earlier generations tended to resolve this conflict in the player’s favour. Even the rationalisation of gambling services in the nineteenth century was not much more than an attempt to supply an indigenously occurring demand (Findlay 1986). Beginning with the depression, however, transformation of capital created a fiscal crisis that was experienced as particularly acute by many states during the two periods of the 1930s and the 1970s. This trend, along with the weakening of traditional cultural values, supported the shift of power that determined the shape and dimension of the shift of gambling markets from consumer-directed to supplier-manipulated. Over this span of time and for the first time in history, it has been possible for commercial operators to erase the natural limits of losses imposed by spontaneous play and to effect wholesale changes in behaviours, and then for the states themselves to institute and centralise one major form of gambling (lotteries) on a massive scale. State lotteries not only allow the states to extract a much larger percentage on the total amount gambled, but places them in a position whereby the inevitable need to consistently increase losses leads them to create a range of practices intended to revalue gambling not only as acceptable, but as a positively valuable activity. These efforts amount to nothing less than a radical transformation of the original meaning of gambling into an institutionalised activity. For example, if lotteries are found in practice to extract revenues at too slow a rate, the wide geographical dispersion and large scale of lottery operations, coupled with modern gambling technology and the authority of the states, can

Gambling cultures

180

rapidly and easily alter the games’ characteristics to stimulate gambling behaviour that produces larger losses, and hence larger lottery revenues. Ever since the advent of the fiscally unsuccessful 1964 New Hampshire lottery, lotteries have become more competitive and have attracted, and even created, new markets of gamblers. The state has encouraged player losses rather than attempting to minimise and control gambling. Finally, the current policy of ‘selective decriminalisation’ of various forms of gambling seems less understandable in terms of any ground-swelling of popular opinion or demand for these games than as the direct result of the political needs of the state itself. The larger, more centralised forms of gambling are being commercialised and institutionalised, while those games which are less amenable to these transformations are still largely proscribed. The play element is being denigrated and commercial forms of gambling guarantee that the players, as a group, lose. These radical changes in the nature of gambling games and gambling situations have occurred in direct response to the revenue needs of the state and not to any constitutional demand for the individual’s ‘right to gamble’ at the games of his or her choice at the cheapest price. The transformation of gambling in America continues. In recent years legislation has been introduced in many fiscally stressed states to expand legal gambling and include small games of chance and video lottery terminals in local bars, telephone gambling and credit-card lotteries which can be player-activated at home by a normal computer (Le Fleur 1984:12). The problems of creating real economic opportunities for people through a combination of their own hard work and government investment in new capitalproducing infrastructures has been ignored in the growing reliance on ‘luck’, ‘chance’ and unearned ‘windfall’ profits. Governments in the United States cannot expect to create new capital by redistributing existing wealth in the form of state lotteries. Clearly, there are limits to gambling revenues and society’s reliance upon them.

NOTE 1 The author would like to acknowledge the help of her student research assistant, Steve Shmukler, in editing and compiling bibliographical material for this chapter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V. and Smith, J. (1986) ‘For whom the bell tolls: is the closing of Liberty Bell a death-knell for harness tracks?’, Hoof Beats 55(2):48–55. Abt, V., Smith, J. and Christiansen, E. (1985) The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Abt, V., Smith, J. and McGurrin, M. (1984) ‘Gambling, the misunderstood sport: a problem in social definition’, Leisure Sciences 6(2):205–20. Alford, R. (1972) ‘Paradigms of relations between state and society’, in L.Lindberg (ed.) Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism, Lexington, MA: Heath. Asbury, H. (1938) Sucker’s Progress: An Informal History of Gambling in America from the Colonies in Canfleld, New York: Dodd, Mead. Barlett, D. and Steele, J. (1991) ‘America: what went wrong?’ The Philadelphia Inquirer (22–28 Oct.):R1–R40. Bluestone, B. and Harrison, B. (1982) The Deindustrialization of America, New York: Basic Books.

The role of the state in the expansion and growth of commercial gambling

181

Brinner, R. and Clotfelter, C. (1975) ‘An economic appraisal of state lotteries’, National Tax Journal 28(4):355–404. Callois, R. (1978) Man, Play, and Games, New York: Schocken Books. Christiansen, E. (1991a) ‘US gaming and handle up 14% in ‘90’, Gaming and Wagering Business (July): 32–43. ——(1991b) ‘Gaming operators win record $25.9B in ‘90’, Gaming and Wagering Business (Aug.) 1991:32–43. Clotfelter, C. and Cook, P. (1989) Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Darman, R. (1991) Director of Management and Budget (OMB) Testimony, House Appropriations Committee (Feb.). Dombrink, J. and Thompson, W. (1990) The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos, Reno: University of Nevada Press. Downes, D.M., Davies, B.P., David, M.E. and Stones, P. (1976) Gambling, Work and Leisure: A Study Across Three Areas, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Eadington, W. (1982) ‘The evolution of corporate gambling in Nevada’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics 6(1):13–22. Findlay, J. (1986) People of Chance, New York: Oxford University Press. Focus (1984) ‘Marketing studies, teamwork help make L G & K big lottery winner’, Focus (25 Jan.):24–6. Haller, M. (1979) ‘The changing structure of American gambling in the twentieth century’, Journal of Social Issues 35(3):87–114. Hofstadter, R., Miller, W. and Aaron, D. (1957) The United States: The History of a Republic, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Le Fleur, I. (1984) ‘The VLT phenomenon’, Gaming Business Magazine (June): 11–12. Lowy, M. (1991) High Rollers: Inside the Savings and Loan Debacle, New York: Praeger. Mahon, G. (1980) The Company that Bought the Boardwalk: A Reporter’s Story of How Resorts International Came to Atlantic City, New York: Random House. Martinez, T. (1983) The Gambling Scene: Why People Gamble, Springfield, IL: Charles C.Thomas. O’Connor, J. (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State, New York: St Martin’s Press. Offe, C. (1972) ‘Political authorities and class structures: an analysis of late capitalist societies’, International Journal of Sociology 2:73–108. Reuter, P. and Rubenstein, J. (1978) ‘Fact, fancy and organized crime’, The Public Interest 53:45– 67. Skolnick, J. (1978) House of Cards: Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling, Boston: Little, Brown. Smith, G. (1992) ‘Sucker bet or sure thing: a critical analysis of sports lotteries’, Journal of Gambling Studies 8(4):331–50. Spiro, M. (1974) ‘On the tax incidence of the Pennsylvania lottery’, National Tax Journal 23(1):74–82. Steffens, L. ([1904] 1948) The Shame of the Cities, New York: Peter Smith. Weber, M. (1930) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Scribner.

11 A SIGN OF THE TIMES The political culture of gaming in the Netherlands Sytze Kingma1 The Staats Loterij Fever is raging. Raging, indeed; for everybody is buying, everybody is hoping and fearing, everybody is pretty sure to win…. I am told the ruin begotten of this among these classes (servants, small traders, little boys), especially, is more than a stranger can conceive; and that the purloining of the master’s silver is but the inevitable consequence when the servant takes to purchasing in the Staats Loterij…. It is not so difficult to name the winner. For the Royal State Lottery wins, and draws a snug little income from the odious traffic; draws it from the idleness, sin, crime, and want of its own children. (Dickens 1858:156) Charles Dickens lamented the flourishing trade in lottery tickets in nineteenth-century Amsterdam. The Dutch upper class also expressed their concern about the gaming habits of ordinary citizens and advocated the discontinuance of the state lottery. Gaming in various forms had long before then found fertile soil in the prosperous Low Countries, which had been shaped by both mercantile capitalism and Calvinistic morality. The tension between a religious attitude to life and a capitalistic existence characterised the cultural climate and cultural politics of the time, dominated by affluent burghers. In his study of the Golden Age—the seventeenth century, when the Dutch Republic of the Seven United Provinces was a leading country in the capitalist world—Schama (1987) provides an extensive treatment of the preoccupation with money, from which a picture emerges of widespread involvement in speculation and lotteries, and in particular the regulations and ambivalent attitudes that went with it. Financial gain, commercial interests, charity, conviviality and entertainment provided an inextricable knot of motives and controversies. In a remarkable way, these factors came together in speculation on tulips, culminating in 1636 in an hysterical frenzy—trade had degenerated into unbridled gambling. The boundaries between unsystematic gambling and organised stock-market trade were rather vague at the time. The burghers also indulged in exclusive lotteries. These were characteristic of the Dutch Republic, and combined worldly greed with religious causes. These lotteries provided the rich both with an opportunity to win scarce and precious goods, especially prizes of silver, and a means of engaging in cultural politics as well as entertainment. Many churches, almshouses, hospices and other charitable institutions had the lotteries to thank for their foundation, their buildings or extensions. Enterprises such as these provided assistance in times of regional or local disasters, and lotteries were organised in order to raise funds for urban prestige projects and for wars.

A sign of the times

183

These were the good times of Dutch lotteries, instigated by sobriety and charitable causes, where those who participated were not driven primarily or solely by pecuniary gain, but by the furtherance of a cause both beneficial and agreeable in the eyes of God. (Fokker 1862:62)2 But Fokker himself overemphasised the moral motives for participating in earlier lotteries and was unremitting in providing arguments for the discontinuance of the state lottery. It is significant that one of his reasons for considering the state lottery to be harmful was that towards the end of the eighteenth century it had become more and more geared to the participation of the working class. In the eyes of Fokker, this meant ‘speculation on the lusts and passions of an unthinking multitude, which is in no way able to resist temptation’ (Fokker 1864:26). During the nineteenth century the upper class changed from initiators, organisers and participants to opponents of lotteries. In a precursor of the modern welfare state, social welfare, which previously had been the responsibility of private initiative and charities (including gaming), to a greater extent became organised collectively and a generalised tax was introduced to guarantee continuity of income. With the industrialisation of the Netherlands, dignitaries foresaw the rise of a vast and potentially dangerous army of wage labourers, as had already occurred in England (de Swaan 1988). But before they embarked upon the civilising activities of the nineteenth century—aimed at factory discipline and stimulating regular life in working-class families through a campaign against, among other things, alcohol, prostitution and gambling—the upper class, who strongly adhered to the Protestant work ethic, first deprived themselves of these pleasures. With their interest in lotteries the emerging bourgeoisie had ironically been at the basis of Dutch organised gaming. In France and Germany, this role was played by an aristocratic elite (relatively absent in the Netherlands) who indulged in less instrumental and more exclusive forms of casino gaming. In the Netherlands, casino gaming was introduced much later, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the seaside resort of Scheveningen (Figure 11.1) and led an irregular and illegal existence until well into the 1970s. The history of gaming in the Netherlands can be regarded as a three-phase development. The first phase was the period of mercantile capitalism and early state formation of a Protestant federalistic state from the Middle Ages to 1813.

Gambling cultures

184

Figure 11.1 Distribution of casinos in the Netherlands, 1990 Gaming had a strong commercial function, as far as lotteries were concerned—other gambling was organised in an undifferentiated manner and was mainly regulated to ensure public order—even though this function was hardly distinguishable from political and social objectives and objectives related to entertainment. This period saw the rise of organised lotteries, with the introduction of the state lottery in 1726, which marked the establishment of centralised government authority. The second phase took shape during the nineteenth century, when gaming gradually became embedded in industrial capitalism and a democratic state. A systematic fight against and the regulation of all publicly organised gaming from a moral point of view was initiated in this period. Gaming came to be valued negatively in cultural terms. This phase lasted until the Second World War. The third phase is the development of a permissive gaming culture in the welfare state, tightly interwoven within an international context. After the Second World War, a slow development set in towards the legalisation, liberalisation and differentiation of gaming. Cultural functions remained dominant in gaming, which came to be valued positively as entertainment and which increasingly was exploited commercially. This chapter offers a historical-sociological analysis of the modern gaming sector in the Netherlands, which will be related to its socio-cultural, political and economic contexts. On a general level, gaming will be perceived from three perspectives: it will be related to processes of state formation and civilising, of economy formation and commercialisation, and of class formation and emancipation.3 First, the chapter will examine the subjection of gaming to state control and its separation as a ‘cultural sector’

A sign of the times

185

in the first half of the twentieth century. Then it will consider the remarkable expansion, legitimation and commercialisation of gaming within its ‘postmodern’ context.

GAMING CONTROL The modernisation of the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century brought about a new policy concerning gaming, a policy which was targeted neither at laissez-faire nor at a total ban. This was characterised by a formal standardisation of gaming and by controlling market forces through state regulation. Gaming was shaped by changing forces of incriminating morality and economic gain, of state government and local autonomy, of collective action and everyday life, as a result of which restrictions varied between games and between severe or lenient sanctions. Initially, Liberals were in the majority in the parliamentary democracy which they founded after 1848 (Holthoon 1985; Stuurman 1983). They did not consider gaming itself to be irrational, although they considered gambling economically unproductive, a waste of money and time, but were more concerned with possible abuses in exploitation and the potentially harmful consequences for players and their families. They considered it to be government’s responsibility primarily to channel the community’s passion for gaming. These principles were the foundation for the first Dutch gaming legislation, the State Lottery Act of 1885. Lottery tickets were to be sold for fixed prices; there would be three draws per year and a restricted number of tickets available. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Liberals lost their power to the Confessionals (Protestants and Catholics), who were widely supported by the petit bourgeoisie, the lower middle classes. They used to their advantage the democratising system based on party politics. Their policies were guided by fundamental Protestant principles. The Confessionals held the opinion that the state had a God-given responsibility for the morality of citizens. They condemned gaming as immoral and wanted to go much further in the fight against gaming than the Liberals. But they had to admit that gaming as it existed could not be reversed in an instant. Politically, they had to retain the support of gamblers. They also recognised that it was impossible to ban gaming because it was widely accepted as an intrinsic aspect of human nature. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Confessionals formed the basis for a policy of standardising game norms, which was aimed at: distinguishing between ‘dangerous’ and ‘innocent’ games; restricting commercial exploitation; and restraining motives of personal gain in the players. Lotteries remained legal in the Lottery Act of 1905 but were subjected to stringent conditions. In 1911 ‘games of hazard’ in gambling houses and on racecourses, which were considered to be socially dangerous, were banned completely by an extension of penal statute (van Poelje et al. 1962). Where gaming was still permitted, cash prizes were prohibited, with the exception of the state lottery. In addition, private commercial exploitation of gaming was prohibited. Gaming proceeds were to be donated to charitable causes or to public welfare. In comparison with earlier policies, however, the functional relation of gaming with public welfare and charity had been reversed. Charity and public welfare were seen as strategies for restraining the interests of operators and the motive to play, instead of the main reasons for organised gaming.

Gambling cultures

186

Although the government never totally succeeded in controlling gaming by law, the fight against gaming remained the prime objective in government policy until the Second World War. Gaming was primarily judged on the basis of culture and morality, with a negative perception of the industry. Shortly after the war, this objective met with opposition as a result of changing political circumstances and developments in the field of sports. With a view to the interests of trotting and racing, which had declined as a result of the prohibition of the totalisator in 1911, a totalisator for horse-racing was established in 1948. In 1957, the Dutch Football Association (KNVB) for the first time organised a national football pool, which became an issue in the 1959 elections.4 Possibilities for the state lottery were extended because it could not meet the demand (Nederlandse Staatswetten 1964). Also, gaming machinery was imported from the United States, further expanding the gaming market. In politics the Socialists gained power. In the 1920s and 1930s, as did the Protestants and Catholics, they formed a social and cultural ‘pillar’ organised around collaborative networks of socialistic political, educational, charitable and recreational institutions (Therborn 1989).5 Conditions were set for a political culture of prudence, sobriety, discussion and compromise which resulted in administrative alliances with a wide social basis, and in the organisation of socio-economic interests in corporatist bodies. The state assigned itself a new and leading role. Fordist-Keynesian policies were implemented, aimed at sustained economic growth, full employment, the control of inflation and assuring effective consumer demand. Cooperation between political groups, however, did not lead to the erosion of the system of pillarisation; on the contrary, all groups fortified their own positions. As regards gaming, this meant repeated and lively ideological debates in Parliament. Catholics and Socialists were less strongly opposed to the legalisation of gaming than Protestants, although they also had some objections. The Gaming Act of 1964 was a product of this political culture. This law was aimed at combining diverse regulations pertaining to various games, bridging the gap between moral objections and pragmatic arguments, and narrowing the gulf between legal opportunities and actual gaming practices as they had developed. Gaming remained illegal, unless the government made an exception, although the legal basis for approved gaming was marginally extended. All lotteries were now allowed to pay out cash prizes, and finally the sports totalisator was legalised with the National Sports Totalisator (SNS) as its operator.6 Commercial and private exploitation of gaming, including casinos, remained a political taboo. As is often the case in restrictive legislation, gaming law lagged behind social developments. By the time the Gaming Act was enacted, the effectiveness of pillarisation was past its peak and a new era had begun. The 1960s brought more leisure, prosperity and commercial entertainment for Dutch citizens, together with secularisation, democratisation (on the level of social institutions), liberalisation and social emancipation. The working classes experienced a steady rise in material living standards, especially after a wage explosion in 1963. Adolescents developed self-conscious consumerist lifestyles. Students, intellectuals and feminists led a movement for social emancipation, in which the breaking of hierarchic structures of authority and sexuality were major themes. The work ethic was challenged. In social relations the focus shifted from authority to spontaneous solidarity, resulting in an emphasis on self-control rather

A sign of the times

187

than on ‘control from above’ (Kapteyn 1980; Wouters 1990). These changes were reflected in relations between employers and employees, the police and the public, medical attendants and patients, men and women, parents and children.

Table 11.1 Consumer expenditures on legal gambling (million guilders) 1955 1965 1975 1985 1990 Slot machines – – – – 1,448 Holland Casinos – – – 142 435 Bank lottery – – 41 80 86 Sports totalisator – 21 114 92 84 Racing/trotting 3 8 24 21 * State lottery 9 15 157 177 207 Totals 12 44 336 512 2,260 Source: Compiled from various reports *Information not available

In politics as well, opposition between the progressive modernists and the conservative traditionalists intensified. An ideological shift took place in all philosophical schools of thought. With increasing difficulty, a coalition of three Confessional parties managed to hold a small majority until in 1980 they merged into one Christian Democratic Party (CDA).7 On all fronts, parties took up new positions on the left-right polarity, with a general trend to liberalisation. Society became more permissive, and attitudes changed towards gaming in politics as well as in public opinion. Between 1965 and 1975 the state lottery and the sports and horse-racing totalisators realised unprecedented growth. This can be attributed to wide community acceptance, increases in the number of draws and maximum prizes, and rising material living standards (Table 11.1). Significantly, public opinion shifted on the legalisation of roulette. In 1948, only 19 per cent of the adult population was in favour of legalisation; in 1965, 31 per cent, and in 1971, a slight majority of 52 per cent favoured legalisation.8

A PERMISSIVE GAMING CULTURE In 1974 the Gaming Act was amended to liberalise and democratise gaming further. The bill acknowledged the interests of socio-cultural institutions as well as the interests of players. In the assessment of the impact of gaming, the emphasis shifted to a more positive focus on the entertainment value of the game, rather than a negative view of gambling motives. In addition to this, players were considered to be increasingly responsible for their own behaviour. In comparison with debates in Parliament in the preceding period, the treatment of the bill was surprisingly pragmatic. A number of speakers did their best to distinguish ethical arguments from practical, regulatory issues, and orthodox Protestants and some Socialists firmly adhered to their former stance. Although gaming was still morally disputed, the bill passed with a small majority. The possibilities for existing legal games were extended further, introducing a range of casino games, lotto and kienen (a form of bingo) for charity. In addition to the

Gambling cultures

188

redefinition of legal gaming, competition from abroad became a legitimising factor. In this respect, the trek of Dutch players to Belgian casinos and the participation of Dutch players in German lotteries were influential. Legalisation was also expressly proposed as a means of controlling illegal gaming. Of greater importance were arguments concerning the commercial interests of the culture industry attached to gaming. Casinos were advocated to improve tourist infrastructure. Interest in lotto was primarily associated with sports interests, and the General Dutch Lottery (ALN/SUFA) had been active for some time with lotteries for charity, welfare institutions and public health.9 Although there was a clearly identifiable trend towards the legalisation of gaming practices, gaming still remained controversial and subject to state restrictions. For casinos, the principle of a single licensee, a state-controlled monopoly, was applied. Lotto was administered by the sports totalisator. With respect to minor games of chance such as kienen, the stakes were to remain low and a large portion of the proceeds, 60 per cent, had to go to local socio-cultural groups such as clubs and societies. Legalisation and liberalisation of gaming is one major theme in the political culture of gaming. From a sociological point of view, the subjection to state control and subsequent institutionalisation of formal gaming norms can be understood as a process of ‘autonomisation’: the time-spatial separation of a cultural sector with a regulation regime of its own.10 The integration, definition and classification of the various elements within the gaming sector occurred simultaneously and is a second major theme in the political culture of gaming. Different standards for the various games, which were interrelated methodically and with increasing precision (Figure 11.2), can be attributed to technical differences between the games. However, no less irnportant are their respective

A sign of the times

189

Figure 11.2 Gaming legislation in the Netherlands influences: the specific periods and contexts in which the games developed, their sociocultural basis and the political and economic power they have been able to generate. In the process, mechanisms of repression, liberalisation and legalisation are simultaneously reproduced within the gaming sector. With legalisation, the general pattern of integration/differentiation for each game follows more or less the same logic of development, while the dynamics of development differ considerably for each game. Typically, games develop at local levels in response to pressure from the market, then the market grows and interest groups become dependent upon the game, which results in increasing competition, conflicts and ‘moral panics’. This produces a need for centralisation and state control. Initially, the state’s aim is repression. If this fails, controlled legalisation follows. This general process can be discerned in the development of Dutch lotteries and the Sports Totalisator. Similar processes occurred in the cases of bingo, slot machines and casino games, which experienced accelerated growth in the 1970s and 1980s. Together

Gambling cultures

190

with their integration in a unifying regime of regulation, the distinctive features of these games were carefully defined vis-à-vis each other, if the process of legalisation not only distinguished between legal game forms, but also led to new and sharp distinctions between legal and illegal gaming. Legality and illegality were defined in one and the same process—the one cannot be understood without the other. Kienen, bingo and slot machines Kienen is a traditional numbers game in Belgium and the southern provinces, the Catholic region of the Netherlands, where the game experienced a revival during the 1950s (Kingma 1988, 1991). Informal clubs discovered the game as a source of income and it suited the preferences of working-class women, who were badly represented on the entertainment market. The game was illegal, however, subject to the ban on games of ‘hazard’. Nevertheless, it was played on an increasing scale in public places such as parish halls, club houses, community centres and pubs. Despite its illegality, it was considered by local and regional authorities to be an innocent form of public entertainment. However, in the early 1970s firm action was undertaken against kienen, because the game was more frequently and openly played for money, and because it was being exploited by semi-professional kien-masters and pub owners. This period of repression preceded legalisation of kienen in 1974, in which public games were permitted but commercial exploitation was banned. The police and the judiciary failed in their resolve to end commercialised kienen. A weakened form of semi-commercial operation was condoned because the law was hard to enforce, and breaches were seen as insignificant or were successfully concealed. There was considerable variation between local authorities in levels of acceptance and regulation, which resulted in a remarkable mobility among women players: kien and (later) bingo trips were organised to bingo venues in municipalities with the most lenient prescriptions. Gaming disturbances broke out everywhere the game appeared, not only in the southern provinces, usually as a result of competition between operators and police intervention. Local policies gradually became more standardised. In the 1970s, the international game of bingo, which closely resembles kienen, appeared in the west of the country and was soon found all over the Netherlands. In the early 1980s the first bingo halls were established in former cinemas, following the British example. Here too, in 1989, after years of opportunistic tolerance, commercial practices were restricted partly as a result of conflicts between operators. The development of the slot-machine market in the same period was somewhat similar to the development of kienen and bingo. However, in the case of slot machines, commercial operation was finally legalised. As early as the 1930s, people were experimenting with coin machines. By the 1950s, these machines were a familiar sight all over the country. One or two companies imported used jukeboxes, pinball and fruit machines from the United States.11 The rapid spread of coin machines and variations in local policy prompted the national government in 1964 to develop a special provision for gaming machines to protect the youthful public. Slot machines were banned, but local authorities were authorised to issue permits for other gaming machines. Enterprising businessmen made agreements with local authorities and with owners of pubs where the machines could be placed and with whom they shared the profit. However, local policies

A sign of the times

191

continued to vary widely, largely as a result of a rather vague legal definition of ‘gaming machine’. The expansion of machines which paid out in cash led to conflicts between operators, pub owners and local authorities, at times resulting in law suits, until the judiciary decided in 1969 that slot machines were allowed to pay out only in ‘free games’, not in cash. People soon started to change their free games for money with the operator. The slot-machine business continued to expand rapidly in the early 1970s with the introduction of technically advanced fruit machines, the so-called ‘uprights’. However, the slot-machine industry, and to an even greater extent kienen and bingo, lacked strategic political and economic power. In the case of bingo and slot machines, there was no lobby or collective action to speak of until 1971 when a number of producers, dealers and keepers united into the Dutch association for the gaming-machine trade (VAN).12 Chaos in the slot machines market at the time of the 1974 amendment of the Gaming Act led to a new legal provision for slot machines. While slot machines were tolerated in anticipation of this legal provision, slots paying out in cash were not legalised until 1986. From then on, operators of slot machines were allowed to deploy their apparatus in sports canteens, clubhouses and community centres, in pubs and in amusement arcades, under restrictive and carefully defined conditions.13 Casinos Unlike the slot-machine industry, the protagonists of casinos had useful contacts in politics and were strongly supported by the Netherlands tourist industry. The National Foundation for the Exploitation of Casino Games (later Holland Casinos), which opened its first casino in Zandvoort in 1976, is the only licensee for casinos.14 In 1977, a casino was opened in Valkenburg, which was followed in 1979 by a casino in Scheveningen— all these places are tourist centres (Figure 11.1). The casino licensee was denied a private commercial interest and placed under the supervision of an independent Casinos Council. Casinos were given this special treatment because Parliament was aware of the special status of this form of gaming. Casinos were considered to be susceptible to fraud and to have other distinguishing features such as ‘the opportunity to participate, continuously, from opening time to closing time; the stimulating effect of fellow players and the public, and the urge instantly to win back the lost amount, with the risk of further losses’ (Parliament 1971–72:1). The minimum age for players was set at 18 years and they had to carry identification papers. After a slow start due to confusion about legal prescriptions and some scandals, since the 1980s considerable effort has been put into improving super-vision and professional operation of Holland Casinos. An advantage of the late arrival of legal casinos in the Netherlands in comparison with the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany was that the latest international ideas and developments could be implemented. Changes in the environment gave new direction to casino development in which the number of casinos was extended from three to eight. Although competition from illegal gaming increased, casino gaming became more popular among the population. In addition to tourism, casinos had a local and regional everyday attraction for players. Interest in casinos increased among municipal governments attracted by the impetus a casino could give to revitalisation schemes for run-down city centres and the local

Gambling cultures

192

economy. New developments took the popular American casino style as a role model rather than the chic European casino style—the corporate style of Holland Casinos is best typified as a mix of both. Exploitation of slot machines, and more informal rules of behaviour and dress requirements, which also reflected changes in fashion, were part of this approach. The strategic function of Holland Casinos in the fight against illegality also called for lower wagering thresholds and dismantling of the elitist European casino style. However, huge casinos embedded in a wider entertainment industry, like those in the United States, were considered incompatible with Dutch culture. Illegal gaming and ‘Golden Ten’ More than ever, the fight against illegality during the 1980s was an argument for liberalisation. Illegal gaming was a constant problem. Bingo had become increasingly commercial, forms of street gaming appeared in the big cities, slot machines in practice were operated on an illegal basis, and illegal lotteries appeared everywhere. Illegal gaming often took place in private homes, in the back room or in the attic. Illegal casinos also flourished during the 1970s, operated by organised crime and connected with prostitution and the drug trade (Middelburg 1988; van der Roer 1989; van Duyne et al. 1990). At first, illegal gaming houses were intended for private entertainment, similar to gaming in the Chinese community, but gangland racketeers became more and more intrusive. In Rotterdam, the police raided over 100 gaming dens between 1967 and 1982, with a peak in 1981–82, when Rotterdam was a candidate for a legal casino. Here too, an illegal lottery organisation, the ‘City Lottery’, was dismantled in 1981. Illegal city lotteries, however, were still organised parallel to the weekly lotto draws of the Sports Totalisator. In Amsterdam, the illegal Club 26 burned down in 1983 and police raided the notorious Club Cabala.15 Gaming which is on the fringe of legality is a different matter. The law provides that chance should determine the outcome of the game. In theory this seems obvious, but in practice it is difficult to determine. The concept of ‘skill’ has been used as an argument to bypass the intentions of the law. For example, at the beginning of this century and in the 1930s, there were short-lived experiments with roulette in Scheveningen (Zijlstra 1974). In 1939, use of a ‘hoisting machine’ was tried by the Supreme Court, which had to decide whether it was a game of skill or a game of chance. From time to time legal debates over games of skill would provide many an entertaining interlude in court. In the 1960s, another wave of roulette-style games (presented as games of skill) surged over the country. In 1965 the Supreme Court, in a verdict concerning a game called Saturne, transferred the criteria from objective game characteristics to subjective gaming behaviour. In future law suits, the criterion would be based on whether the results of playing the game for the players were seen to be determined by chance or skill. This resulted in practical problems with the onus of proof. Indirectly, this discretion in the application of the law by the judiciary provided a loophole for Golden Ten, a game introduced in the early 1980s. Golden Ten clubs mushroomed, ranging from many smallscale venues to one or two bigger casinos (Schalken 1990). By 1987, a total of about 140 Golden Ten casinos were known to operate. Prosecution soon turned out to be extremely labour-intensive and was not pursued on a large scale until 1990. This was in anticipation

A sign of the times

193

of a verdict of the Supreme Court in 1991, which defined Golden Ten as a game of chance and therefore subject to the Gaming Act. By the 1990s it had become clear that controlling illegal gaming through legal competition alone was not sufficient, and prosecution was intensified. The popularity of illegal gaming could be attributed to lenient, informal and weak state controls, greater time-spatial availability in comparison with legal gaming facilities, and the social and economic opportunities which gaming offered criminals. However, more than criminal involvement, the presence of controversies over illegal gaming signified the increasing subjection of gaming to juridical interpretation. Legal ambiguities, opportunistic policies, low policing priorities, reluctance and discretion in prosecution provided a basis for illegal gaming. Moreover, the illegal exploitation of gaming was considered to be a ‘victimless crime’, particularly in bingo, slot machines and most prominently in Golden Ten. Vague gaming definitions, juridical interpretation and the problem of illegality marked the transition to legalisation and liberalisation.

POSTMODERN GAMING It is significant that, despite growing tolerance towards gaming, it remained the object of government regulation and surveillance. Supervision was not slackened; on the contrary, it was intensified, made more comprehensive, improved and differentiated. But government authority was directed towards the supervision of legal facilities and the protection of players rather than the repression of gaming. The repressive task of the state retreated to the fringes of the legal gaming sector. In the 1980s the general trend towards an autonomus and differentiated gaming sector can be discerned: further expansion and liberalisation of gaming together with improved gaming aesthetics; detailed differentiation in gaming products and detachment of gaming products from specific class-fractions; greater emphasis on market forces, pragmatism and self-regulation; dominance of a fun ethic and playful involvement in gaming. At the same time, there developed a growing recognition of gaming addiction, the scientific study of gaming, increased media involvement and international dependency. The gaming sector became part of a postmodern consumer culture.16 Stagflation and pragmatism As a result of the economic recession in the 1970s, the growth in gaming turnover stagnated, more or less in line with developments in consumer expenditure, while the differentiation of games increased. In the course of the 1980s, turnovers started to rise again, but the structure of the gaming market had changed considerably. The expansion of gaming during the 1980s is characterised by consolidation as well as by broadening of the types of games, exploitation methods and public participation. The focus was on ‘hard’, active gaming—on bingo, slot machines, blackjack, roulette and betting shops.17 It is estimated that the proportion in market shares between passive and active gaming, also defined in terms of short-odds versus long-odds games, shifted from two to one in 1970 to one to one in 1987, with a growing emphasis on active gaming (see Table 11.1) (Driehuis et al. 1989).

Gambling cultures

194

An ideological change in the Netherlands around 1980 opened the way for more active gaming. The moralism and idealism of the 1950s and 1960s were replaced by pragmatism, not only in politics but also in individual and in group-related lifestyles. These developments occurred in the context of aggravated domestic contradictions, stagnating economic growth (stagflation) and the nation’s dependency on the world economy. Structural unemployment worsened, and the tendency towards levelling of incomes came to an end. Adolescents lost the prospect of an uncomplicated, prosperous future. Some pessimistically rejected the social establishment or looked for alternatives in small communities, environmental and peace movements. Others focused on the reinforcement of individual economic wealth (yuppies). Individualistic relationships, small families and associations outside collective social formations dominated social life. The commercial market to an ever greater extent provided for communication and social needs. Social emancipation increased the public role for women, ethnic minorities and gay people. The range of lifestyle options expanded. In this respect the process of growing differentiation in gaming parallels the broader process of social differentiation. Leisure, consumption, sports, tourism, art and entertainment became more important in the lifestyles of the Dutch. Pragmatism showed itself in hedonism, ostentatious consumption and in the cultivation of style. This situation provided fertile soil for active gaming. More and more players came from the middle classes with relatively modest lifestyles; and a new generation of nouveaux riches no longer scorned such ephemeral pleasures, setting their own standards of play. In the political realm, ideological oppositions shifted from conservative/ progressive towards idealistic/pragmatic, a shift in which pragmatism gained ground. For instance, in 1982–83 debates in Parliament on slot machines paying out in cash and on expanding the number of legal casinos from three to eight were devoid of idealism. The focus was on technical and economic questions and on matters of feasibility and public order. In the case of slot machines, responsible members of the government said: Whether or not the government has ethical objections to gambling is not a decisive factor. It is the task of government to provide regulation, based on the consideration that slot machines may not lead to losses that are damaging to the weaker groups in our society, while on the other hand, a reasonable exploitation must be possible, in order to prevent a flight into illegality. (Parliament 1982–83:3) In the cases of slot machines and betting shops unprecedented levels of commercial exploitation were allowed. In 1985, off-track betting shops, to be operated by the multinational corporation Ladbroke, were introduced to meet the needs of trotting and racing. By 1990 Ladbroke operated seventy-five betting shops throughout the country. It should be noted that the pragmatic evaluation of gaming mentioned here did not remove ideological debates over gaming. Rather, the practice of ideological assessment as well as gaming itself has changed. First, gambling is not a universal and fixed category of play that is acted upon, controlled or enabled; it is shaped and changed in a process of societal transformation of which gaming itself is part and parcel. Changes in the role of gaming in society took place through a change of gaming itself. In particular, the

A sign of the times

195

legalisation of gaming was both controlled and controlling, with the introduction of defined and defining gaming standards. In part this redefinition (that is, civilising) of gaming has overcome the ethical objections of former days. Second, the pragmatic emphasis has moved from a moral judgement of gaming itself towards judgement of the way gaming is used. The style of gaming and the social consequences of gaming, as mediated by players and operators, has become the focus of evaluations and indirect interventions. The decisive question is less whether ‘to gamble or not to gamble’ and more ‘how to gamble if to gamble’ and ‘how to regulate if to legalise’. In this conception the role of the state is to set the prerequisites for ‘proper gaming’. Increasing autonomy and new dependencies Rapid expansion, professionalisation and liberalisation characterised the development of Dutch gaming in the 1980s. The growing differentiation and autonomy of the gaming sector had several dimensions: growth in numbers, increased time-spatial availability and visibility, the involvement of science and health-care institutions, use of electronic media and a mass market of consumers. The growth in active gaming accelerated. The number of casino visits increased from 1.1 million in 1982 to 3.2 million in 1990. Casino proceeds increased from 72 million to 400 million guilders. In 1982 the number of slot machines was estimated at 30,000, with an estimated turnover of some 350 million guilders. In 1990, there were 75,000 slot machines outside the casinos, with a turnover of an estimated 1.5 billion guilders. About 10 per cent of the gaming machinery is placed in 130 amusement arcades throughout the Netherlands. Within a very short period the gaming machine industry had become respectable.18 This new élan assumed a visual, street dimension through the upgrading of amusement arcades. These arcades are no longer out-of-the-way, cramped, murky venues, but spacious, colourful and brightly lit ‘pleasure domes’ in prime localities. The latest casinos also are urban pleasure sites built around a specific image. The most recent developments in the early 1990s include the privatisation of the state lottery, which is contracted out in a similar way to casino operations, the extension of sports betting and the instant lottery (SNS), and the presentation of lotteries in spectacular television shows. The only commercial television station in the Netherlands broadcasts Hit Bingo for de Postcode loterij every week and de Staatsloterijshow once a month. At the same time gaming is taken somewhat less seriously. Holland Casinos and the slotmachine trade, for instance, are stressing pleasure and sociability as primary motives for gaming. Players are attracted to gaming venues by the lifestyle, even if they do not take part in gambling. Gaming has, somewhat paradoxically, further departed from its classical definition as a route to fortune in favour of fun and style. The growing autonomy and independence of the gaming sector has its counter-part in its integration in society, as a tree has roots. Gaming is encountered in more and more social situations, in the first place because more people participate in gaming. In 1986, only 7 per cent of the adult Dutch population had never gambled; 52 per cent sometimes played in the state lottery, 38 per cent participated in a television lottery, 33 per cent played bingo, 15 per cent played on gaming machines and 8 per cent sometimes visited a casino (Becker et al. 1987). The gaming sector has become integrated with the social

Gambling cultures

196

structure of the Netherlands, contributing to the national income, employment and everyday language. With the increasing popularity of gaming, market growth and increasing competition, gaming operators have become more dependent upon consumers and their diversified preferences. The former reluctance to advertise gaming is waning. Consumers are more informed about gaming opportunities and their gaming behaviour is supervised to ensure ‘proper gaming’. If necessary, their behaviour is corrected, not only to ensure an orderly game but also to prevent excessive gaming and gaming addiction. Yet gaming remains controversial. In 1986, 62 per cent of the adult population agreed with the statement that ‘gambling is wrong and it can get people in trouble’; 92 per cent thought that ‘gambling was potentially dangerous’ (Becker et al. 1987).19 From this we learn less about the actual dangers of gaming and more about perceived dangers, which has a tempering effect on behaviour. Awareness of dangers is often directly related to self-restraint and self-conscious gaming. Player reflections on gaming can be understood as a further aspect of the sector’s autonomy. Scientific understanding of gaming is a form of detached reflection which enables an understanding and knowledge of gaming, relatively independent of gaming’s actual presence. In the 1980s in the Netherlands, research was carried out on practically every aspect of gaming. In many respects, scientific involvement in gaming can be understood as the rational guidance of irrationality, in so far as scientific research influences gaming policies, the industry or public opinon. Indeed, most research in gaming is explicitly designed to improve the industry’s sensitivity to the market, to guide political decision making or to control the industry’s dark sides—addiction, criminality and illegality. In fact, the gaming industry has introduced methods of scientific management for almost all facets of corporate strategy to deal with players as well as competitors, with the product and regulations, including business ethics. Gaming has become more dependent on scientific research for the establishment of gaming norms, the disciplining of consumers and operators. In this way power and knowledge are intimately related. In this respect it is hardly a coincidence that most research is focused on ‘problem players’, who are associated with criminality and addiction (Hermkens et al. 1988; Kok et al. 1991). With the expansion of the gaming industry in the 1980s, the need for knowledge about the social significance and impact of gaming grew. This research has influenced the debate on gaming and the validity of arguments. Commercial and policy decisions now are based on empirical research and sound theory; experience and common sense no longer suffice. For example, in 1986–87 a major research project was commissioned by the Casinos Council to investigate the Dutch population’s opinions on gaming, gaming participation and gaming addiction (Becker et al. 1987; Hermkens et al. 1988). Variations in gaming participation indicate that relevant factors are age (players on gaming machines are on the whole younger), gender (women generally play bingo, men bet on horse-races) and class (roulette players have higher incomes). However, the various game forms no longer correspond with homogeneous social categories. Instead, specific games are associated with specific groups which display their own identity with respect to gaming. The industry encourages this trend, aiming for a larger playing public via market segmentation and expansion of the range of products. The relative dissociation from age, gender and class reflects the growing cultural distinctiveness of the gaming sector, in this case with respect to public composition. The

A sign of the times

197

range of gaming products has become increasingly independent, through time, space and meaning, of the range of class-fractions.20 This separation of gaming from class-fractions is only a tendency, not a definite characteristic of gaming. For instance, whereas the casino public is characterised by heterogeneity, the bingo public is characterised by homogeneity. To complicate matters further, this relative independence appears in two forms: differentiation between games, and heterogeneity within games. In the Netherlands, casino gaming is primarily a middle-class phenomenon where individuality and difference are celebrated; bingo is primarily a phenomenon of working-class women, where collective identity is celebrated.21 Gaming preferences and playing styles mediate between the opportunities offered by the gaming industry on the one side of the market and the lifestyles of consumers on the other side. As a consequence, the socio-economic roots of players, like income, education and gender, are indirectly represented in gaming. They appear not only in participation figures, but more prominently in the way people gamble. Until 1985 welfare and health organisations in the Netherlands had hardly heard of gaming addiction, but they too have become involved in the gaming sector. Official registration of gambling addicts increased from 400 in 1986 to 2,500 in 1989. The first Gamblers Anonymous group in the Netherlands was formed in 1981; in 1989 there were sixteen. Since 1986, gaming addiction has become manifest and a point of controversy. The latest ‘gaming panic’ (of the sort cited in the introduction to this chapter) was perhaps more accurately a concern for criminality stemming from addiction, prompting municipal governments to consider banning slot machines. The growing concern over addiction in particular led to controversies over, and sometimes wild speculation about, the estimated number of gaming addicts (estimates ranging between 20,000 and 200,000). Gaming addiction adds a further dimension to the cultural autonomy of gaming. First, people can more easily be trapped in a subcultural enclave that has become relatively separated from the rest of their daily lives, an enclave that, under certain circumstances— escapism, loss of personal bonds or unemployment—has the potential to become an extreme source of identification and signification, comparable to other cultural sectors like the media, sports and religion. Second, assistance given to addicts by welfare and health-care organisations, through which gaming addicts are resocialised in society, represents a ‘soft’ form of control and containment of gaming, in addition to the ‘hard’ control of policing. Accelerated growth and developments in gaming markets have precipitated several policy innovations to achieve more uniformity and coherence for the gaming sector. In 1989 for instance, the Dutch government reconsidered the fundamental aims of its gaming policy (Parliament Additionals 1988–89). The primary objectives remain the regulation of supply and the channelling of demand (in effect, the preservation of state control over gaming). Concerns persisted about the further liberalisation of the market. Another expressed aim was to strive for greater integration of various legislative provisions and co-operation between regulating bodies and operators. An additional problem was posed by the integration of the European Market in 1992 and the effects on national gaming monopolies.22 The considerable differences in regulatory standards between the twelve countries of the European Community can be ascribed to a common factor: restrictive national policies in which the banning of foreign competition is an integral part. Developments at both national and international levels compelled Dutch

Gambling cultures

198

gaming regulators as well as the operators to coordinate and cooperate. During the 1980s, they had expanded towards each other’s markets, increasing the danger of market collisions and the danger of creating demand through fierce competition. At the same time, they became dependent on each other’s support to face possible foreign competition. With these initiatives, the degree of autonomous self-management within the gaming sector increased.

INSTANT PLEASURE Over time, an autonomous gaming sector has emerged in the Netherlands with its own regimen of regulation. Each consecutive phase in this development has been presented as congruous with the preceding one, rather than a clean break with the past. The restrictive phase which took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, in which gaming was condemned as a moral evil, can be understood both as the submission of all gaming to state control, and as the isolation of gaming in the cultural sphere of social life. This submission and cultural definition of gaming was not abandoned in the following permissive phase. Rather, state control was applied in a different way, and the cultural definition of gaming was changed. Following market pressures, government authority was used to achieve the controlled legalisation of gaming. In this process, legal possibilities in the gaming sector were extended, and the number of games and the variations in games increased. During the 1980s, the development into a postmodern gaming culture in the short run signalled rupture with the moral reserve of the past. But more importantly, it sped up the long-term process of gaming’s cultural separation and independence, with increasing liberalisation and a precise, detailed and differentiated basis for gaming in society. The development of cultural autonomy in the gaming sector has been underscored by changes in the connections between gaming and public causes. Early lotteries were especially designed for the purpose of alleviating social and economic needs. Gaming served as a means to a public end. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the lottery had become an end in itself, whereby charity and welfare were regarded as a means to curb the passion for gaming. The state lottery saw a similar development. It served initially as a means of replenishing the Treasury, but by the middle of the nineteenth century the importance of the state lottery as an income source for government had already diminished considerably. By the early twentieth century the state lottery was only sustained in order to provide the people with an outlet for their propensity to gamble. With growing liberalisation, the connection to public causes continued to be a crucial aspect in the regulation of gaming. Betting on horse-races and on football games remains immediately and explicitly linked to specific social interests. In lotto, this connection is less immediate. In casinos and the slotmachine industry, the games are virtually independent of motives and legitimations other than gaming-related ones. In these cases the connections with societal interests (prestige, tourism, taxes) are indirect.23 Some gaming proceeds, such as those from the General Dutch Lottery and Sports Totalisator, are put into a mutual fund from which various non-profit organisations receive a share. Proceeds of the state lottery and Holland Casinos go to general government funds, so that public welfare is perceived in a general, abstracted sense.

A sign of the times

199

The tendency of disconnecting gaming from external social and economic ends can also be seen in the changing justifications given for legalisation from the inherent human propensity to gamble, to the financing of social and cultural institutions and the fighting against illegality—all versions of gaming as a ‘necessary evil’—to a positive evaluation of gaming as entertainment and gaming, an integral and legitimate element in the economy of pleasure. All of these arguments have figured in debates on gaming in every historical period, but they have assumed varying degrees of importance and different implications. The Gaming Act of 1964, for example, was basically a moral act and liberalisation was a consequence of concessions to market forces. The 1974 amendment was a defeat for moralism, accelerating liberalisation and the cultural acceptance of gaming. Further liberalisation in the 1980s reflected commercial appreciation of the industry. In this case, reservations about gaming had mostly to do with matters of public order. The tendency towards commercialisation represents only one dimension in the general trend to the cultural autonomy of gaming. Others concern the increasing differentiation of gaming products, the shift towards a fun-ethic in gaming, an emphasis on self-regulation and pragmatism, the move towards more distanced and indirect modes of regulation, professionalisation, the involvement of science and health institutions, improved gaming aesthetics and the involvement of a diversified mass of consumers. Participation by social groups ranges across the full spectrum of gaming options, which are provided on an increasingly omnipresent and continual basis. All of these trends point in the direction of a separate and relatively independent cultural sector. This is not to say that the autonomy of gaming has reached a final stage, or even that it is irreversible: far from it. In comparison with other cultural sectors, such as fashion, sports or music, the degree of cultural autonomy in gaming is relatively low. Furthermore, within the gaming sector, degrees of autonomy vary considerably for different games, as they do across nations. Autonomy can be won or lost in social struggles between contradictory interests. Explanations for changes in the makeup of Dutch gaming at each phase of development can be found in the political, economic and socio-cultural circumstances of the time. The cultural separation and control of gaming is related to the rise of industrial capitalism and the intervention of the nation state in the daily lives of the people. Liberalisation can be attributed to rising material living standards, pressures from the illegal gaming market, shifts in the power basis of party ideologies, the general sociocultural acceptance of gaming and, paradoxically, the state’s containment and tempering of gaming itself. From a political culture perspective, the subjection of gaming in the Netherlands to state control and the simultaneous definition of gaming standards was a process of controlled legalisation, in which gaming itself was changed. The state was able to legalise and liberalise gaming precisely because of its firm control over gaming: the liberalisation of gaming presupposed a stronger state, not a weaker one. The liberalisation of gaming has been realised through the introduction of safeguards within the gaming sector, with prescribed gaming standards and expectations of self-control from operators, players, regulators and even from the judiciary (Wouters 1990). Theft, foul play, fraud, undesirable stimulation of demand and excessive gaming are controlled from the inside of the gaming sector and in advance rather than from the outside and retrospectively. In

Gambling cultures

200

the process, the boundaries between legal and illegal gaming have been sharply redefined. But also, as a result of prosperity and social security, players no longer immediately risk their livelihoods in gaming. For players and operators, the emphasis has shifted from what was negatively called gambling towards what is positively regarded as leisure and entertainment. The role of the state—in which the cultural independence of gaming can be seen both as the expression of state control and as a constitutive part of state formation itselfcannot be understood irrespective of class emancipation and the commercialisation of culture. In the field of political representation, class emancipation has led to more equal power balances, resulting in policy compromises over class-bound gaming ideologies. Of equal importance, because most modern ideologies, with the exception of the liberal standpoint, were opposed to gambling, was the cultural and economic emancipation of a wide range of social classes. This has led to the development of an affluent mass of consumers and pressures from the market to legalise gaming. It did not lead, however, to a homogeneous mass culture of gaming. On the contrary, the growth of the gaming market was realised with and through difference. In the period of the welfare state, gaming was considered to be primarily of interest to finance cultural and welfare institutions. In the most recent phase a new layer has been added: gaming itself is shaped as a consumer product in the economy of pleasure. First, gaming can be regarded as a cultivation of money, at a time when people are judged more than ever according to their spending power and depend greatly on commerce for the creation of lifestyles. Second, gaming represents more than money fetishism. It has to be regarded as far more than a mirror of society; it is a substantial, increasingly autonomous part of society. The forms in which the gaming boom has taken shape are indicative of the way in which today’s consumer culture operates: active consumer participation in the turnover of money, pleasure and style as the principal sources of meaning and motivation, and the spread of commercial entertainment over all social strata. Postmodern consumption patterns can be regarded as part of the answer to a crisis of capitalism, the stagnation of economic growth in the 1970s (Harvey 1989). Gaming perfectly meets the standards of postmodern consumption. It is a trade in illusions. Money is almost instantly turned into fun, identity, status, hope (and profit to the operators). The most recent developments in gaming in the Netherlands—casino games, slot machines, lottery draws in spectacular television shows and the instant lottery—also meet most closely the timespace compression as required by capital.24 This is not to suggest that the political culture of gaming is implicitly designed to meet the economic requirements of a particular era. Politics, economics and culture, the separation of which is a consequence of modernity itself, are intimately connected. Instead of searching for or inferring causalities, it is of greater relevance to see how these separations and connections are actually realised and contested in practice.

NOTES 1 This chapter is based upon research endowed by the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research (NWO). Translation of this chapter has been sponsored by the Casinos Council. 2 Fokker was a liberal politician who published a book on the history of the Netherlands state lottery (Fokker 1864).

A sign of the times

201

3 The theoretical frameworks I have in mind here include: for processes of state formation, the work of Elias (1978, 1982); for economic formation, the work of Harvey (1989); and for social classes, the work of Bourdieu (1984). 4 KNVB: Koninklijke Nederlands Voetbalbond (Royal Netherlands Soccer League). 5 The triple system of pillarisation, a formal and informal vertical segmentation of key interest groups, is considered to be characteristic of Dutch societal relations in the 1950s. Another aspect was the necessity for these groups to cooperate politically to address an economy which had suffered from the war and the loss of Dutch colonies, and which lagged behind internationally. 6 SNS: Stichting de Nationale Sporttotalisator (Foundation National Sports Totalisator). 7 CDA: Christen Democratisch Appel (Christian Democratic Appeal). 8 Netherlands Institute of Public Opinion, press releases nos. 288, 1034, 1456. 9 The SUFA (Foundation Executing Fund-raising) is a merger of some private charitable organisations which held a yearly lottery from 1961 onwards. In 1970, these institutions founded the ALN (General Dutch Lotteries) which initiated a giro lottery and, in 1978, a bank lottery. 10 From a Weberian perspective, the emergence of distinctive, autonomous spheres of social action can be regarded as the key momentum in modernisation processes. In his analysis of social development, Weber put as foremost the development of independent spheres (lebensordnungen) of economics, politics, aesthetics, science or religion, each domain with a dynamic of its own (cf. Lasch 1990). In Simmel’s sociology of culture, this ‘autonomisation’ appears as the commodification of culture, with particular emphasis on the role of money (Simmel 1907). In Elias and Dunning’s sociology of leisure (1986), various leisure practices are understood as temporal-spatial ‘enclaves’, each with its own structure of meaning. Bourdieu’s cultural theory (1984) focuses on the notion of ‘fields’, but hardly considers the historical construction of such fields. I prefer to use the term ‘sector’ to indicate a specific set of consumption practices together with a guiding regime of regulation, such as gaming. Indeed, the relative autonomy of various leisure practices is not given, but is historically produced and reproduced, and is contested at all times and places (Kalb and Kingma 1991). 11 In a similar manner, some old slot machines nowadays find their way to Eastern European countries. 12 VAN: Vereniging Automatenhandel Nederland (Netherlands Association Gaming Machinery Trade). 13 Prescriptions include: a minimum age for players of 16 years, a limit on the number of machines on the premises (usually two machines are allowed), a maximum stake of 25 cents per game, a minimum duration of 3 seconds per game and a maximum loss of 50 guilders per hour on average. 14 The Foundation was later renamed Holland Casinos. 15 It was reported that the American Mafia was involved in both these clubs. 16 The debate on postmodernism can be found in Harvey (1989), Lasch (1990), Featherstone (1991) and Giddens (1991). 17 ‘Active’ gaming is distinguished both from passive playing—alea iacta est, in which players can hardly influence the nature of the game, as in lotteries—and from interactive gaming— ludere alea, where players not only play the game, but the game also reacts upon the players, as in a poker game (Eco 1990). 18 This change is reflected in the title of the gaming machinery trade policy plan for the 1990s, ‘Towards a respectable branch’; in 1987 it was called ‘Unknown—unloved’. 19 These high percentages may have been influenced by the terms used in the questions. In the Netherlands, the term ‘gambling’ carries connotations of improper and risky gaming. 20 The relative independence of the field of cultural products on one hand, and the range of social categories on the other, are central to Bourdieu’s theory of cultural distinction (Bourdieu 1984, 1988). From this perspective, postmodernism should not be equated with a

Gambling cultures

202

process of ‘de-differentiation’, but rather as a process in which differentiations and the simultaneous harmonisation of differences—in the sphere of products and the sphere of lifestyles—occur increasingly independently of each other. This aspect of cultural autonomy intensifies a quest for identity, both on the supply side of the market, in the gaming industry, and on the demand side of the market, in the lifestyles of the players. 21 With respect to class cultures in gaming, in the Netherlands only bingo has been the subject of research (Kingma 1988, 1991). 22 The European Committee ordered an inventory of national markets (European Committee 1991). 23 In this respect it is remarkable that the link between bingo and local cultural institutions has been retained, despite pressure from the market to disconnect them. 24 According to Harvey, ‘flexible accumulation’ would lead to a new phase of growth, through ‘time-space compression’: accelerating turnover time of capital. This requires, among other things, greater flexibility of the ‘mode of consumption’—not more of the same products, but other articles, adaptations of existing products, changes in the organisation of sales, in consumption habits, in such a way that bigger and faster turnovers are realised, with bigger profits. Fast-food products, cash-and-carry, low-fat, low-sugar and low-alcohol products and disposables are examples of this. Because they can be virtually consumed without limits, ‘immaterial’ products, such as articles in the illusory culture of art, literature, music or sports, are admirably suited.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Becker, H.A., Hermkens, P.L.J. and Mutsaers, H.P.M. (1987) ‘Deelname aan kansspelen. Waardering voor kansspelen’, Report, Universiteit Utrecht. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London and New York: Routledge. ——(1988) ‘Program for a sociology of sport’, Sociology of Sport Journal 5:153–61. Dickens, C. (ed.) (1858) ‘Down among the Dutchmen, vi’, Household Words. A Weekly Journal. 156–60. Driehuis, W., Bunt, J., van Empel, M. and van der Pligt, J. (1989) ‘De nederlandse kansspelmarkt: feiten, kansen en bedreigingen’, Report, Amsterdam. van Duyne, P.C., Kouwenberg, R.F. and Romeijn, G. (1990) Misdaadondernemingen. Ondernemende misdadigers, Arnhem: Gouda Quint. Eco, U. (1990) ‘Huizinga en het spel’, Wat spiegels betreft, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker: 285–303. Economische Statistische Berichten (1982) ‘Themanummer kansspelen’: 1351–78. Elias, N. (1978) The Civilizing Process, vol. I, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ——(1982) The Civilizing Process, vol. II, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Elias, N. and Dunning, E. (1986) Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. European Committee (1991) ‘Gambling in the single market’, Report, Brussels. Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage. Fokker, G.A. (1862) Geschiedenis der loterijen in de Nederlanden, Amsterdam: Frederik Muller. ——(1864) De Nederlandsche Staatsloterij, Middelburg. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hermkens, P.L.J., Becker, H.A., Kok, K.M. and Mutsaers, H.P.M. (1988) ‘Kansspelen als riskante gewoonte’, Report, Universiteit Utrecht. Holthoon, F.L. (ed.) (1985) De Nederlandse samenleving sinds 1815, Assen: Van Gorcum.

A sign of the times

203

Kalb, D. and Kingma, S. (eds) (1991) Fragmenten van vermaak. Macht en plezier in moderniserend Nederland, Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kapteyn, P. (1980) Taboe, ontwikkelingen in macht en moraal speciaal in Nederland, Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers. Kingma, S. (1988) ‘Bingo en kienen. Over de structurering van eigentijds vermaak’, Volkscultuur: 40–52. ——(1991) ‘De legitimiteit van het kienen en bingo of de smaak van de noodzaak’, in D. Kalb and S.Kingma (eds) Fragmenten van vermaak. Macht en plezier in moderniserend Nederland, Amsterdam: Rodopi: 123–51. Kok, I., Hermkens, P.L.J., van Wijngaarden, J.J. and van de Wijngaart, G.F. (1991) ‘Determinanten probleemspelers’, Report, Utrecht: VAN. Lasch, S. (1990) Sociology of Postmodernism, London: Routledge. Middelburg, B. (1988) De Mafia in Amsterdam, Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers. Nederlandse Staatswetten nr. 69 (1964, bewerking H.D.Pijpers), Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink. ——(1988, bewerking F.J.Gallast), Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink. Parliament (1971–72) Preliminary Report, Bill no. 11.549:1. ——(1982–83) Memorandum in Reply, Bill no. 16.481, no. 10:3. Parliament Additionals 11 (1988–89) 21.277, no. 2. van Poelje, G.A. et al. (1962) Nederlands bestuursrecht deel II, Alphen aan den Rijn: Samson. van der Roer, R. (1989) ‘De miljoenengok van Ger van D.V.’, in C.J.C.F.Fijnaut, Georganiseerde misdaad en strafrechtelijk politiebeleid, Lochem: van den Brink: 49–80. Schalken, T.M. (1990) Casino en illegaliteit, Arnhem: Gouda Quint. Schama, S. (1987) The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, New York: Knopf. Simmel, G. (1907) Philosophie des Geldes, Munich and Leipzig: Von Duncken & Humbolt. Stuurman, S. (1983) Verzuiling, kapitalisme en patriarchaat, Nijmegen: SUN. de Swaan, A. (1988) In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modern Era, Cambridge: Polity Press. Therborn, G. (1989) ‘“Pillarisation” and popular networks. Two variants of welfare state capitalism: the Netherlands and Sweden’, in F.G.Castles (ed.) The Comparative History of Public Policy, London: Polity Press: 192–241. Wouters, C. (1990) Van minnen en sterven. Informalisering van omgangsvormen rond seks en dood, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Zijlstra, A.A. (1974) Vaar Wel, Scheveningen! Bonte herinneringen aan een badplaats, Leiden.

12 THE MEDICALISATION OF GAMBLING AS AN ‘ADDICTION’ Michael Walker

Gambling is a common leisure activity in most countries and cultures throughout the world. However, it also attracts criticism and censure in most societies. Much of this criticism is directed at the fact that some gamblers continue with the activity to such an extent that it disrupts their lives, their families and their employment. Within western cultures, useful employment, family life and the acquisition of material wealth are central goals of the socialisation process. The heavy gambler is seen as a failure by these standards. One explanation for this failure is that the socialisation of the individual has been inadequate: the society has failed in its task. However, increasingly, a different kind of explanation is given: that the heavy gambler is ill. Heavy gambling is not only socially deviant but it is caused by a disease process in the individual. In particular, western societies are moving quickly to a recognition of heavy gambling as an addiction. At the same time there is a concerted attempt to change the concept of addiction itself. These two forces, one to classify heavy gambling as an addiction and the second to broaden ‘addiction’ to include heavy gambling, are converging on a view of heavy gambling as a pathological state of the individual. In this chapter, it is argued that this view relies upon a strictly limited interpretation of the evidence. It is claimed that the view that heavy gambling is pathological is recent in origin and changing in character, that a pathology of gambling as an addiction has not been demonstrated, and that the similarities between drug addiction and heavy gambling are overstated. The movement to medicalise gambling as an addiction is not based on sound empirical evidence. Thus the inadequate metaphor of gambling as compulsive is replaced by another inadequate metaphor of gambling as addictive. What is required is a new, non-medical metaphor.

THE MOVE TO VIEW HEAVY GAMBLING AS PATHOLOGICAL Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gambling was viewed as a vice and heavy gambling as a sin. The change from ‘gambling as sin’ to ‘gambling as sick’ was associated with the development of the psychoanalytic perspective on human nature. Initially, the psychoanalytic view was that over-indulgence in activities such as gambling and drinking (alcohol) should be regarded as examples of mania. Later, heavy gambling came to be regarded as a compulsion, and the term ‘compulsive gambler’ is one which is readily understood and widely used in western society. However, in the decade following

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

205

1980, it became clear to the medical community that heavy gambling does not have the characteristics of a classical compulsive neurosis (Dickerson 1984; Maze 1987). Consequently, there has been a widespread move, especially among psychiatrists, to see excessive gambling from a different perspective. There has been a clear trend for medical opinion to shift from the concept of problem gambling as a disorder of impulse control (compulsive gambling) to problem gambling as an addiction. This change is evident in the criteria for diagnosis of pathological gambling set out in the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. In DSM III (1980), pathological gambling was described in terms of impulse control and listed with other impulsive behaviours such as kleptomania, whereas in the revised edition, DSM IIIR (1987), pathological gambling is defined in terms of criteria which are very similar to those for alcohol and drug dependence (see Table 12.1). Furthermore, DSM IV, which will be released in the early 1990s, will continue with the core idea that pathological gambling is similar to psychoactive substance dependency.

Table 12.1 Comparison of the DSM IIIR criteria for substance dependence and pathological gambling Psychoactive substance dependence

Pathological gambling

At least three of the following: At least four of the following: 1 when not actually using the substance, 1 frequent preoccupation with a lot of time spent looking forward to gambling or with obtaining money use of or arranging to get the substance to gamble 2 substance often taken in larger amounts 2 often gambling larger amounts of money or over a longer period than the or over a longer period than intended individual intended 3 tolerance: need for increased amounts of the 3 need to increase the size and frequency substance in order to achieve intoxication of bets to achieve the desired excitement or desired effect, or diminished effect with continued use of the same amount 4 characteristic withdrawal symptoms 4 restlessness or irritability if unable to gamble 5 persistent desire or repeated efforts 5 repeated efforts to cut down or stop gambling to cut down or control substance use 6 frequent intoxication or impairment by 6 often gambling when expected to fulfil substance use when expected to fulfil social or occupational obligations social or occupational obligations, or when substance use is hazardous 7 important social, occupational or 7 some important social, occupational or recreational recreational activity given up or reduced activity given up in order to because it was incompatible with the gamble use of the substance 8 continued substance use despite a persistent 8 continuation of gambling despite inability to pay social, occupational, psychological or a mounting debts, or despite other significant social, physical problem that is caused or occupational, or legal problems that the individual exacerbated by the use of the substance knows to be exacerbated by gambling 9 substance often taken to relieve or avoid 9 repeated loss of money gambling and returning withdrawal symptoms another day to win back losses (‘chasing’) Source: Modified table from Blume (1987:242)

Gambling cultures

206

The criteria for pathological gambling in DSM IIIR were modelled on those for substance abuse, and were based on the assumption that pathological gambling was the same kind of problem as drug addiction (Lesieur 1988). The term ‘pathological gambling’ was chosen to reflect the disease nature of the problem and to avoid the criticisms levelled at the use of the term ‘compulsive gambling’. Thus, the use of the term ‘pathological gambling’ incorporates excessive gambling and its associated problems within a medical model which includes psychoactive substance dependence. In this chapter, various terms will be used which imply heavy gambling involvement. ‘Heavy gambling’ is intended to be a value-free term which implies (relatively) highfrequency gambling involving ‘relatively’ large sums of money. ‘Excessive gambling’ and ‘problem gambling’ are used interchangeably to refer to gambling that the gambler acknowledges as causing significant problems in his or her everyday life. References to ‘pathological gambling’ are reserved for attempts to incorporate gambling within a medical model as is done explicitly within DSM IIIR. It should be noted at this point that there is considerable argument concerning whether a medical model is appropriate for understanding drug addictions at all (Orford 1985; Krivanek 1988). If the drug addictions are not examples of pathological dependence then heavy gambling is not an example either, and the attempt to medicalise gambling as an addiction is invalid. Hence, an important first step in evaluating the claim that gambling is an addiction, and thus pathological, involves deciding whether addiction of any kind is pathological.

DRUG ADDICTION AND PATHOLOGY In the development of the criteria for substance abuse, two components were central: tolerance and withdrawal. Tolerance refers to the fact that more and more of the drug is required to produce the same effects, and withdrawal refers to a syndrome of bodily reactions which occur when the drug is not used. Both of these processes are physiologically based. The presence of physical dependence provided an objective basis on which a full range of criteria, both physiological and psychological, could be derived. However, the explanation of drug addiction itself has undergone a major shift of emphasis which enables closer parallels to be drawn between the drug addictions and abuse of other substances and activities. Formerly, drug addiction was assumed to be based on negative reinforcement. The central idea was that, through repeated ingestion of the drug, tolerance for the drug increased and a powerful negative withdrawal syndrome was experienced if the drug was discontinued. It was assumed that it was avoidance of withdrawal effects which motivated continued use of the drug (Wikler 1973; Solomon and Corbitt 1974; Sarason and Sarason 1980). However, in the past decade, beliefs about the central motivation for drug addiction have changed. The positive reward value of the drug is now believed to be the main motivation for drug abuse. The basis for this change in view involves a range of observations. First of all, negative reinforcement does not explain relapse after detoxification. Second, some powerfully addictive drugs, such as cocaine, have minor withdrawal effects (Carlson 1991). Finally, there is strong evidence that all of the addictive drugs operate through the dopaminergic component of neurotransmission which is central to the mediation of positive reinforcement (Wise 1988). Thus, a complete view

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

207

of the mechanisms of drug addiction is likely to emphasise the reward value of the drug as an incentive to begin and continue use. Avoidance of the withdrawal syndrome is best regarded as a secondary motivation for continued use of some drugs, such as heroin. There is nothing inherently pathological about the processes of drug addiction as described by physiology and neurochemistry. In principle, any person could become addicted to any drug. An explanation of drug addiction as pathological must specify the physiological processes that are different (diseased) in the addict compared to the nonaddict or, at least, imply that such processes exist. A number of different kinds of arguments and evidence can be used to support a pathological account of drug addiction. These are briefly outlined below. Pathology based on inheritance Since addictive drugs do not automatically produce addiction, the explanation of why some individuals become addicted whereas others do not must be found for the explanation of drug addiction to be complete. It is at this point that medical models of addiction as a pathology conflict with behavioural models of addiction as a learned phenomenon within a sociological context. The argument that drug addictions involve pathology implies that there is a biological basis not simply for the action of drugs but also for the differential susceptibility of individuals to become addicted. For a medical model of drug addiction to be correct, there must be biological predispositions for individuals to become addicted. In the case of alcoholism, the comparison of alcohol consumption in monozygotic and dizygotic twins provides some support for a genetically based predisposing factor. Compared to dizygotic twins, monozygotic twins are more likely to be jointly alcoholic. However, equivalent evidence for other drugs is not available, and thus the claim that drug addiction is pathological because of predisposing biological mechanisms is weakened. Pathology based on physiology The central question in understanding an individual predisposition to addiction concerns the actual mechanism that is different in the addicted person. In the case of alcohol consumption, there is evidence suggesting that the routes by which alcohol affects the neurotransmitters in the brain of the abuser are different from those for non-abusers (Carlson 1991). Whether or not these differences are confirmed and whether or not they can be extended to other addictive drugs, the possibility of such individual differences allows for a pathological or disease model for alcohol addiction. Clearly, a similar basis for a disease model of problem gambling cannot exist. It is clear that there is some evidence of pathology associated with alcohol abuse. However, the question of pathology is not resolved and strong arguments against a pathological explanation of alcohol abuse have been advanced (Orford 1985). For drug addiction in general, the case for an explanation in terms of pathology is weak or nonexistent. The pathology associated with drug addiction is primarily the consequence of chronic abuse.

Gambling cultures

208

THE MOVEMENT TO BROADEN THE CONCEPT OF ADDICTION TO INCLUDE HEAVY GAMBLING Heavy gambling has been described as the ‘purest addiction’ (Custer and Milt 1985; Jacobs 1986). Two claims are implied by this assertion: first, that heavy gambling is an addiction; and second, that substance abuse is incidental to the core notion of addiction. Custer and Jacobs are not alone in believing that addiction is a process that is wider in scope than dependence on drugs. For example, Solomon has argued that the processes that underlie drug addiction are the same processes that underlie such activities as regular jogging or sauna use (Solomon and Corbitt 1974); Orford has identified the learning of restraint as the key element in the control of drug consumption, gambling and excessive sexuality (Orford 1985); and a large number of papers identify common elements in the behaviour of drug addicts and compulsive gamblers (for example, Bejerot and Bejerot 1978; Blaszczynski et al. 1986; Fuller et al. 1988; Hickey et al. 1986). If addiction is a process that applies to behaviours other than drug-taking, then studies of drug abuse and its control have implications for treatment and control of other dangerous behaviours such as heavy gambling. On the other hand, if the ingestion of psychoactive substances is central to the process of addiction, then the notion of addiction is at best an analogy for understanding compulsive gambling and may be quite misleading. Thus, it is crucial to understand what is intended when the term ‘addiction’ is used and whether it may be properly applied to heavy gambling. The central role of gambling in the debate over the range of addiction is highlighted by Orford: ‘It can be demonstrated that excessive gambling is in most respects similar to excessive drinking or drug-taking, then it follows that an adequate explanation of excessive appetites in general must account for this non-drug form of “addiction”’ (Orford 1985:29). The attempt to broaden the concept of addiction to include excessive gambling is based on the similarities that can be drawn between behaviours such as alcohol dependence, habitual smoking and heavy gambling. Different aspects of these excessive behaviours may become the focus of the argument which concludes that heavy gambling is an addiction. Because of the antecedents, consequences and details of behaviour A and because behaviour A is an addiction, therefore behaviour B is an addiction. It should be noted that this argument can be false in three ways. First of all, the antecedents, consequences and details of behaviour B may not be sufficiently similar to those for A for the argument to be valid. Second, A may not be an addiction. Finally, the antecedents, consequences and details of a behaviour may not be relevant to categorisation of a behaviour as an addiction. In fact, the argument from similarity may be false in all three ways if behaviour A is not well chosen. The large majority of papers using the argument from similarity choose excessive alcohol consumption as behaviour A. Since the debate over whether or not excessive alcohol consumption is an addiction has not been resolved, the dangers in this approach are apparent. Nevertheless, even if alcohol consumption is an appropriate substitute for behaviour A, the argument from similarity will fail if the so-called ‘similarities’ are not genuine similarities. Sugar and salt share many superficial properties in common but only one improves the coffee.

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

209

In general, the argument that gambling can be addictive in a broader (nonpathological) sense can be seen as a small number of disparate claims. These will be considered separately. Gambling and other addictions have similar consumption curves Alcohol consumption in the general population follows a markedly skewed curve. The majority of Australians, for example, drink some alcohol each year but the daily average consumption is low. By comparison, much more alcohol is consumed in France than in Australia, and the average daily consumption is much higher. Nevertheless, whatever the country, the distribution curve has a long tail such that small numbers of people consume much more alcohol than the daily average. One view of these curves is that they are lognormal distributions (Orford 1985). An alternative view is that the distribution of alcohol consumption is bimodal, with the second mode representing a distinctly different group of ‘alcoholics’. In the case of narcotic drugs, the bimodal nature of the consumption curve may be more clear-cut: one mode corresponding to abstinence and the other to addiction. When the distribution of consumption for gambling is considered, it becomes clear immediately that there are difficulties in showing similar-shaped curves to those for alcohol or for other drugs. Just as one might ask, ‘the distribution of which drug?’, so one might ask, ‘the distribution of which form of gambling?’ Gambling is a heterogeneous set of activities and it is unreasonable to expect each type of gambling to have the same shape of consumption curve. It is likely that slot-machine playing, in communities where slot machines are legal, follows the lognormal curve proposed by Ledermann. However, bimodal distributions would be expected for many games with a significant component of skill. Playing bridge for money may be a good example. Abstinence would determine one mode, whereas the demands of maintaining playing standards will ensure that the second mode involves relatively frequent rate of play (for example, once per week). Now interestingly, the games on which the case for addiction is usually based are typically unimodal (slot machines, horse betting), whereas the heroin consumption curve is bimodal and therefore similar to non-addictive gambling involvement in rubber bridge. Thus, the degree of similarity between ‘gambling involvement’ and ‘drug consumption’ depends on the form of gambling and the type of drug. Any claim of overall similarity obscures these differences. The argument from cross-addictions It is claimed that gambling and other substance addictions are functionally equivalent because of the higher frequency than expected of dual addictions and poly-addictions involving heavy gambling as one component. The central idea here is the notion of an addiction-prone individual or an addictive personality. Such a person is likely to become excessive about a range of drugs or a range of activities. In the case of drug addictions, recent work emphasising the uniformity of the processes underlying addictions to different drugs implies the possibility that one drug could be substituted for another. According to Wise:

Gambling cultures

210

If a variety of addictive substances have positive reinforcing effects through a common biological mechanism, then one drug should have some of the same subjective consequences of, and partially satisfy the urge for, another. This has been long suspected from cases of polydrug use. (1988:125) Thus, if gambling rewards the individual by means of the same biological routes as addictive drugs, then we should expect that addicted gamblers would be more likely than other people also to exhibit heavy involvement with addictive drugs. Claims of the equivalence of pathological gambling and drug abuse are frequently made (Adler 1966; Ferrioli and Ciminero 1981; Cook 1987; Das 1990). However, the hypothesis itself is open to statistical testing. Just as the data show that alcohol dependency is likely to be associated with nicotine dependency, we should expect heavy gambling to be associated with drug abuse in general. The most common claim is that heavy gambling is associated with abuse of alcohol. Both are legally available to adults in many western countries and both show widespread usage within communities. Some examples of joint excessive usage would be expected by chance. The question of central importance is whether the degree of association is greater than chance and, if it is, whether the joint occurrence is an artefact of some causal factor common to both. Blaszczynski and McConaghy have reviewed a range of studies which examine the incidence of alcoholism among members of Gamblers Anonymous and pathological gamblers attending Veterans Administration hospitals in the United States, and come to the conclusion that, ‘in comparison to the ten percent alcoholism rate described for the general population, both groups have higher rates of alcoholism’ (Blaszczynski and McConaghy 1989:48). Blaszczynski and McConaghy point out that co-occurrence of gambling problems and alcohol problems at a rate above chance is not unequivocal support for an addictive personality. Consumption of alcohol, for example, might disinhibit risk-taking and make gambling more likely. Similarly, losses at gambling might cause depression which the gambler seeks to overcome through drinking. However, there are other, cultural reasons for being sceptical of the correlational data showing that alcoholism and pathological gambling co-occur. First of all, the evidence available suggests that alcoholism and pathological gambling co-occur for men but not for women (Lesieur et al. 1986). Why should this be? Casinos in the United States provide easy access to alcohol, and in Australia betting shops are frequently located near hotels. Among males, but not females, drinking is a sex-role-appropriate behaviour (Blume 1990); thus, among males assembled for the purpose of gambling, as in a betting shop, alcohol consumption would be expected. Similarly, among male drinkers at the local hotel (sex-role-appropriate gathering), gambling may be the common topic between drinks. Secondly, among Jewish people, gambling problems are common but alcohol problems are rare. In the United States, Jewish people are over-represented in Gamblers Anonymous but under-represented in Alcoholics Anonymous. Again, among Aboriginal Australians, alcohol problems are common (Taft 1967) but gambling problems are rare (Caldwell et al. 1985). Such culturally based results would be unlikely if the addictions had a common basis.

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

211

When alcoholics and pathological gamblers with serious consumption problems are considered, the possibility of joint addictions introduces a paradox. Consider the alcoholic who craves ever more drink: will he or she waste $5 on a horse when the money could be better used for drink? Similarly the compulsive gambler who will use the bus money for one last bet is unlikely to waste $5 on drinks. It does not seem possible that serious addictions of this kind can co-occur. What is more likely is that aspects of the problem behaviour—for example, drinking—may be misattributed to the secondary nonproblematic behaviour—for example, gambling. Gambling and drug addictions show tolerance and withdrawal effects In the case of drug addictions, the physiological effects of some drugs are known in some detail and the basis for physical dependence established (Carlson 1991). All addictive drugs act directly on the neurotransmission system and produce negative feedback loops whereby chemicals are manufactured by the body which act to minimise the disturbance induced by the drug. The withdrawal syndrome is simply the continuation of the action of these balancing chemicals when consumption of the drug ends. In order to qualify as a behaviour which might be explained by similar processes, heavy gambling must first be demonstrated to have a withdrawal syndrome on cessation of involvement. The withdrawal symptoms following cessation of ingestion of opiates include trembling and shaking, heart-rate and blood-pressure changes, sweating and temperature changes, and difficulty in sleeping. Wray and Dickerson (1981) examined the recollections of compulsive gamblers belonging to Gamblers Anonymous in Britain, concerning how they felt in the first few weeks after stopping gambling. The majority gave answers suggesting relief and happiness at giving up. However, 30 per cent of the sample recalled some disturbance involving irritability, restlessness, depressed mood, poor concentration and obsessional thoughts. Symptoms such as these are mild and psychological compared to drug-withdrawal symptoms, which are frequently physiological and typically more severe. Such psychological symptoms might well be expected when a person gives up any exciting pastime that has consumed most of the waking hours over an extended period of time. Furthermore, even if irritability, restlessness, depressed mood, poor concentration and obsessive thoughts are present following the cessation of gambling, for these responses to qualify as withdrawal symptoms, it must be shown that they were not present prior to the onset of gambling. It is entirely possible that some gamblers are depressed prior to gambling and that the gambling itself relieves the symptoms which later return when the gambling is terminated. Such symptoms would be falsely assumed to be part of the withdrawal syndrome if appropriate control groups are not used (Hand 1990). At this time, there appears to be no convincing demonstration of withdrawal effects following cessation of heavy gambling. Although there may be other ways in which it is claimed that heavy gambling is similar to drug addiction, it is clear that claims of overall similarity are overstated. There is no adequate evidence that gambling involvement and drug addictions are similarly distributed in society, no convincing argument that people susceptible to problems with drugs are differentially susceptible to problems with gambling, and no pattern of withdrawal effects common to both. It is clear that gambling behaviour B has not been

Gambling cultures

212

shown to be sufficiently similar to drug addiction A, for the claim that gambling is an addiction to follow as a matter of logic.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON GAMBLING If we abandon the concept of gambling as addictive, how then shall we explain the fact that some gamblers do continue with the activity until they are financially ruined and every facet of their lives is detrimentally affected? And, if excessive gambling is not the same kind of thing as excessive consumption of psychoactive substances, what kind of thing is it? We need a genuine alternative to drug addiction as a schema that makes sense out of the paradox of persistence with an activity where the overt objective is winning money but persistence with the activity is a proven way of losing money. It is proposed here that the starting point for understanding gambling is not the insensate pleasure afforded by drugs but the sense of mastery that comes from striving at games of skill. The core idea is not ‘addiction’ but ‘commitment’. The gambler is ‘heroic’, not ‘hooked’. Perhaps he or she is also a fool, but then the same claim might be made about martyrs to causes everywhere. In expanding this metaphor, we could begin with any one of a number of more or less skilful activities. However, games of skill have a history as old as psychoactive substances, and have a number of attributes in common with gambling games. Among games of skill, the prototype is perhaps the game of chess. When chess becomes life Chess is a game of pure skill and therefore totally different from gambling games where chance predominates. Although the game is fully determined, the game tree is so large that there is no foreseeable time when even the most advanced computers will play perfect chess. The game therefore provides opportunities for humans to strive for mastery, where mastery is measured by success against opponents of increasing and measurable skill. Attempts to understand chess within a stimulus-response framework are doomed to failure, and the claim that people play chess for immediate pleasure, for excitement or for thrills are misguided. There are no studies of ‘chess addicts’ in the literature, yet chess can absorb a person’s life as completely as heroin can consume the life of the drug addict. Although there are no studies of the life-absorbing potential of chess, there is a story that can stand as the paradigm in much the same way that Dostoevsky’s The Gambler stands as a paradigm for the compulsive gambler. In 1964, Nabokov’s The Defence was published for the first time in English. The hero is a Russian chess player called Luzhin. From the moment when Luzhin first learns chess, the game begins to absorb his life. Luzhin plays truant from school to play chess with his aunt. He becomes a child prodigy, and chess becomes more and more important to the extent that all of the other parts of his life recede into a blurred unimportance. He accepted this external life as something inevitable but completely uninteresting. Similarly, in his way of dressing and in the manner of his everyday life, he was prompted by extremely dim motives, stopping to think about nothing, rarely changing his linen, automatically winding his

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

213

watch at night, shaving with the same safety blade until it ceased to cut altogether, and feeding haphazardly and plainly. From some kind of melancholy inertia he continued to order at dinner the same mineral water, which effervesced slightly in his sinuses and evoked a tickling sensation in the corners of his eyes, like tears for the vanished Valentinov. Only rarely did he notice his own existence…. In general life around him was so opaque and demanded so little effort of him that it sometimes seemed someone—a mysterious, invisible manager—continued to take him from tournament to tournament. (Nabokov, The Defence, [1964] 1986:75–6) Although chess is important to Luzhin, to the significant others in his life it is a waste of time. Seen from the point of view of an observer, the person who focuses on one activity until fully absorbed by it is, at best, missing out on life and, if the pursuit is not valued by the observer, condemned as unworthy. So it was with Luzhin. ‘But can a man really devote himself to such trifles,’ she exclaimed, looking at her daughter distractedly, ‘throw one’s whole life away on such trifles?… Look, you had an uncle who was also good at all sorts of games—chess, cards, billiards—but at least he had a job and a career and everything.’ ([1964] 1986:89) Although the activity is trivial for the observer, it is demanding for the actor. It is the constructive, goal-orientated nature of the activity that sets it apart from addiction. With drug addictions we understand that the addict craves the sensations and feelings provided by the drug, but with absorbing constructive activities the actor strives for mastery. In games of skill there is a sense of achievement as different phases of the game are mastered. At first he learned to replay the immortal games that remained from former tournaments—he would rapidly glance over the notes of chess and silently move the pieces on his board…. These possible continuations that explained the essence of blunder or foresight Luzhin gradually ceased to reconstruct actually on the board. ([1964] 1986:44) The actor gains pleasure from knowledge and mastery of the activity. However, this pleasure should not be thought of as the goal in itself as in the case of a drug addiction but rather as a by-product of progress towards the goals of the activity. It is of significance that actors will strive in goal-orientated activities for long periods without fulfilment and the associated pleasure. Nevertheless, success at the activity is accompanied by feelings of worth. The interplay of striving, succeeding and mastery is nowhere more evident in The Defence than when Luzhin is playing his last climactic game against his foe, Turati. This passage also illustrates another feature of focused

Gambling cultures

214

activity which differs from drug addiction, the sense of contest in which the actor strives to overcome the obstacle or to solve the problem: And then there was a long, long interval of thought, during which Luzhin bred [sic] from one spot on the board and lost a dozen illusionary games in succession, and then his finger groped for and found a bewitching, brittle, crystalline combination—which with a gentle tinkle disintegrated at Turati’s first reply. But neither was Turati able to do anything after that and playing for time (time is merciless in the universe of chess), both opponents repeated the same two moves, threat and defence, threat and defence—but meanwhile both kept thinking of a most tricky conceit that had nothing in common with these mechanical moves. ([1964] 1986:44) It is not claimed here that gambling games are games of skill but rather that gamblers approach the activity of gambling with the same kinds of motives, the same conviction that they will succeed, and proceed to develop their own special knowledge of the task as players do in games of skill. Although chess and its mastery may seem far removed from addiction, the proximity of the two can be demonstrated by reference to computer games. It is argued here that computer games have much in common with chess, and yet are also claimed to be addictive. Computer games are skilful and absorbing It would be unreasonable to claim that computer games of the ‘Space invaders’ type involve the same skills as chess. Chess is a game of pure strategy, whereas computer games involve both strategy and eye-hand coordination. Nevertheless, ‘skill’ is the correct term to apply to successful play in both games. Apart from the nature of the skill required, the games differ in other ways as well. Computer games are played on a computer screen, and although many games can be played as an interpersonal contest, computer games are primarily solo games. Success is measured by a score against the computer and players strive for the high score. Neither chess nor computer games involve gambling as more than a peripheral activity as in betting on the Fischer-Spassky matches or side bets on who will obtain the highest score in computer games. However, computer games are of specific interest because of the claim that they are addictive. Soper and Miller (1983) suggested that video amusement games attract sufficient involvement from players that they may come to be abused. The term ‘addiction’ was specifically used to describe this potential abuse by players, who were referred to as ‘junkies’. Similarly, Brown and Robertson (1993) examined the time spent playing home computers by adolescents in Glasgow, and concluded that, judged by the time spent in the activity, computer games were more of a problem than gambling games such as fruit machines. Brown also theorised that involvement with gambling machines and gambling involvement among adolescents should be viewed in the context of involvement with machine games in general. The suggestion that video amusement games may be antecedent to gambling games, in a developmental sense, has also been made by Graham (1988), who reviewed the dangers of dependency and delinquency associated with the

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

215

use of amusement parlours in Britain by children. Interestingly, Graham came to the conclusion that there was no clear evidence of dependency induced by machines at these sites. Gambling and games of skill The fact that gambling occurs in the context of games of skill is the link between the heavy involvement in a game such as chess, which does not involve gambling, and games such as those offered by slot machines, which do not involve skill. Bridge, poker and blackjack are excellent examples of such games. There can be no question that they are games of skill: there are World Championships and World Champions, and the annals of each game contain legendary characters such as Georgio Belladonna, Amarillo Slim and Ken Uston. Each of the games supports professional gamblers (Hayano 1984; Spanier 1987; Walker 1987) as well as large numbers of devotees who aspire to becoming professional gamblers. And each of the games is able to absorb the life of a person, to become the focus of determined, persistent effort directed towards succeeding at the game (Spanier 1987). Interestingly, there appear to be no studies of addiction to bridge, poker or blackjack and no therapies directed at relieving the ‘compulsive’ nature of the sickness. Nevertheless, there are people who lives have been devastated by their involvement in these games. Attendance at meetings of Gamblers Anonymous will reveal that this is so. And regular attendance at any bridge club will bring contact with potentially productive professional people whose abilities have been wholly redirected to the game of bridge. Players of these games report characteristics such as loss of control (Browne 1989) and gambling larger amounts of money than intended (Zurcher 1970; Walker 1987) that meet the criteria for pathological gambling. Why are there not clinics for obsessional bridge, poker and blackjack gamblers? And why do these gamblers make up only a small fraction of the membership of Gamblers Anonymous? The answer probably lies in the fact that in these games there is a real element of skill. Persistence and immersion in the game can enable the gambler to play the game better. Since the game is played better, the. risk of suffering the severe financial losses that characterise members of Gamblers Anonymous is reduced. Gambling and games of chance Numbers games are typically games without any opportunity of using strategy or developing skill. Although many numbers games are associated with problem gambling (lotteries, for example), one high-risk game from the perspective of problem gambling is the slot machine. If so-called ‘compulsive’ involvement in the play of slot machines can be explained in terms of persistence, determination, focused, goal-orientated activity then the whole range of gambling games and the whole range of gambling involvement can be explained without reference to addiction. Slot machines are played for a wide variety of reasons, and it is more common than not for regular players to deny that they are trying to win money. Typically, players report playing the machines for amusement or excitement (Caldwell 1974; Dickerson et al. 1986; Walker 1988). Superficially, this result appears to favour an addiction model

Gambling cultures

216

rather than a commitment model. However, a closer inspection of the play of slot machines leads to the conclusion that amusement or excitement as an explanation should be discounted (Walker 1990). Since the likelihood of winning on the slot machine decreases with the length of time spent playing, regular players have essentially no chance of coming out ahead. Thus, for a regular player to admit to trying to win money would appear irrational to the player and to the observer. Attribution theory would lead us to expect that very few slot-machine players would view their motive for playing as an attempt to win money. Nevertheless, the operation of the machine is purely concerned with money in and money out. The reality of slot machines is that they are about the transfer of money. It is unreasonable to believe that any other aspect of the machine is of importance: one need only ponder how attractive to the regular player would be a slot machine that was played with monopoly money in and monopoly money out! Excitement is limited to the pay-out of large prizes and jackpots. For most of the time, playing the machine is not in itself an exciting activity (Dickerson et al. 1992). It is likely that playing slot machines has other psychological functions for some players. Daley (1987), for example, has argued that players are buying time on the machines. Such an idea has plausibility where playing the machine provides something of value to the player other than winning money. Older people are one group for which this account may be true. After retirement, and especially after the death of the spouse, the elderly have the problem of how to spend their time. For many elderly people, loneliness may be countered by the apparent sociability attached to playing slot machines in the company of others (Lynch 1990). It is not that playing the slot machine is a social activity but rather that the presence of so many others engaged in a similar activity provides a role and an explanation for their own lives. However, this is not the group that is most likely to suffer from involvement with slot machines. If gambling is a goal-orientated activity like the acquisition of skill in chess, then the gambler is striving towards some goal. For the analogy to be useful, the goal must be identified and we must show that, in some sense, skill is being acquired. Since skilful play of slot machines would appear to be impossible, it is difficult to see how the goalorientated nature of slot-machine playing could be a fact. The answer to this issue is at the heart of the claim that gambling does not conform to the characteristics of an addiction. The solution lies with the perceptions of the players. Slot-machine players believe they can influence the outcome of a machine. The evidence for this claim comes both from anecdote and from experiment. Observation of slot-machine players shows that they do not behave as if all machines are equivalent. Players frequently can be seen searching out the machine that is close to a big pay-out or which is about to ‘run hot’ (Caldwell 1974). A machine with certain payoff structures, reels containing jokers, or multi-coin and multi-line machines may be chosen in preference to other varieties because of the opportunities for the use of skill (Eisler 1989). Some machines are preferred because the player can discern ‘good vibes’ or because it is ‘known’ to be close to a jackpot (Walker 1990). And manufacturers recognise this belief in the ability to influence the machine by incorporating features which give the illusion that skill can be applied as in ‘hold em’ machines and accessories such as ‘hole-in-one’ bonuses. Seen from the perspective of the player, such beliefs are the basis of skill or special knowledge by which the machine can be influenced. Seen from the perspective of the observer, such beliefs are false. Whether or not the beliefs are

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

217

true they can be elicited with ease and analysed statistically (Gaboury and Ladouceur 1988; Griffiths 1990; Walker 1990). What these studies show is that more irrational beliefs are expressed by players who play more frequently, and more so by slot-machine players than video-poker players. One straightforward interpretation of these results is that slot-machine players build up repertoires of false beliefs rather than real skills, and that these beliefs function in the same way, in relation to slot-machine games, as real knowledge or skill functions in relation to games where skill is possible. Persistence and problems From this perspective, the heavy slot-machine player is engaged in a contest with the machine. For some players, the contest attracts the same determination, perseverance and involvement that is afforded by other life-absorbing activities such as chess, bridge or computer games. They become immersed in the struggle, patient through failure, and convinced that ultimately they will succeed. The tragedy is that such commitment, that in other areas of life is applauded and to which many of us in western culture are socialised, is doomed to failure and bound to be financially hazardous. The loss of control which is often taken to be symptomatic of addiction is easily understood in terms of the beliefs of the gambler. The false beliefs held by the gambler persuade him or her that success is imminent. The financial outlay will be rewarded with persistence. The gambler is entrapped (Brockner and Rubin 1985). To stop playing now is unthinkable when the jackpot is so much closer. Imagine how you would feel if the very next coin (not yours) won the jackpot. Thus it is not surprising that the play of the machine continues past all limits set by the gambler. Moreover, the slot machine provides small prizes quite frequently. These may well function to convince the player that the bigger prizes are near. Not surprisingly, heavy slot-machine players play a little faster following these rewards (Dickerson et al. 1992). When asked after the event, the gambler will accurately report gambling more than intended and trying to cut down but failing. The combination of financial loss and lowered self-esteem associated with failure have effects on the gambler that have often been described. Why does the slot-machine player not stop once it is clear that winning is not possible? There is perhaps a range of contributing factors. First of all, the slot-machine player may be convinced of the accuracy of his or her beliefs. Thus persistence will be rewarded. In any case the special knowledge required to defeat the machine is being acquired continuously in the course of testing new ideas. The mechanisms by which failure can be rationalised as success have been made explicit elsewhere (Walker 1990). Beyond the special knowledge and skills that the player has gained there will be a network of friends and acquaintances that has been built up over time. They are engaged in similar endeavours and may function as a support to the legitimacy of the enterprise. Such networks have been described in detail for the racing game by Rosecrance (1986). Finally, when a person focuses their life on one activity or project, they become proficient in the activity in a way that may not happen in other parts of life. The slotmachine player knows all the roles, customs, norms and procedures in their environment. They know the history of machines, jackpots and players. It is in a broad sense their area of expertise. Although mastery of the game may be illusory, mastery of the environment is real. Such mastery contributes to the definition of self and is lost if the activity is given

Gambling cultures

218

up. Nevertheless, where the financial losses are too great or the social pressure to desist from the activity too powerful, the slot-machine player may be forced to seek help. Although that help may come from agencies which accept the addiction perspective, the surprising fact is that alternatives exist for the gambler which would be unthinkable for the drug addict. A new approach to overcoming gambling problems Controlled drinking is, according to some clinicians, a realistic goal for the alcoholic, and similar claims have been made for excessive gambling (Blaszczynski 1988). However, it is unthinkable that the drug addict might be shown how to consume his or her drug more effectively so that the effect is even more attractive, and the reward even more potent. Yet such a therapy has been offered to problem gamblers (Sartin 1988). Allcock and Dickerson (1986) have argued that gamblers would enjoy their gambling more if they knew the best strategies of betting and of money management. However, Sartin has taken the argument one step further by teaching problem gamblers how to gamble with a greater chance of winning. Sartin claims that his approach to ‘therapy’ is much more effective than methods based on the assumption that gambling is pathological or addictive. Whether or not Sartin’s claims are well-founded, the possibility that problems with gambling might be lessened by raising the real skill level of the gambler places problem gambling in a different category of activity from drug addiction.

CONCLUSION The central claim in this chapter is that heavy gambling is wrongly interpreted as an addiction. Gambling is better understood as a leisure activity which is potentially dangerous. The danger is that persistence will cause heavy financial losses. The reasons why gamblers persist in the activity are not agreed upon. However, the dominant view among treatment agencies is that there is something wrong with the gambler who persists in the face of mounting financial losses. The view is that the gambler has become addicted to the activity. Addiction is understood as a pathology that afflicts certain people, and the heavy gambling that causes serious financial losses is defined as pathological. It is argued here that no pathology of the heavy gambler has been demonstrated, that attempts to medicalise gambling as an addiction are based on the mistaken belief that drug abuse and heavy gambling are similar, and that gambling is better understood as a commitment of resources similar to that involved in success at games of skill. Attempts to install pleasure as the common ingredient of drug abuse and heavy gambling are misplaced. It is ironic that the persistence displayed by the heavy gambler is lauded in other aspects of life. To work diligently, to play hard, to master hobbies, to acquire competence through practice, are part and parcel of successful socialisation in modern western industrialised societies. It is the heavy gambler who is labelled ‘pathological’ rather than the society in which diligence in one legitimate sphere is rewarded but in another punished. There are two main types of explanation for the plight of the heavy gambler who loses all assets: those which focus on individual weaknesses and those which take a

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

219

broader social view. I have reviewed the explanation in terms of personal failure and concluded that there is no basis for attributing the phenomenon to pathology. Perhaps it is time to look again at the role of society and the preparation of the individual for modern life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alder, J. (1966) ‘Gambling, drugs and alcohol: a note on the functional equivalents’, Issues in Criminology 2:111–17. Allcock, C.C. and Dickerson, M.G. (1986) The Guide to Good Gambling, Sydney: Social Sciences Press. American Psychiatric Association (1980) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edn) DSM III, Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. ——(1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edn) DSM IIIR, Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Bejerot, C. and Bejerot, M. (1978) ‘Exposure factors in drug use, abuse and addiction’, in J.Fishman (ed.) Bases of Addiction, Berlin: Dahlem Konferenzem. Blaszczynski, A.P. (1988) ‘Clinical studies in pathological gambling: is controlled gambling an acceptable treatment outcome?’ Unpublished PhD thesis, University of New South Wales. Blaszczynski, A.P., Buhrich, N. and McConaghy, N. (1986) ‘Pathological gamblers, heroin addicts and controls compared on the EPQ “Addiction Scale”’, British Journal of Addiction 80:315–19. Blaszczynski, A. and McConaghy, N. (1989) ‘The medical model of pathological gambling: current shortcomings’, Journal of Gambling Behavior 5:42–52. Blume, S.B. (1987) ‘Compulsive gambling and the medical model’, Journal of Gambling Behavior 3:231–41. ——(1990) ‘Chemical dependency in women: important issues’, American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 16:297–307. Brockner, J. and Rubin, J.Z. (1985) Entrapment in Escalating Conflicts: A Social Psychological Analysis, New York: Springer-Verlag. Brown, R.I.F. and Robertson, S. (1993) ‘Home computer and video-game addictions in relation to adolescent gambling: conceptual and developmental aspects’, in W.R. Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling Behavior and Problem Gambling, Reno: University of Nevada: 451–72. Browne, B.R. (1989) ‘Going on tilt: frequent poker players and control’, Journal of Gambling Behavior 5:3–21. Caldwell, G. (1974) ‘The gambling Australian’, in D.E.Edgar (ed.) Social Change in Australia, Melbourne: Cheshire. Caldwell, G.T., Dickerson, M.G., Haig, B. and Sylvan, L. (eds) (1985) Gambling in Australia, Sydney: Croom Helm. Carlson, N.R. (1991) Physiology of Behavior, Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Cook, D.R. (1987) ‘Self-identified addictions and emotional disturbances in a sample of college students’, Psychology of Addictive Behaviours 1:55–61. Custer, R.L. and Milt, H. (1985) When Luck Runs Out, New York: Warner Books. Daley, K. (1987) ‘Encouraging “habitual” gambling on poker machines’, in M.B.Walker (ed.) Faces of Gambling, Sydney: National Association for Gambling Studies. Das, A.K. (1990) ‘Counselling people with addictive behaviour’, International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling 13:169–77. Dickerson, M.G. (1984) Compulsive Gamblers, London: Longman. ——(1990) ‘Internal and external determinants of persistent gambling and impaired control’, Paper presented at the Eighth International Conference on Risk and Gambling, London.

Gambling cultures

220

Dickerson, M.G., Fabre, J. and Bayliss, D. (1986) ‘A comparison of TAB customers and pokermachine players’, in J.McMillen (ed.) Gambling in the 80s, Brisbane: Griffith University. Dickerson M.G., Hinchy, J., Legg-England, S. and Cunningham, R. (1992) ‘On the operant determinants of persistent gambling behaviour. I High-frequency poker machine players’, British Journal of Psychology 83:237–48. Eisler, H. (1989) ‘The gambling dollar: observations on the activities of punting and poker machine playing’, Paper delivered at The State of Gambling, The Fourth Conference of the National Association for Gambling Studies, Melbourne. Ferrioli, M. and Ciminero, A.R. (1981) ‘The treatment of pathological gambling as an addictive behaviour’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) The Gambling Papers, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, University of Nevada, Reno. Fuller, N.P., Taber, J.I. and Wittman, G.W. (1988) ‘On the irrelevance of substances in defining addictive disorders’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Nevada: University of Nevada, Reno. Gaboury, A. and Ladouceur, R. (1988) ‘Irrational thinking and gambling’, in W.R. Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, University of Nevada, Reno. Graham, J. (1988) Amusement Machines: Dependency and Delinquency, London: Home Office. Griffiths, M.D. (1990) ‘A study of the cognitive activity of fruit machine players’, Paper presented at the Eighth International Conference on Risk and Gambling, London. Hand, I. (1990) ‘A socio-behavioral model of compulsive gambling: social gambling-pathological gambling-addictive gambling’, Paper presented at the English International Conference on Risk and Gambling, London. Hayano, D.M. (1984) ‘The professional gambler: fame, fortune and failure’, Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science 474:157–67. Hickey, J.E., Haertzen, C.A. and Henningfield, J.E. (1986) ‘Simulation of gambling responses on the addiction research centre inventory’, Addictive Behaviors 11:345–9. Jacobs, D.F. (1986) ‘A general theory of addictions: a new theoretical model’, Journal of Gambling Behavior 2:15–31. Krivanek, J. (1988) Addiction, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Lesieur, H.R. (1988) ‘Altering the DSM-III criteria for pathological gambling’, Journal of Gambling Behavior 4:38–47. Lesieur, H.R., Blume, S.B. and Zoppa, R.M. (1986) ‘Alcoholism, drug abuse and gambling’, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 10:33–8. Lynch, R. (1990) ‘Working class gambling and vocabularies of hope among regular poker machine gamblers’, in D.Rowe and G.Lawrence (eds) Sport and Leisure: Trends in Australian Popular Culture, Marrickville: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 189–208. Maze, J. (1987) ‘Lady Luck is gambler’s mother’, in M.B.Walker (ed.) Faces of Gambling, Sydney: National Association for Gambling Studies. Milkman, H. and Sunderwirth, S. (1983) ‘The chemistry of craving’, Psychology Today (Oct.): 36– 44. Nabokov, V. ([1964] 1986) The Defence, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orford, J. (1985) Excessive Appetites, London: John Wiley & Sons. Rosecrance, J. (1986) ‘Why regular gamblers don’t quit: a sociological perspective’, Sociological Perspectives 29:357–78. Sarason, I.G. and Sarason, B.R. (1980) Abnormal Psychology: The Problem of Mal-adaptive Behavior, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Sartin, H.G. (1988) ‘Win therapy: an alternative diagnostic and treatment procedure for problem gambling’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 5:365–91, University of Nevada, Reno. Solomon, R.L. and Corbit, J.D. (1974) ‘An opponent-process theory of motivation: 1. Temporaral dynamics of affect’, Psychological Review 81:119–45.

The medicalisation of gambling as an 'addiction'

221

Soper, W.B. and Miller, M.J. (1983) ‘Junk-time junkies: an emerging addiction among students’, School Counsellor 31:40–3. Spanier, D. (1987) Easy Money: Inside the Gambler’s Mind, London: Secker & Warburg. Taft, R. (1967) Attitudes and Social Conditions: Essays, Canberra: Australian National University. Walker, M.B. (1987) ‘Bridge for money: gambling with finesse’, in M.B.Walker (ed.) Faces of Gambling, Sydney: National Association for Gambling Studies. ——(1988) ‘Betting shops and slot machines: comparisons among gamblers’, in W.R. Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Gamblers and Gambling Behavior, Nevada: University of Nevada, Reno. ——(1990) ‘The presence of irrational thinking among poker machine players’, in M.G. Dickerson (ed.) 200-UP, Canberra: National Association for Gambling Studies. Wikler, A. (1973) ‘Dynamics of drug dependence: implications of a conditioning theory for research and treatment’, in S.Fisher and A.M.Friedman (eds) Opiate Addiction: Origins and Treatment, New York: Winston & Sons. Wise, R.A. (1988) ‘The neurobiology of craving: implications for the understanding and treatment of addiction’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 97:118–32. Wray, I. and Dickerson, M.G. (1981) ‘Cessation of high frequency gambling and “withdrawal” symptoms’, British Journal of Addiction 76:401–5. Zurcher, L. (1970) ‘The “friendly” poker game: a study of an ephemeral role’, Social Forces 49:173–86.

13 ETHICAL AND POLICY CONSIDERATIONS IN THE SPREAD OF COMMERCIAL GAMBLING William R.Eadington

By the 1990s in the United States, Canada, the European Community, Australia and New Zealand, there had emerged a substantial increase in the legal and social acceptance of commercial gambling. Gaming industries had become increasingly sophisticated and legitimate to reflect this reality. From a consumer’s perspective, gambling had transformed itself over the previous thirty years from an inappropriate, ‘sinful’ endeavour to a mainstream participatory activity. Furthermore, as acceptability had increased, various special interests, ranging from charities to churches to private enterprises to government agencies, lobbied for the right to offer commercial gaming services to the general public so as to capture the resultant economic benefits, often for some higher purpose than merely their own self-interest. However, in spite of its increased presence and acceptance, gambling remained quite controversial as an activity and a commercial enterprise. Attempts to bring about its expansion or to change the existing institutional structures that offer gambling services would often encounter vociferous opposition. Furthermore, commercial gaming industries would still come under question on legitimacy grounds. They would often be stigmatised by old perceptions such as ties to organised crime, association with political corruption or links to moral decay. Clearly, some of these perceptions had valid historical roots, though many were based on exaggeration or had become outdated by changing legal or institutional factors. Yet, there were enough vestiges of the past surrounding commercial gaming to keep members of the interested general public wondering about the actual level of integrity—or lack of it—associated with commercial gaming industries and their regulators, on the one hand, and the possible negative social effects of widespread gambling, on the other. Furthermore, there had been considerable variation in experience among jurisdictions that allowed commercial gaming. In some, the issues of corruption, social damage and adverse impacts were perceived as considerably more severe than in others. But for the most part, public policy attitudes towards gambling throughout the industrialised world had shifted from viewing gambling as a vice to seeing it as an opportunity to be exploited. This is perhaps the main reason why there was, and continues to be, such a strong trend towards legalisation of new forms of commercial gaming and the relaxation of constraints on existing commercial gaming activities over the past decade. Based on the events leading up to the mid-1990s, these trends promise to continue and perhaps even accelerate by the turn of the century.

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

223

ETHICAL AND POLICY ISSUES IN JURISDICTIONS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD As possibilities for legal commercial gambling have arisen in various countries through legislative or other processes, policy-makers have had to weigh a variety of economic, moral and social considerations. The economic impacts of introducing commercial gaming industries are generally tangible, quantifiable and perceived as positive, whereas moral issues and social impacts linked to gambling are usually intangible, difficult to measure and on balance considered to be negative. However, when gambling is moved from the list of prohibited activities into legal status with specified criteria for eligibility for gambling suppliers and particular rules as to how gambling services can be offered, substantial potential economic rents often arise. Allocation of such economic rents then becomes an integral part of the public policy process, though allocation of the social costs is usually ignored. Generally speaking, the latent demand among the general public to participate in gambling activities emerges when gambling moves from illegal to legal status. Revenues generated by legal gambling typically far exceed the volume of illegal or social gambling that such legalisation might have displaced. Furthermore, since the guidelines by which commercial gambling can be operated and controlled are created by a political process, the allocation of economic rents to ‘deserving’ parties also becomes part of the deliberation. The fact that there is a strong latent demand for gambling—that is, given the option, many people will choose to gamble—has not by itself been a sufficient reason for moving from prohibition to legalisation. In order to be politically acceptable, the legalisation of gambling must be linked to one or more ‘higher purposes’ that can receive a portion of the created economic rents and overcome the arguments against gambling. Such higher purposes can be grouped into tax benefits, investment stimuli, job creation, regional economic development or redevelopment, and revenue enhancement for deserving interests. Thus, for example, lotteries have been introduced for the express purpose of enhancing government revenues. Casinos have been legalised in the hope of stimulating local and regional economies, and revitalising or bolstering existing tourist industries. Charities have been authorised to sponsor a variety of gambling activities—such as bingo, pull-tab tickets or ‘Las Vegas nights’—because the revenues extracted from gambling’s excess rents allow the organisations to fulfil their charitable objectives better. Indian gaming in America and Canada has received political support because of its ability to provide economic development opportunities and wealth for otherwise impoverished Indian tribes and bands. But seldom does gambling become legal without a public debate on both its merits and its costs. The traditional arguments against gambling are three-fold. First, gambling is immoral and works against family and social values that directly link reward to hard work. Such values require the head of household to contribute income for the well-being of the family unit rather than squander it on vices. They also encourage activities that lead to self-improvement rather than the wasting of time. Second, gambling is inseparable from law-breaking, political corruption and infiltration by organised crime. This is because it preys on the weaknesses of individuals for whom gambling leads to

Gambling cultures

224

irresponsibility. Law-breaking will take place even with legal gambling because the need for gambling money will lead some to theft or embezzlement, to deal with ‘loan sharks’, or to pursue other illegal means to stay ‘in the action’. Political corruption will take place as long as society establishes rules to constrain gambling legally or prohibit certain types of gambling, and public officials have the ability to thwart such constraints or prohibitions by ‘looking the other way’ or removing them in return for bribes or other considerations. Organised crime can enter any vacuum created by an activity linked to gambling which is popular but officially prohibited. Such activities are placed outside the reach of normal contract law and can therefore be exploited through a ‘black market’ in such a manner as to meet demand. Third, gambling can lead to personal and family tragedies from compulsive or pathological gambling behaviour. Some individuals who are unable to control their gambling behaviour will financially ruin themselves and their families as a result of gambling. Alternatively, irresponsible gambling will lead to greater personal and financial stress on the individual and his or her family, and may manifest itself through greater degrees of family problems in the form of erosion of trust and communication, increased spouse or child abuse or a higher incidence of family disintegration. In public debate concerning gambling legalisation, policy-makers must evaluate the strength of these arguments in light of the consequences of keeping gambling in a prohibited state, even though there is no guarantee that illegal gambling will truly be prohibited, in comparison to circumstances where gambling will be legally sanctioned but constrained through a variety of regulatory or statutory options. The general objections to legal gambling have weakened during the second half of the twentieth century. Moral arguments, which in the past had been most strongly put forward by churches and government bodies, have suffered partly because of the diminishing authority such institutions presently carry in comparison to previous times, and partly because many churches and governments have themselves become actively involved—through charitable gambling, church bingo and lotteries—in the delivery of gambling services. Furthermore, in comparison to those of previous generations, the attitudes of the general public do not rank gambling as much of an immoral activity in the 1990s.1 Political corruption and organised crime concerns are likely to emerge in an environment where gambling is either prohibited or highly constrained but where public officials have some discretion as to whether they will enforce the law. As legal commercial gaming has become more legitimate and established, and as regulatory bodies have become more professional and sophisticated, the opportunities for corruption and for the infiltration of organised crime into gambling operations have diminished. The issue of compulsive or pathological gambling is complex. There are really two related issues that emerge. First, how prevalent is the incidence of compulsive gambling, especially when society changes the legal status of gambling; and second, what strategies will be most effective in shaping policies that deal with the consequences of compulsive gambling, whether or not it is legal? The issue of incidence involves both the question of definition—what constitutes being a ‘compulsive gambler’?—and measurement—the number of compulsive gamblers in jurisdictions with different degrees of access to legal or illegal gambling opportunities. Though still an area that needs considerable refinement, studies that have been completed in the United States and elsewhere indicate

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

225

an incidence of compulsive gambling of between 1 per cent and 5 per cent of the adult population (Volberg and Steadman 1989). Furthermore, greater access to legal gambling seems to lead to a greater incidence of compulsive gambling. On the question of appropriate public policy, some comparisons can be made regarding societal treatment of gambling and other ‘morally suspect’ activities. On the one hand, with gambling, there has been a trend towards allowing people to have greater control over their choice of activities and to be more responsible for the consequences for their actions. But this principle has not been applied uniformly over the so-called ‘vices’, such as alcohol, tobacco, illicit drug use, prostitution and pornography. These vices, along with gambling, have similar economic and social characteristics: strong demand for consumption of the activity from select segments of the population, an acknowledgement that the activity must be constrained to some extent to control its negative social consequences, and a history of changing social and legal tolerance and acceptance. With some activities—such as illicit drugs—there has been a strong drive to prohibit both use and sale, accompanied by severe penalties for violations of legal sanctions. With other activities—such as tobacco-smoking—there has been an increase in restrictions on both users and producers, partly to protect the potential smoker against being ‘seduced’ into smoking (hence prohibitions against certain types of marketing) and to protect nonsmokers from the health and aesthetic costs of having to share space with smokers (leading to the creation of ‘smoking prohibited’ spaces). In some cases, the response has been with stiffer penalties on those who abuse the activity—as with more severe penalties for drunken driving violations—or selective non-enforcement of the law in certain geographic areas, as with street prostitution. Compulsive gambling has been variously interpreted to indicate that the individual has little or no control over his or her actions while gambling, and therefore cannot be held responsible for the consequences (Rose 1988). Because of this, it has been difficult to ascribe guilt or responsibility to the adverse consequences that arise from compulsive gambling. To prohibit gambling penalises the majority for the weaknesses regarding gambling behaviour inherent in a distinct minority. To allow gambling but require commercial gaming industries to absorb the costs and consequences of compulsive gambling places an undue burden of identification and policing upon suppliers of gaming services. To hold the individual fully responsible for actions that result from gambling raises the spectre of diminished capacity. Thus, government is often expected to mitigate the severity of compulsive gambling through appropriate regulatory and operational constraints both on operators and gamblers. If legal gaming industries already exist when a jurisdiction is considering introducing new forms of commercial gambling, the economic trade-offs can become more difficult and the moral and social costs more ambiguous. For example, pari-mutuel wagering associated with thoroughbred racing has had a considerably longer legal status than most other forms of gambling in many countries. However, when other forms of commercial gaming are introduced, pari-mutuel wagering often suffers from the new competition (Syme 1992; Thalheimer 1992). Thus, as a result of the economic threat, racing lobbies often become formidable opponents to the introduction of new forms of legal gambling in their jurisdictions; but instead of couching their arguments on the adverse economic impacts, they often revert to moral or social arguments which criticise gambling in general.

Gambling cultures

226

When this occurs, existing legal gaming industries often find themselves in the company of organisations which oppose gambling on more idealistic grounds: Church groups who are morally opposed to gambling and its impact on values and the family, law enforcement agencies which are concerned about the potential for criminal spillovers, and social services organisations who see gambling as a disruptive factor for a class of people whose lives are already somewhat tenuous. However, the general effectiveness of such campaigns in opposition to gambling have weakened in recent years in the face of apparently successful and acceptable new forms of legal gambling. Moral and social considerations are difficult to identify and evaluate in the legislative process. Whereas economic impacts are tangible and quantifiable—in the form of jobs, payrolls, tax revenues and new investments—negative social impacts are usually qualitative and intangible—such as increased financial distress within families, a greater incidence of spouse and family abuse, and a higher propensity for embezzlements and petty theft. Because of the historic prohibitions against gambling, there are concerns about what widespread gambling might do if unleashed on a previously unexposed public. Because there has been so little experience with easily accessible commercial gaming in the past, introducing gambling rapidly and openly carries with it many risks of the unknown—of what might go wrong in society as a by-product of a cornucopia of available gambling opportunities. Yet, even when a jurisdiction makes the commitment to legalise a form of gambling for whatever ‘higher purpose’, there is usually enough lingering doubt concerning the wisdom of such an act to induce policy-makers to saddle the new industries with a variety of regulations and constraints that will hopefully mitigate the potential for social damage, or protect existing economic interests. Such regulations might be directed at protecting consumers of gambling from their own folly, such as with prohibitions against the granting of credit for gambling purposes, maximum wager size limitations or maximum loss limits. They may take the form of restrictions on the ability of the gaming industry to promote itself, as with prohibitions on advertising or solicitations. They might restrict the access to or ambience of the gambling activity, as with geographic constraints, entrance fees or dress-code requirements, mandated closing hours, or prohibitions against alcohol or live entertainment. Or they might protect the existing competing gaming or nongaming industries by limiting the areas in which newly legalised gaming operations might compete. Such restrictions are usually above and beyond the ‘fundamental’ objectives of regulation, which are: to protect the integrity of the games and wagers by regulating against cheating and fraud; to protect the integrity of tax collections by requiring acceptable accounting standards and practices; and to protect the general integrity of the gaming industry by establishing procedures to guard against infiltration by undesirables into ownership and management positions in gaming operations. In summary, although many legislative bodies have chosen to allow commercial gambling to become a legal presence within their jurisdictions, there remains enough lingering doubt about negative side effects that such authorisation is often accompanied by a wide array of restrictions and regulations to limit the overall negative impacts that might arise. Yet when placed within the context of increasing presence of commercial gaming activities, such restraints might later be analysed more in terms of their adverse competitive impacts. This creates the dynamic that will likely influence the future policy

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

227

debates among decision-makers for how best to allow commercial gaming to exist within the social framework. Thus, a common theme that emerges among industrialised countries is the struggle to answer the following broad questions. If commercial gambling is going to be authorised: • who should be allowed to capture the economic rents associated with supplying gambling services? • how should the general public be protected against their own potential weaknesses when confronted with the opportunity to gamble? • and how should the interests of other presently legal industries, whether involved with gambling at present or not, be protected against the adverse competitive pressures that could arise? The following discussion looks specifically at the experience in the United States in trying to provide some insight into these issues.

COMMERCIAL GAMING AND THE LEGALISATION PROCESS: THE US EXPERIENCE From the mid-1960s to the 1990s, the proliferation of gambling took place in a variety of ways in different countries throughout the world. Yet important common patterns emerge, and many of these are reflected by the experience of jurisdictions in the United States. Legalisation of commercial gaming in the United States has tended to be directed at specific objectives, which primarily have been economic in nature. There are four main commercial gaming industries in America that have emerged in the second half of the twentieth century: lotteries, casino-style gambling, pari-mutuel wagering and charitable gambling. Each will be discussed in the context of the challenges pointed out above, and with regard to the policy alternatives that have presented themselves. Lotteries Lotteries, which were outlawed in all the states by the end of the nineteenth century because of widespread fraud and corruption, were reintroduced into New Hampshire in 1964. The first twentieth-century lottery was authorised primarily to generate tax revenue, serving as a form of ‘voluntary’ taxation that would be paid for largely by residents of other states. This lottery model was copied and improved upon by neighbouring states so that, by the 1990s, lotteries had spread throughout the country. In terms of understanding why modern lotteries came back to America, it is useful to note their initial organisational and market structure characteristics (Clotfelter and Cook 1989). Lotteries were created by state legislatures as government-owned monopolies whose explicit purpose was to generate revenues for state government. This would allow states to avoid having to increase other taxes. Advocating traditional tax increases had become politically unpopular in the United States, especially by the 1970s. With a monopoly on lottery gambling, the states could charge monopoly prices and extract monopoly rents, which they typically did. Of every dollar spent on lottery products, 50

Gambling cultures

228

per cent would usually be retained by the lottery and the other 50 per cent would be paid back to lottery winners as prizes. Once one state was successful in operating lotteries in a region, pressure increased for non-lottery states, especially those adjacent to lottery states, to jump on the bandwagon. Where introduced, lotteries were proving popular as a ‘harmless’ form of gambling. In states without a lottery, citizens would often cross borders to purchase lottery tickets. These situations eroded the arguments in opposition to lotteries. By 1992, lotteries had spread to over thirty-four states, encompassing more than 80 per cent of America’s population. Gross sales before payment of prizes for lotteries in 1991 exceeded $20 billion. Furthermore, many of the remaining non-lottery states were under increasing pressure to authorise their own lotteries. Lotteries have had the general effect in the United States of sanitising and popularising commercial gaming in the minds of the general public. State lotteries have introduced more Americans to commercial gaming than has any other form of gambling. Lotterystyle gambling, as run by the government, has also been economically successful and free of scandal, and because of that, many of the older images linked to other forms of gambling—such as corruption, nefarious characters, rigged games and destroyed lives— were revised in light of the relatively clean image of lotteries. But lotteries have not been free of controversy. There are various intriguing and difficult policy issues that have emerged with American-style lotteries. First on the list is the question of whether the government should even be in the lottery business. Lotteries in the United States are big business, but there is enough lingering sentiment about gambling being morally suspect that a case can be made regarding whether the government is best serving its citizenry by acting as a supplier of gambling services. It is one thing to authorise an activity and then regulate it in the public interest. It is quite another to establish a legal monopoly, and then exploit that monopoly for revenue purposes without an obvious system of regulatory checks and balances (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:235–49). A second and related controversial issue regarding lotteries is whether government should be using sophisticated marketing techniques to increase lottery sales. Lotteries in America are sold with the same verve and effectiveness as are soaps, beer and other consumer commodities. Furthermore, there is little doubt that lottery sales are strongly influenced by marketing efforts. However, because of the morally ambiguous view towards gambling that is held in some quarters, it is legitimate to pose the question as to whether the lottery is indeed a product that should be sold with the same techniques that are so effective with other consumer goods. A third issue that lotteries raise is whether governments should be concerned that lottery sales are disproportionate among society’s have-nots. Lottery Commissions, because they are political bodies, have always been sensitive to the issue that government revenues raised through lotteries are effectively regressive taxes (Clotfelter and Cook 1989:215–34). People who buy lottery tickets come disproportionately from lowerincome groups, disadvantaged groups, ethnic groups, the elderly, the unemployed and the gullible. Furthermore, as competition for discretionary income gets stronger and niche marketing becomes more finely tuned, it is likely that these groups are where new market growth for lottery products will most effectively be developed. To the extent lotteries are, by their essence, a tax—indeed, some observers have called them ‘a tax on the stupid’—

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

229

if a greater proportion of income from lower-income groups is spent on lotteries, then lotteries represent a regressive form of taxation. Probably the most intriguing question for lotteries in the future is whether they should expand by introducing forms of gambling that are traditionally not lottery products. Perhaps the best illustration of this is video lottery terminals, or VLTs.2 VLTs were introduced by the South Dakota Lottery in 1989, and by the Oregon and West Virginia lotteries in 1992. As revenue generators, the VLTs have been quite successful in their first few years of operation. In South Dakota, for example, there were about 6,000 units placed in age-restricted outlets such as bars and taverns throughout the sparsely populated state by 1992, and the gross winnings of all VLTs amounted to $150 million, or about $200 per capita. Such performance is quite strong in comparison to traditional lottery sales in the United States. This experience is occurring at a time when Lottery Commissions in many states are finding the sales growth of traditional lottery products flattening or declining. As a result, there is considerable political pressure on Lottery Commissions to find new ways to expand lottery sales. Many lotteries are considering introducing gambling activities that traditionally have not been viewed as lottery games but rather as casino games, such as VLTs or Keno, or heretofore illegal forms of gambling, such as sports pool wagering. As such, lotteries are becoming more exciting, more interesting, and potentially more addictive and damaging to society at large. Furthermore, as states and provinces confront record budget deficits in the 1990s, pressure for better revenue performance by lotteries will likely continue consideration of this type of product development. When lotteries were established in the various states, casino-style gaming was uniformly illegal in every one of them. Furthermore, when lotteries were authorised, the kind of gambling envisaged within the lottery legislation was usually far more passive and uninteresting than interactive casino-style gambling. Aside from the legal issue of whether lottery laws can be used to authorise casino-style gambling under the aegis of the lottery, there is a broader ethical question of whether statutes prohibiting casino-style gambling should be invalidated by administrative action of a Lottery Commission. In total, the conflicts inherent in these issues pose intriguing questions about lotteries that are far from being resolved. Casinos The second major commercial gaming industry in the United States in terms of gross gaming revenues is casino gaming. Since 1988, many American jurisdictions have begun the process of determining how the economic opportunities that casinos promise can best be exploited. Until the mid-1970s, Nevada was the only state in the United States that allowed ongoing casino operations. In 1976, New Jersey voters authorised the development of a casino industry in Atlantic City which has since grown in terms of gross gaming revenues to nearly the size of Las Vegas’s casino industry. All other attempts to bring casino gaming to the United States between 1976 and 1988 failed (Dombrink and Thompson 1989). However, beginning in the fall of 1988, three important events occurred that started a process of rapid change in the presence of casino gambling in the United States: a statewide ballot issue in South Dakota approving limited stakes casino gaming in the small

Gambling cultures

230

mining community of Deadwood, passage by Congress of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and legislative approval of riverboat gambling in Iowa in early 1989. Since then, the presence of casino-style gambling in America has exploded, with a wide variety of new forms of casino gaming appearing in various jurisdictions. There have been distinct patterns which have emerged from these consequential events. Both the South Dakota and Iowa authorisations began with the implicit premise that those forms of casino gaming were relatively benign and controllable in terms of their possible negative social side effects. The South Dakota referendum, for example, limited the maximum wager size to $5 and kept casino operations small by allowing no more than thirty table games or gaming devices per casino licence. Furthermore, the remoteness of Deadwood would minimise social problems that might be associated with casino gaming. In Iowa, casino gaming was restricted to riverboats along major waterways only. Admission fees would be charged to gain entrance onto the riverboats, wagers in excess of $5 were not permitted, and players were limited to a maximum loss of $200 per riverboat excursion. Furthermore, the state of Iowa earmarked 0.3 per cent of gross gaming revenues for problem gambling treatment programmes in the state. Both South Dakota and Iowa began casino gaming with the belief that the economic benefits which casino gaming would create would be within the scale of what the affected communities could utilise. Both states devised constraints that would limit the appeal of casino gaming to out-of-state or major corporate interests. And Iowa established funding mechanisms to mitigate whatever damage might occur as a result of casino gaming. Though they did not realise it at the time, South Dakota and Iowa established models for other states to follow suit, with variations of mining-town casino gaming and riverboat casino gaming, respectively. The pattern that emerged was for new jurisdictions to copy the legislation of their predecessors, but to be slightly less restrictive in the regulations governing their new casino industry. Thus, when Illinois authorised riverboat gambling in 1990, they allowed credit and did not incorporate maximum wager limits or loss per excursion limits. When Mississippi legalised riverboat casinos in 1990, they allowed ‘dockside’ casino operations, which implied not only that riverboats with casinos did not have to sail on the river; such casino facilities did not even have to be boats as long as they were built over the water. Missouri’s 1992 referendum authorising riverboat casinos also allows boats in some locations to remain dockside. When the voters of Colorado approved small stakes casino gaming for three Rocky Mountain mining towns in 1990 based on South Dakota’s approach, they did not restrict the size of the gaming operations to any pre-set number of games or devices. Indian gaming has had a different set of political consequences. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) was passed in response to a Supreme Court decision in 1987, Cabazon v. the State of California (Eadington 1990). The Cabazon decision recognised that Indian tribes in America were autonomous governmental entities which existed within states but were independent from civil or regulatory control from the states. Thus, if a state allowed any person for any purpose to operate gaming within their jurisdiction, then Indian tribes with reservation land within that state could not be prohibited from operating the same type of gambling on tribal land. Furthermore, the state could have no regulatory authority over the Indian gaming operations within their borders.

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

231

Cabazon carried the implication of the unregulated spread of a variety of forms of gambling, so Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act so as to create a framework for states and tribes to negotiate what forms of Indian gaming would be allowed and how the state’s public policy interests might be protected through regulatory oversight. However, when IGRA was passed into law, it was still unclear what its true impacts would be. IGRA noted that states must negotiate in good faith with Indian tribes, and that if states did not negotiate in good faith, tribes could go to federal court for mediation or arbitration. As a result, many of the important consequences of IGRA and Indian gaming have come about as a result of Indian law suits and court interpretations. Either by negotiating processes or through judicial findings, Indian casino gaming spread rapidly in the five years following IGRA’s passage. Major Indian casinos appeared in the states of Connecticut, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, California and Arizona. Often Indians were able to gain the right to operate full-service Nevada-style casinos because the state in which their tribal lands are located allowed a highly restricted form of casino-style gambling, such as charity ‘Las Vegas’ casino nights. Because such situations led to full-scale casino gaming for Indian tribes within those states, the public policy debate was substantially changed. No longer would states have to debate the issue of whether or not to have casinos; Indian casinos were clearly established. Rather, the debate shifted to how many casinos a state should have, where they should be located and who should benefit. As of 1993, it was clear that Indian casino gaming was continuing to spread throughout the United States, and following closely behind it would be the continued proliferation of non-Indian casino gaming. Another noteworthy development of American casinos has been the emergence of urban casino gaming. Historically, casinos in Europe and America had been geographically isolated from population centres, at least partly because of a belief that casinos are deleterious for urban, working-class populations. Legal American casinos in operation as of the end of 1992—whether in Nevada, Atlantic City, or in mining towns, on riverboats or on Indian reservations—had all held to that general pattern. However, in 1992, New Orleans became the first American jurisdiction to legalise an urban casino, with passage of a law authorising a monopoly casino for that city. Subsequently, St Louis and Kansas City (Missouri) authorised riverboat casinos close to their urban centres. Other American cities such as Chicago, Hartford and Bridgeport (Connecticut) actively debated the possibility in 1992. Other cities unsuccessfully attempted to legalise casinos in recent years because they found themselves in dire economic straits and felt that casinos offered one of the only ways out. Such cities as Gary (Indiana), Detroit (Michigan) and East St Louis (Illinois) share an economic desperation not unlike that which prevailed in Atlantic City in 1976. There is very little economic hope left for these places, and a casino or casinos could perhaps save them. However, there are harsh lessons to be learned for such cities from Atlantic City, especially as far as urban redevelopment is concerned (Sternlieb and Hughes 1983). In Atlantic City, the creation of a casino industry that brought 30 million visitors to the city each year, and created over 50,000 jobs, did not alleviate the urban blight or poverty that had plagued that city. Regrettably, because of the similarities of Atlantic City to these other cities—in terms of economic desperation and circumstances—the same general disappointing outcomes would also be likely to apply.

Gambling cultures

232

The past decade has also brought about significant growth and change for the major existing casino cities in the United States. In Atlantic City fifteen years after legalisation, the casino industry has grown to apparent maturity, but there is increasing concern about the future health of Atlantic City and its casino industry. Between 1988 and 1992, over half of Atlantic City’s dozen casinos went through bankruptcy, and one of them closed permanently. Atlantic City experienced its major growth in the 1980s and, as with other American industries that expanded in that period, many of the problems of Atlantic City’s casinos can be traced to over-leveraging and over-reliance on debt financing for capital expansion. The Atlantic City casino industry effectively gambled that the growth it experienced in the 1980s would continue. It did not, and Atlantic City also failed to cure its fundamental problems, such as urban blight. Some of these problems may no longer be curable, and legalisation of casino-style gambling threatens to compete for and cut into some of Atlantic City’s eastern seaboard markets. Thus, there is reason to believe that Atlantic City’s slowdown in growth may indeed be permanent. Las Vegas, Nevada, on the other hand, has been a boom town virtually without precedent. According to the 1990 census, Nevada was the fastest-growing state in the United States for the decade of the 1980s, with the population increasing by more than 50 per cent to 1.2 million and Las Vegas the centre of growth in the state. The causes of population growth in Las Vegas are easy to see. About 30 per cent of the labour force is employed in the gaming, hotel and recreation sector. By 1994 Las Vegas had the ten largest hotels in the world, all of them casino hotels. Las Vegas is probably the premier convention city in the world, in terms of convention facilities and available hotel rooms. In terms of variety and quality of live entertainment available, Las Vegas compares favourably with virtually all of the world’s capital cities. There are over 90,000 hotel rooms in Las Vegas, more than can be found in Manhattan and London combined. All this has come about in the last thirty years. In the 1960s, conventional wisdom viewed Las Vegas as a city controlled by organised crime, a place filled with transients, low-lifers and opportunists. The transformation of Las Vegas is a direct result of the popularity and growth of casino-style gambling, and as of the 1990s no end is in sight for its casino-fuelled growth boom. One reason for the continued growth of Las Vegas—and of other casino centres in Nevada—has been the underlying philosophy by which governmental bodies have regulated Nevada’s casinos. The principles by which regulators have overseen the casino industry are relatively narrow. The purpose of regulation of casino gaming is to protect the image of the state’s casino industry by • ensuring the integrity of the accounting procedures used by casinos to assure the state its appropriate share of taxes; • monitoring the honesty of the games and wagering opportunities offered so that the public can be confident of protection against cheating; • protecting the integrity of casino owners and key employees by precluding undesirables from obtaining gaming licences. Nevada has incorporated few moral positions about casino gaming into its regulatory framework, especially in comparison to other American jurisdictions with casinos. Few of the social concerns related to widely available casino gambling have affected Nevada’s public policy towards gambling or its regulation of the casino industry. As far as the state

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

233

is concerned, regulation should not adversely affect the economic performance of the casino industry unless an absence of regulatory action threatens the long-run integrity or image of the industry itself. Such feelings are based in the formative period of Nevada’s regulation. In the 1950s and 1960s, the real risk to the state’s casino industry was the threat of federal intervention because of historic associations with organised crime and a federal view that gambling was morally wrong (Cabot and Schuetz 1991; Skolnick 1978). The regulatory process in Atlantic City, by contrast, is far more cumbersome in terms of restrictions, requirements and costs of regulatory compliance imposed on casinos. This is at least partially because the position that New Jersey regulatory bodies have been reluctant to give up control of a variety of areas of decision-making that in Nevada are left to the discretion of casino management. But in spite of its recent successes, there are questions about the Las Vegas casino economy that pose concerns over the next few years. There is an ongoing issue about if and when Las Vegas will become over-built. And if it does, there might be severe attrition among the older, smaller casino properties which may not be able to compete effectively against the newest and largest ‘must see’ casino destination resorts that have been built in that city. Most fundamental is the question of whether tourists will continue to visit Las Vegas, and spend as much time and money there, when they can find casinostyle gambling opportunities in a variety of other states and jurisdictions throughout the country. Pari-mutuel wagering The third component of the US commercial gaming industries is pari-mutuel wagering, in the form of on-track horse-racing and dog-racing, along with jai alai and off-track wagering.3 Pari-mutuel wagering in the United States is clearly the weakest member of the American commercial gaming industries. Generally speaking, pari-mutuel wagering has not been able to compete effectively against other legal forms of gambling during the expansions of the past three decades. It is vulnerable to virtually any competition from alternative forms of commercial gaming, whether they be lotteries, casino-style gambling, sports betting or even charity gambling. The economic plight of the pari-mutuel wagering industry can be attributed to difficulties associated with new player development. These in turn are probably related to the fact that it takes much longer to become proficient at handicapping races than it does to master other forms of gambling. Furthermore, the racing industry has not been very effective in broadening the base of pari-mutuel bettors. Finally, pari-mutuel wagering, especially on-track horse-racing, used to be the ‘only game in town’. The loss of racing’s regional monopolies over legal commercial gaming with the introduction of new legal gambling options has undoubtedly contracted the size of pari-mutuel markets. However, because of their long-term economic weakness and their vulnerability to competition, the pari-mutuel wagering industry and the horse-racing industry have become quite politically astute in America. Often, they have been the major opponents to new forms of commercial gambling. In Ohio in 1990, for example, the racing industry was the major contributor to the opposition campaign against a casino, amassing a war chest of $1 million. Opponents to casinos argued through the media that casinos would bring organised crime, compulsive gambling and other social costs to Ohio, yet managed

Gambling cultures

234

to skirt the issue of similar problems within the racing industry. However, it is clear that the economic interests of the racing industry would have been at risk if the casino referendum had passed. Charitable gambling The final component of commercial gaming industries in America to be noted here is charitable gambling. Charitable gambling, in the form of bingo, pull-tab tickets,4 and low stakes casino-style gambling, is an activity that often gets ignored when examining gaming industries, but in many parts of the United States it is a rapidly growing, though somewhat disorganised, industry. Furthermore, it has achieved significant dimensions in some jurisdictions. For example, in Minnesota, with a population of just over 4 million, total charitable gambling sales were approximately $1.2 billion in 1991, with gross gaming win of about $230 million. However, charitable gambling has typically been under-regulated, often encountering serious problems with theft, cheating, accounting irregularities and fraud (Fiscal Analyst’s Report 1990). One of the main reasons why under-regulation of such activities occurs has been a naïve attitude on the part of authorising legislative bodies that strict regulation would not be necessary because people working for charities would not steal or cheat, perhaps because they were committed to the causes reflected in their charities. Experience has demonstrated that this is not the case, and the lack of regulation in charitable gambling has led to numerous scandals and control problems. It has been a common pattern that when gambling is established without regulation or over-sight, eventually someone will have their hand in the till.

THE INTERACTION OF ECONOMIC FORCES AND POLICY OBJECTIVES As more forms of commercial gaming compete for what eventually will be a saturated commercial gaming market, some policy objectives will come into conflict with the economic viability and survival of competing forms of gaming. As new gambling activities become available to the general public, they will displace other, less convenient, less exciting, less cost-effective or less accessible forms of gambling. For example, racing and pari-mutuel wagering in the United States will probably continue to go through major contraction because of the proliferation of other competing forms of gambling and their inability to compete effectively. One of the effects of economic hardship on a socially regulated gaming industry is the pressure that arises at a political level to bring about a relaxation of the constraints under which the industry must operate. Initially, a gaming industry may have been legalised because policy-makers felt it could be controlled—symbolically or in reality—and made acceptable through constraints on location, operations or wagering conditions. Pragmatically, such rules may initially have been the only way to make such gambling legislation politically palatable to opponents. However, once a gaming industry is established in a region, it begins the process of becoming legitimate—as a taxpayer, an employer and a member of the local or regional community. If its continued existence is

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

235

threatened by competitive forces, it becomes far more difficult to argue to preserve the social constraints, especially if they have not been very effective in accomplishing their initial purposes. This pattern has already begun to emerge among some of America’s new gaming industries. Iowa provides an excellent example. Though its riverboat casinos only began operations in 1991, substantial attrition soon arose in the state’s riverboat gaming industry. Two of the original five riverboat casinos closed after the first year, and moved to more favourable gaming markets and regulatory environments in Mississippi; a third was scheduled to cease operations within two years of its inauguration and move to a better location in another state. Some of lowa’s problems were related to location, but some of their economic difficulties could be linked to the ‘socially responsible’ legislation they initially passed for their riverboat casinos. The $5 maximum wager and $200 maximum loss per excursion limitations were intended to protect customers from problems related to over-indulging in gambling, but rival riverboats operating across the Mississippi River in Illinois were not subject to such limitations and therefore were more appealing to customers who do not want to gamble under such constraints. The same could be said about lowa’s prohibition against casino credit in contrast to Illinois’s allowance of credit.5 Remote locations for gaming operations—which were initially tolerated because they were distant from population centres—may become the unwitting victims of the changing legal norms governing access to gambling. For example, Deadwood (South Dakota) may find its casino industry contracting in the 1990s because of competition from more recently authorised gaming venues which are closer to their customer markets. In general, customers will choose the convenience of gambling venues close to where they live if they are able. In the same manner, Nevada’s gaming industry is vulnerable to legal changes regarding gambling in California, where many of Nevada’s gaming customers live. It is clear that if California legalises casinos, VLTs or another similar product, it would have major negative impacts on the state’s casino gaming industry. Alternatively, if California state policies open the door to Indian casino gaming in that state, it is likely that it would be followed by a proliferation of non-Indian gaming as well. Any of these events could adversely affect Nevada’s gaming primarily because Nevada would be at a distinct locational disadvantage. Atlantic City is perhaps most vulnerable of all to the proliferation of gambling. Because it has a casino industry whose major attraction to date is that it is the closest locale with casino gaming to the population centres of New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, Atlantic City does not have much to offer its visitors besides the gaming that can take place in its casinos. Thus, if new locations develop with casinos that are more convenient to its primary markets, Atlantic City will lose customers to the new venues. It has relatively little it can draw on to develop or retain the loyalty of its customer base in a more competitive gaming environment. The best the casino industry there can hope for is to ask legislators and regulators to relax many of the expensive regulations so that they would be better able to compete with new competitors. Even that may not be enough.

Gambling cultures

236

CONCLUSIONS The experience of the United States provides an interesting case study as to the dynamics of legalisation of commercial gaming. This is primarily because there are so many autonomous jurisdictions which have the ability and inclination to move quickly in changing the legal and regulatory status of gambling within their authority. In comparison to other countries, gambling policy in the United States in the 1990s has been far more focused on economic rather than social concerns. However, this might reflect the tendency for policy-makers in America to concentrate on only a single dimension at a time of the impacts of commercial gaming on society. In past decades, attitudes towards gambling in America were dominated by stereotypes of organised crime and political corruption, as well as concerns over the social damage that could occur from widespread gambling. Such attitudes have clearly been usurped by a combination of the related economic benefits—jobs, tax revenues, capital investment, regional development—linked to the exploitation of commercial gaming. Also, there has been a strong tendency to replicate or improve upon initiatives from other nearby jurisdictions which had already decided to exploit the economic benefits of commercial gambling. This has led to a ‘domino effect’ of legislation as adjacent jurisdictions try to improve upon the approaches of their neighbours. In comparison, European countries have tended to alter legislation more slowly, with greater deliberation and greater concern for social impacts. This is reflected in the structure of laws and regulations overseeing commercial gaming. However, the potential for the European Community to force standardisation among some commercial gaming industries, in the name of harmonisation, equal access to markets and the underlying principles of the Treaty of Rome, may become an important catalyst for change among the European countries for the rest of the decade (Coopers and Lybrand 1991). In Australia, New Zealand and Canada, governments have kept a tighter degree of control over the ownership and market structure of commercial gaming industries than in the United States, and this has created a different dynamic than that of either the United States or Europe. Because of more socialistic ideologies and a different perspective in the appropriate role of competition versus monopoly in these countries, there has been a tendency to control the creation of new gaming industries in order to shape their ultimate role in local or regional economies, or more directly to capture the economic rents that legalisation can bring about. For example, exclusive franchise monopolies to privatesector operators has become the standard for casino development in Australia and New Zealand, whereas Canada has experimented with government-owned exclusive franchise casino development in Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and Quebec. Economic justifications in these countries are similar to those in the United States: tourism development, tax revenue generation, capital formation and job creation. Interestingly, these countries have also been changing the legal status of commercial gaming industries quite rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps because of a perceived need by government to keep up with competing jurisdictions and the resulting ‘domino effect’.

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

237

Thus, the trend in recent years to exploit the opportunities associated with the changing social acceptance of gambling has led to a variety of experiments with legalisation and regulation of commercial gaming. In the United States and other countries, many of the constraints that were initially placed upon new commercial gaming industries to protect the ‘public interest’ have become targets for relaxation in response to changes in public and legislative attitudes towards gambling. These may arise as a result of greater understanding of social costs and benefits associated with gambling, but also because of increased competition among commercial gaming industries or governments, and concerns over continued economic viability of established gaming industries. Also, as different sectors of the gaming industries pursue growth opportunities, various new products and new gaming concepts are developed. Such activities will muddy the distinctions among gaming industries such as casinos, lotteries and the like. In effect, society’s acceptance of gambling as a mainstream recreational activity is becoming increasingly established. However, there is still going to be considerable political in-fighting over the question of who will be allowed to benefit from offering gambling services to the general public. Potential beneficiaries include governments through lottery commissions and as tax recipients, not-for-profit organisations through charitable gambling or as sponsors of other gambling activities, cities or communities hoping to be designated exclusive franchise locations for gambling outlets in their market areas, and private-sector interests as vendors of gaming equipment or suppliers of gambling services. One other point should be noted. For the United States at least, the political process described in this analysis is driven largely by the opportunistic benefits linked to legalising gambling. Such policies may be misdirected in the long term because their main justifications are likely to be only temporary. Job creation, tax revenue generation, investment stimulation and other related benefits will become diluted as gambling proliferates into more and more jurisdictions. Such benefits to a region may only be sustainable if that jurisdiction can hold its monopoly on gambling for some period of time. This is an aspect of the process that other countries besides the United States have a better opportunity to control in the intermediate and long term. The unstable legal status of commercial gaming in competing jurisdictions in America is usually taken into account by private investors, who evaluate the financial risks that are present in any project due to the possibility of changing legal status of gaming in neighbouring jurisdictions. However, the government sector also has to ‘buy in’ whenever gaming is authorised, either through infrastructure requirements, creation of regulatory bureaucracies, or other budgetary commitments. Governments quite often are not as conscientious in evaluating their commitments as private-sector investors because it is not their own money they are committing. Furthermore, they may be more prone to err on the side of optimism in making projections on the job-creating or revenuegenerating capabilities of new gaming industries. Not every jurisdiction can be as successful as the first one to legalise; economic benefits, especially those that depend upon capturing customers from other jurisdictions, must eventually be dissipated by continued proliferation. Finally, with regard to the potentially damaging social effects linked to gambling, there is a strong asymmetric nature to regulatory and statutory commitments regarding

Gambling cultures

238

the operation of authorised commercial gambling. This is because it is difficult to increase the constraints on a legally created commercial gaming industry once it has been established and generally accepted, especially when it is under increasing competitive pressures from other gaming jurisdictions. The events of the last decade do not paint a clear picture of how commercial gaming will evolve over the next ten or twenty years in terms of who will ultimately benefit as suppliers of gambling services or recipients of economic rents. It is clear, however, that if commercial gaming continues to expand its presence in society, the major long-term effect will be in terms of improved consumer access to a variety of gambling activities; the economic rents will be dissipated as monopolies are eroded. Whether this is good or bad for society at large will probably remain somewhat questionable. Gambling remains an activity that has considerable moral ambiguity associated with it which may not be dispelled in spite of extensive changes in its legal status.

NOTES 1 A January 1993 survey conducted by the Home Testing Institute for Harrah’s Casino Hotels revealed that 55 per cent of Americans found casino gambling as a form of behaviour ‘perfectly acceptable for anyone’; an additional 35 per cent said it was ‘acceptable for others but not for me’. Only 10 per cent found casino gaming as ‘not acceptable for anyone’. 2 These are electronic gaming devices in the form of video draw poker, video blackjack and video keno machines. 3 The US racing industry does not allow on-track bookmaking as can be found in the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand. 4 Pull-tab tickets are similar to ‘scratch-out’ lottery tickets and are sometimes called ‘paper slot machines’. The player will purchase such a ticket for about $1, and pull paper tabs to reveal whether the ticket is a winner or a loser. 5 In 1994 Iowa law was changed to remove the $5 maximum wager and the $200 loss limit per excursion, and mandated sailing for the state’s riverboat casinos. As a result the Iowa riverboat casino industry immediately became more economically successful, and experienced considerable expansion over the subsequent two years. In the same legislation, slot machines were authorised at existing racetracks in Iowa, following local voter suppport. Those tracks which qualified for slot machines soon found that slot machines had become the dominant source of their revenues and profits.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Cabot, A. and Schuetz, R. (1991) ‘An economic view of the Nevada gaming licensing process’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, University of Nevada, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming: 123–54. Clotfelter, C. and Cook, P. (1989) Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Coopers and Lybrand (1991) ‘Gambling in the Single Market’, a report prepared for the Commission of the European Communities, Brussels. Dombrink, J. and Thompson, W.N. (1989) The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos, Reno: University of Nevada Press.

Ethical and policy considerations in the spread of commercial gambling

239

Eadington, W.R. (ed.) (1990) Indian Gaming and the Law, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada. Eadington, W.R. and Cornelius, J.A. (eds) (1991) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada. ——(eds) (1992) Gambling and Commercial Gaming: Essays in Business, Economics, Philosophy and Science, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada. Fiscal Analyst’s Report (1990) Lawful Gambling in Minnesota, St Paul, MN. Rose, I.N. (1988) ‘Compulsive gambling and the law: from sin to vice to disease’, Journal of Gambling Behavior 4(4):240–60. Shaffer, H., Stein, S., Gambino, B. and Cummings, T. (1989) Compulsive Gambling: Theory, Research and Practice, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Skolnick, J. (1978) House of Cards: Regulation of Casino Gambling in Nevada, Boston: Little Brown. Sternleib, G. and Hughes, J. (1983) The Atlantic City Gamble, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Syme, D. (1992) ‘He manako te koura i kore ai—the dilemma facing New Zealand’s parimutuel racing industry’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Commercial Gaming: Essays in Business, Economics, Philosophy and Science, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada: 315–32. Thalheimer, R. (1992) ‘The impact of intrastate intertrack wagering, casinos, and a state lottery on the demand for parimutuel horseracing: New Jersey, a case study’, in W.R. Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Commercial Gaming: Essays in Business, Economics, Philosophy and Science, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada: 285–94. Volberg, R. and Steadman, H. (1989) ‘Policy implications of prevalence estimates of pathological gambling’, in H.Shaffer et al., Compulsive Gambling: Theory, Research and Practice, Lexington, MA: Lexington Press.

14 FROM GLAMOUR TO GRIND The globalisation of casinos Jan McMillen

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the emerging global trends in casino development and in the process to attempt to understand the complex relationship between political, economic and cultural domains in this contemporary social trend. Two interrelated themes are developed. First, the period since the 1970s has been an age of extraordinary change in all realms of human activity, including gambling. The post-war mixed economy has undergone significant transformations with the strengthening of commercial and financial linkages across different regions of the globe (Emy 1993; Strange 1986; Stubbs and Underhill 1994). National authorities are losing control of domestic economies as they are subsumed by global markets. This process of globalisation has been a common denominator in the rapid expansion and transformation of commercial gambling in Europe, the Americas, Australasia, Africa and the former east European communist bloc. Technological innovation, the emergence of international financial markets, and growth in mass tourism and leisure industries have all contributed to the development of new, transnational forms of gambling and the commercialisation of existing gambling traditions. Business and political leaders in all parts of the globe are embracing gambling policies which would have been anathema to governments and the community alike a decade ago. Second, global transformations in the casino market have been intimately bound up with important changes in the political-economic and cultural domains at both domestic and international levels. In trying to come to terms with the globalisation of casinos, it is necessary to understand the intimate and reciprocal connection between the control of significant economic resources, the exercise of political power and notions of local cultural identity. The legalisation of casino gambling and its mode of economic and social organisation are the results of political interaction constituted through the institutional structures of the nation state. In turn, the changing global structure and interactions of the casino market give rise to new patterns of economic and political forces at the local level, resulting in profound socio-cultural transformation. The interdependence which links states and their societies through the market, in many respects dominated by transnational economic interests which can elude the instruments of domestic state policy, help to define the policy choices which are made and their socio-cultural consequences. This chapter highlights the role of the state as the site of contested politics resulting from the fusion of global and local influences in contemporary gambling. Clearly, both the theory and the practice of state authority are inextricably linked with the society within which it has evolved, and it is these connections which will be examined here.

From glamour to grind

241

Discussion will concentrate on the rapid and consistent expansion of commercial casinos throughout the world since the 1970s, although in many respects similar patterns have occurred with other forms of gambling such as lotto, lotteries and horse-racing. The chapter does not investigate the particular cultural character of casinos in any depth; it is concerned merely to understand the evolution of the modern global phenomenon of commercial casino gambling. Casinos have had a long history, first appearing in their modern organisational form in the nineteenth century to cater to the amusement of the aristocracy in European spa resorts, such as Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden and Monaco (Miers 1980; Wykes 1964; Kelly and Eadington 1986).1 Since then, legalised casinos have become an integral element of mass tourism and the political and commercial delivery of casino gambling has diverged into a number of vastly different systems. In the past two decades, legalised commercial casinos have spread rapidly throughout the world and currently operate in almost 100 different countries (La Fleur and Hevener 1992). Casinos have become progressively internationalised as the growth of global tourism, the investment mobility of private economic interests and the sensitivity of casino markets to one another have eroded the boundaries between separate national and regional markets. Global processes have heavily influenced casino developments and policies across a range of countries, beginning with the commercialisation and expansion of casinos during the post-war years in Europe, Britain and the United States.2 The pattern of development has been uneven, as always, but the broad picture is one of a dramatic and widespread investment of economic surplus into casino enterprises. But while the general trend to globalisation of casino development has promoted the emergence of transnational casino corporations and the rapid interconnections between states and economies, the nature of these changes varies under different national conditions. Not all states and casinos are equally integrated into the international economy. Despite the fact that casinos have become part of an international political economy, some nation states have retained a greater capacity to determine which pattern of development is appropriate for their citizens. While there has been a dramatic global expansion of commercial casinos since the 1970s, the specific shape of casino policies has varied between countries primarily because of national differences in the role of the state and the complex social factors that govern change. The following sections trace the sources and consequences of these differences and explore the historical relation between the emergence of commercial casinos and changing political, economic and socio-cultural contexts. There have been considerable variations between different countries in the role of the state and the direction and purpose of casino policy. For example, in Britain the central state plays an important role in coordinating casino regulation and restricting market practices; in America’s market-orientated and federal system, casino development is more specialised and stratified, and predicated on an aversion to state intervention and control of markets. These structural and cultural differences inevitably have an impact on the character and performance of the two systems. When a decision is taken to establish a casino, all governments must confront questions of who is to operate the casino, how it fits within society and how it is to be regulated. Throughout the world, there have been two basically different solutions to this last problem: control by government regulation or control by government ownership (Marcum and Rowen 1974:34; Rose 1979:267–99).3 The approach taken in each society

Gambling cultures

242

is a product of prevailing political-economic objectives, cultural preferences, social concerns and the changing nature of casinos themselves. The features of any casino model, and the selection of which one to follow, cannot be considered in isolation from these factors. Any policy preference is connected with a set of social attitudes and cultural values which at certain times may be reinforced by economic pressures. One approach or the other may be considered unsuitable for a particular society, or existing political-economic conditions may prevent its acceptance. Thus the role of government with respect to casinos varies from one society to another and between periods, with the types of casino and the objectives to be achieved.

THE EVOLUTION OF CONTEMPORARY CASINOS The purpose of this section is to itemise the historical origins and tendencies which have produced the characteristics of contemporary casino gambling: commercialisation, the emergence of an affluent middle class and consumerism, the rise of transnational corporations involved in leisure and tourism rather than production, technological innovation and the intensification of global cultural flows. These processes underlie the fact that gambling has been historically and materially structured, fully integrated into the power structure of society. The analysis proceeds in two steps: 1 It examines the emergence of modern casinos as an historical process. The chapter will introduce preliminary observations about the history and character of casino gambling, notably in Europe, Britain and the United States. This provides an initial understanding of the general issues and global preconditions of modern casinos and their more recent expansion to other nations. 2 It introduces a conceptualisation of legal casinos as a state-regulated commercial enterprise and as a mechanism of cultural integration. Structural and ideological characteristics of casinos have combined with social mechanisms which entrench the power of specific groups. In this way an analysis is developed which, although far from conclusive, raises some fundamental concerns about the nature of the international casino industry and its effects. European casinos and the aristocratic ‘leisure class’ Since the eighteenth century the aristocracy and royalty of Europe have openly indulged their enthusiasm for gaming in the recreational and health resorts of aristocratic Europe, even though European states officially were opposed to public gaming and it was illegal in most countries. Notwithstanding periodic attempts by the state to suppress the gambling activities of the general population, gaming survived and developed as a favoured recreation of the aristocracy to the stage that the social demand for legitimate outlets could no longer be ignored. Links between the royal families of Britain and the German states and the emergence of an affluent mercantile and industrial class encouraged the establishment of permanent gaming amenities for regular visitors to places such as Baden-Baden and Wiesbaden in Germany and Baden in Austria. The growing popularity of travel in the nineteenth century, the physical beauty of many of the spa locations and the assumed health-giving properties of the mineral waters attracted

From glamour to grind

243

wealthy visitors from all over Europe; casinos provided a diversion and entertainment during their vacation or recuperation. From Germany and Austria, legal casinos spread to other parts of western Europe. The Casino de Monte Carlo, in particular, became a model for stimulating regional development which fuelled the proliferation of resort casinos throughout Europe. When France annexed most of Monaco in 1861, the remaining small principality lacked a productive economic base. The casino provided the major source of revenue and the impetus for urban development. Astute and entrepreneurial management of the casino to attract the rich and famous produced immediate results which provided a boost to the growth of tourism facilities and infrastructure. The Riviera became a popular holiday area for wealthy Americans as well as the European aristocracy, and the Casino de Monte Carlo rapidly became the most famous and most profitable casino in Europe. The success of casinos such as those in Monte Carlo led to similar ventures in other European nations, primarily to prevent the loss of local revenues across national borders and to increase government revenues from tourists. After France legalised casino gambling in 1907, casinos were established in several resort areas such as Deauville, Cannes and Biarritz. Casinos also were established in Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal.4 In these traditional-style European casinos, the emphasis was on elegance, dignity and refinement. The buildings themselves are often magnificent, palatial monuments in the style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, surrounded by parkland and gardens. As well as numerous gambling rooms, the casinos feature a vast complex of spacious areas which are used for a variety of purposes, including theatre, restaurants, lounges and vestibules. Rich and elegant furnishings and objets d’art add to the regal and luxurious atmosphere. Casino gambling expanded and flourished most markedly in the period of affluence after the Second World War. Although European casinos have their historical roots in the elitist market of aristocratic resorts, modern casinos are directed at a much wider market and present a greater variety of operating conditions. In general, government motivations for the post-war growth of casinos in European countries have been based on attempts to provide a complementary facility for the expanding tourism trade while simultaneously boosting public revenues necessary for social amenities and services. Contemporary European casinos, which range in size and style from the large, prestigious German and Monte Carlo casinos to small, spartan, one-room operations, are intended primarily as an entertainment venue for the mass tourist market. A key feature of the post-war European approach is the close integration of casinos into other recreational and cultural activities, primarily in resort areas.5 However, as well as offering gaming and entertainment facilities to cater for middle-class tourists, the casinos have not abandoned their traditional elitist clientele. As casinos have become more popular with the public, the large casinos have provided a private room (salon privé) for the exclusive use of gamblers playing for high stakes (high-rollers) or for people of rank or reputation who do not wish to be seen by the general public. The extent to which casinos are commercially exploited as a catalyst for tourism or a major source of government revenue is constrained by the strength of social concerns in each nation. In some cases, governments have been equally motivated to counteract the spread of illegal gaming clubs (Kelly and Eadington 1986; Polders 1987–88). Moreover, there are considerable differences in approach and philosophies which underlie the

Gambling cultures

244

legislative and regulatory structures which have established post-war European casinos. In many European countries, casino policies have been strongly influenced by variants of democratic socialism which stress the importance of state intervention to ensure that goods and services are distributed on a basis distinct from the market principle. In contrast to the private-enterprise model of Britain and the United States, European casino policies have been grounded on various operating models intended to maximise the benefits for the local population, to a greater or lesser extent overriding the profit motives of casino management. Since the nineteenth century, a restrained and socially responsible approach to casino gambling has been sustained by policies intended to both contain the commercial scope and political power of the industry and avoid possible social problems and adverse impacts on the local community (entry fees, strict dress codes, assistance for ‘problem’ gamblers, town planning ordinances). Most European governments limit each region to a single casino intended mainly for tourists. Moreover, casinos often are seen as a proper and acceptable area for public enterprise. The privately owned casinos in Germany, for example, are regulated by regional authorities which set an operational framework sensitive to local conditions (Kelly and Eadington 1986:59–61). The premises are owned by the city or state in which they are located; renewal of the operators’ franchise is dependent upon their contributions to community objectives; public access is limited in various ways, such as entrance fees, dress requirements and restrictions on advertising; and casino revenues are subject to high marginal tax rates (80 per cent by state governments plus a city tax). In France, there are over 145 private-sector casinos of various sizes which are closely regulated in all aspects of management by a central authority (the Commission Supérieure des Jeux); taxes are levied by both central and local governments; and local residents are prohibited from gambling in the casinos, which are reserved for tourists. Until recently the Netherlands took the extreme position of requiring that all games of chance be conducted on a non-profit basis by a single public authority, the government’s Board for Casino Games.6 Austria provides another example of a European strategy of government involvement to maximise social benefits from casino profits. The distinctive institutional arrangements and policies of Austrian casinos are the product of historical and cultural conditions conducive to corporatism, a political and economic strategy for securing organic cooperation between public and private sectors and unions to achieve relatively advantageous policies for state and society (Marin 1985). Casinos Austria AG, which has a majority government shareholding, holds exclusive licences for all of the eleven casinos established in Austria. The corporatist structure of casino ownership effectively strengthens the collaboration of political and commercial representatives in the successful pursuit of both commercial and social objectives. Casino management is guided by a strong sense of social responsibility which balances commercial considerations. Yet the company is very entrepreneurial in purpose and management style, extending its monopoly over Austrian casinos to invest in other countries and cruise-ship casinos. In all European casinos, the social objective of community protection and the economic goal of encouraging revenues from tourism have been complemented by a third political principle: the prevention of crime and fraud. Since the nineteenth century, a number of scandals involving fraud, cheating, blackmail and political corruption in casinos have been aggravated by bad publicity concerning apparent links between

From glamour to grind

245

notorious criminals and the casino industry. To restore public confidence all governments have been obliged to impose more stringent political controls over casino operations. In Europe, government intervention and control over market expansion historically has been accepted as a general principle. Moreover, as European casinos (with the exception of Monte Carlo) are not a powerful force in the local economy, control procedures have been tightened with little risk of the casino management pressuring government for more liberal operating conditions. Consequently, most contemporary European casinos have been relatively trouble-free and policies have successfully mitigated the potential social costs often associated with casinos. In France, however, the control system has been less successful and political corruption, taxation scandals and criminal infiltration have tarnished the reputations of French casinos.7 In the 1980s, a number of influences brought considerable change to European casinos which reflect changing national interests and community objectives. More significantly, the collapse of socialist regimes in eastern Europe by the end of the decade and the urgency of economic reforms in countries such as Hungary, the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia have opened the way for international investment in tourism and the introduction of casinos to those countries. Organised casino gambling was prohibited in socialist countries as an intolerable expression of capitalist society which reproduced class inequalities, materialism and the exploitation of working-class culture for profit. This ideological objection to casinos has broken down with the demise of socialism in the eastern bloc and attempts to open these economies to capitalist market forces. Casinos have recently opened in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia. With the recent shift in policy, it is notable that the most successful applicant to operate casinos in eastern European countries has been Casinos Austria AG, which has a demonstrated capacity to work within a model informed by democratic socialist principles. Its management practices are more compatible with established communal political and social expectations in these countries than the more aggressively commercial American or Asian casino corporations. Elsewhere, however, the global expansion of the more profit-orientated American model of casino development has introduced to Europe the economic and political influence of large non-European casino corporations with transnational resources and ambitions. Political and economic pressures for industry expansion have begun to erode the stability of the traditional European model. In order to obtain a share of an increasingly competitive international market, many older casinos have enlarged and modernised their facilities, relaxed entry requirements and introduced non-traditional mechanised games. As these casinos become larger and new types of casinos are introduced they are likely to exert new and greater influences on the local economy, political relations and social structure of the regions. This new era is being further complicated by the institutional and regulatory uncertainty associated with the development of the federated European Union (Miers 1991). The final shape of this new European geography has yet to emerge, but it is likely to accelerate the flow of cultural and economic influences across local and national boundaries. It may be that casino policy systems based on the hitherto unchallenged authority of nation states will be profoundly modified.

Gambling cultures

246

The British tradition: player protection A variation of the European model is the contemporary British ‘club’ casino. The history of British gaming has been characterised by class-based preferences for different games and the existence of different gambling outlets to cater for these activities. From the sixteenth century, gaming as such was not illegal, although specific games popular with the working class and the conduct of common gaming houses were prohibited (Miers 1980). Even so, illegal public gaming houses thrived with only spasmodic attempts to control them. However, the primary concern of the Crown was to deter gambling by the propertied classes, who often conducted gaming sessions on their estates as well as frequenting the common gaming houses.8 The British nobility and aristocracy have been enthusiastic gamblers since the eleventh century, but the extent of high-stake gaming, indebtedness and cheating among the wealthy had become so widespread by the seventeenth century that both Charles II and Queen Anne legislated to prevent the loss of land and wealth through gambling debts. Gaming by the nobility and rich continued to flourish, however, and by the eighteenth century the first casino was established at Bath and was well patronised by British and European gentry. Coffee houses and private clubs in London also became popular venues for wealthy gamblers during the Georgian period, with some establishments devoted solely to gaming. Often protected by royal patronage, these illegal clubs operated well into the nineteenth century without any serious attempt to enforce the legislation. Parliamentary representatives of the propertied classes, however, took a serious view of the socially dangerous effects of illegal gambling by the working class. Campaigns against the gambling habits of the poor were maintained, but with only limited success until the Victorian era. Concern by the Victorian middle class to reform public morality and a perceived need to distinguish gambling transactions from the speculative investment activities of the respectable new capitalist class prompted legislative changes intended to protect the community from the social and personal effects of their own predilection for gambling. The new policy involved more direct intervention by the state, but unlike the European perspective this was construed narrowly in the liberal view of a protective mechanism which might safeguard gamblers against arbitrary commercial exploitation by others, such as the use of penalties against running a gaming house for profit. In the liberal tradition, the fundamental freedom to gamble was still seen as the non-political preserve of the individual. The practical effects of this policy meant that there was little attempt to close illegal public gaming houses, which continued to cater for the urban working class. The British nobility and wealthy gamblers simply transferred their gaming activities to European casinos. Despite criticisms by moralists that the law was being flouted, benign enforcement ensured that the policy was virtually unchanged for over a century. Restrictions on the commercial exploitation of gambling activities and the paternalistic concept of ‘player protection’ from the ‘seductions of gambling’ remain as central principles of contemporary British gaming policy (Miers 1984:184). These principles were re-affirmed between 1949 and 1951 by a Royal Commission which signalled a more tolerant attitude to gambling by the British government. This policy shift seems to have been influenced more by attempts to address persistent non-compliance with the law than

From glamour to grind

247

by a conscious liberalisation of attitudes or by fiscal pressures and the need for revenue. By the 1960s, the erosion of public confidence in law-enforcement officials had become a serious problem for the British government. Further changes to the Betting and Gaming Act in 1960 permitted premises to be used for gaming, effectively decriminalising the illegal gaming clubs and clearing the way for the establishment of hundreds of new clubs throughout Britain (Royal Commission on Gambling [Rothschild Report] 1978).9 Inadequate and ambiguous regulations allowed commercial gaming to expand uncontrolled until 1968. Without adequate legislative controls over their activities, many of the new clubs commercially exploited the market and were used as fronts for criminal activities. The Gaming Act of 1968 was introduced to reduce drastically the numbers of commercial gaming clubs and to establish a strict regulatory system to enforce the stated policy principles. The numbers of casinos were limited (since maintained at around 120) and a Gaming Board for Great Britain appointed with extensive powers to license club premises and ensure honest conduct of gaming (Miers 1984, 1987:82–4; Kelly and Eadington 1986:33–44). The elimination of criminal influence became an explicit policy objective for the first time, with licensing (certificates of consent to operate) as the central strategy to eliminate undesirable elements from the industry. The combination of new crime control principles and the legacy of the player protection principle resulted in a more restrictive regulatory regime over casinos than that which existed in either Europe or the United States at the time. Since the 1960s, British governments, whether Conservative or Labour, have adopted the position that because casino gaming cannot be eradicated, it must be controlled to prevent criminal involvement or mismanagement. Furthermore, the social costs of ‘excessive’ gambling mean that it should not be stimulated for commercial gain or revenue. Even so, there was no serious challenge to private ownership. Although the Labour government explored the possibility that casinos could be managed by local government authorities, it was rejected on moral grounds and the risk to governments if the casinos were unprofitable. Rather, national interests are secured by restricting casino ownership to British citizens. British casinos are organised in the style of private ‘clubs’, which was seen as a culturally and politically acceptable way of confining casino gambling to a small, affluent section of the population. British casinos, usually small venues devoted almost exclusively to table games, are required by law to confine access to club members. To avoid impulsive gambling, application for membership must be made at least 48 hours in advance; credit betting and advertising are prohibited; ‘problem’ gamblers can be excluded from the casino; and alcohol cannot be served at the gaming tables. Premises vary from the elegant and intimate to the basic and austere, depending on location and the class of patrons. In this way British governments have hoped to prevent the spread of social problems while satisfying the minimum gambling demands of citizens. Although it was not the government’s intention to provide a service for tourists, the more entrepreneurial clubs cooperate with tourism operators to arrange temporary membership for visitors to Britain. Some of the more luxurious London club-casinos also compete vigorously with one another to attract wealthy players from the Middle East who form a core clientele of regular high-stake gamblers.10 During the 1970s global recession, competition among the club-casinos for these valued ‘high-rollers’ led to a series of scandals which exposed serious flaws in the government’s control strategy (Miers 1983, 1984).11

Gambling cultures

248

The British regulatory system places considerable trust in the ultimate power of legal sanctions to achieve honest casino management. However, before the Gaming Board could proceed against the offending casino licensees they were subject to a corporate takeover at deflated prices, thus allowing gaming to continue. This ‘commercial subversion of the legal sanction’ (Miers 1989:29) prompted legislative reform but it remains an open question whether the new policies are an adequate safeguard against management’s efforts to bypass regulations in global economic conditions similar to those which caused the 1970s decline in casino revenues. The United States: from ‘organised crime’ to global dominance The expansion of legalised casinos in the United States has had a markedly different history from that of Britain or Europe. Casino policy in the United States has been determined less by the state’s attempt to regulate the market or by differential treatment of the gambling preferences of the wealthy and the working class than by conflicts between religious, legal and economic groups to control gambling policy. Policy debates have been informed by liberal-democratic assumptions about the capacity for individuals of all classes to represent their competing interests to the state and for the state to act as an impartial guardian of community values. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, gambling policies have been shaped by the polarised views of two antagonistic forces: intense anti-gambling campaigns by moralists demanding its total prohibition, and entrepreneurs who sought to turn the gambling activities of the population to their commercial advantage. The history of casino gambling in the United States is fraught with evidence of links with illegal enterprises and criminals. Immigrants from Europe brought their gaming practices with them, and by the eighteenth century, illegal gaming was prevalent in eastern cities such as New Orleans and New York (Reuter 1983, 1984). Makeshift illegal gaming clubs were well established in New Orleans by the time the first illegal Europeanstyle casino opened its doors in 1872. On the east coast, the illegal casinos in New York and New Orleans experienced a history of legislative fluctuations, with official attempts at prohibition followed by relaxation or non-enforcement of the law. The benign and inconsistent approach of policy-makers, ‘symbolic enforcement’ of the law and widespread corruption of police by illegal gambling operators ensured that illegal gaming casinos. flourished despite strong anti-gambling legislation. Rather than eradicating gaming, the existence of heavy legal sanctions discouraged small operators and cleared the way for criminal syndicates with substantial illicit funds to develop more luxurious facilities and improve services for clients. In defiance of prohibition, the larger illegal operators could offer credit, prostitution and free liquor. By the 1930s, the east coast casinos were attracting gamblers from among the wealthy middle class, including professionals and politicians. A similar history of entrepreneurial initiative and regulatory failure evolved in western states. The popularity of gambling spread westward with the migration to California which followed the discovery of gold in 1848. Gaming became the principal recreational activity for males in mining communities, notably in the desert state of Nevada, where card and dice games flourished in the back rooms of saloons and gambling halls (Eadington and Hattori 1976; Elliott and Rowley 1987; Hicks 1981). Nevada has been at

From glamour to grind

249

the forefront of casino developments in the United States ever since.12 However, the rowdy and disruptive behaviour of gamblers soon attracted criticism from churches and community leaders hoping to establish permanent towns. Without proper legal controls, cheating reached epidemic proportions and brawls and violent disputes between drunken gamblers over winnings created major problems for local law enforcement officials. The first official attempt to restrict gambling in Nevada coincided with the formation of the Nevada Territory in 1861. In line with eastern states, legislation initially prohibited conduct and participation in gaming, but the tough penalties imposed on prohibited games drove most gaming underground and attracted criminals to their operation. Antigaming legislation had little effect; illegal games continued to grow in size and number and from 1913 the anti-gambling policy was gradually reversed, despite vocal and wellorganised opposition from churches and women’s groups. In 1931 the Nevada legislature took the final step towards legalisation and passed a new ‘wide open gambling bill’ which permitted all forms of commercial gaming (Commission of the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling [Morin Commission] 1976:184). The small ‘casinos’, which at that time were little more than gaming rooms, were licensed by the state government after 1945 and taxes were imposed on gross earnings. The Nevada casino industry grew steadily in the post-war years (Eadington 1982a, 1982b; Skolnick 1978). However, even with strengthened licensing and enforcement powers, efforts at regulation were ineffective and public officials were unable to remove corrupt and undesirable influences. One contributing economic factor was the traditional source of investment in the Las Vegas casinos. Wary of the industry’s reputation for crime and not wishing to offend middle-class moralists, respectable investors and lenders had shunned casinos, seeing them as a ‘pariah’ industry (Skolnick 1978:141). Nevada casino operators consequently turned to criminal sources to finance the construction and refurbishment of the large casino-hotels which began to appear in the post-war years. During the 1950s and 1960s the close association between casinos and crime syndicates and known criminals, and the involvement of some casinos in profit-skimming and corruption of public officials, prompted a federal investigation and several attempts by federal authorities to intervene (Special Senate Committee to Investigate Organised Crime in Interstate Commerce [Kefauver Committee] 1951). To avoid further federal intervention, in the 1960s Nevada officials took action to improve the reputation of the industry and coincidentally its economic viability. Legislative reforms allowed publicly traded corporations to own and operate casinos, paving the way for investment by respected entrepreneurs such as Howard Hughes and legitimate hotel corporations such as Hilton, Ramada, Hyatt, MGM and Holiday Corporation. The casino industry is crucial to the Nevada economy, a fact reflected in the laissezfaire approach of casino legislation. The shift by the state from an ineffective crime control approach to a policy of facilitating commercial expansion has transformed the casino industry and the state economy. Although the residential population is small, hundreds of casinos of all sizes are located throughout Nevada, particularly in Las Vegas, Reno and Laughlin, attracting millions of tourists throughout the year (Elliott and Rowley 1987:325–48; Skolnick 1978:363). Casinos are the state’s main generator of economic development, employment and government revenue (Ebel 1990). This revenue dependency has had three main effects for government: it is economically indebted to the casino industry; it must encourage the casino corporations to expand and create new

Gambling cultures

250

markets; and it has to trust that its licensing procedures are adequate as the main mechanism of control. The socio-cultural effects have been profound. The ‘unapologetic pursuit of wealth and the quest for lady luck at the gambling tables’ have provided Nevada with its main source of cultural cohesion, establishing ‘continuity between its original mining frontier and the gambling-based society of the late twentieth century’ (Elliott and Rowley 1987:373). Its defenders stress the economic bonanza which has financed the transformation of Nevada from a state deprived of arts, literature and the values of family life to a society with one of the highest standards of living in the United States (1987:372–400). Critics question the general health and quality of life in a permissive community founded on the ‘excesses of gambling, drinking, divorce and even prostitution’ which other states have shunned (1987:373). By the 1970s, however, other state governments, encouraged by the tourism lobby, also began to view the casino industry in a more favourable light (Eadington 1982a; Morin Commission 1976). By this time many Americans had experienced casino gambling for themselves, either in Nevada or in illegal casinos in eastern cities. An increasing number of Americans could afford to travel to casinos in Europe, Puerto Rico or the Bahamas; Havana was a popular and accessible playground of the affluent middle class from the eastern states until closure of the casinos following the coup led by Fidel Castro. Although initial casino proposals were successfully opposed by the anti-gambling lobby, public attitudes towards gambling in the United States began to change as various states sought to resolve their fiscal problems by liberalising existing gambling policies, introducing new forms of gambling such as state lotteries (Abt et al. 1985; Clotfelter and Cook 1989). Arguments about the immorality of gambling and its socially destructive effects still carried considerable political weight, but the Nevada experience had shifted concerns to the involvement of ‘organised crime’ in casinos and doubts about the capacity of governments to remove criminal activities from the industry. Mounting pressures to legalise gambling in order to stimulate economic growth and growing scepticism about the honesty and ethics of private operators dominated a strong campaign by casino and tourism interests for commercial casinos in New Jersey. The main motivations were to revitalise the decaying Atlantic City resort, to increase employment and to boost government revenues (Abt et al. 1985:145–7; Hawkins 1982; Lampen 1982; Lehne 1986:26–56; Sternlieb and Hughes 1983). Against the recommendation of a national inquiry (Morin Commission 1976) many proponents of legalised casinos argued that legalisation was the only way US citizens would be discouraged from gambling valuable dollars in other jurisdictions. Others suggested that legalisation would prevent organised crime from profiteering from gambling and the state would be helped financially.13 These economic arguments were supported by some who favoured decriminalisation of gaming laws on the grounds that they are ‘unenforceable’. Opponents of the New Jersey proposal, on the other hand, pointed to the fact that the history of Nevada casinos was tainted by crime and corruption, problems which had not been completely resolved. Negative public perceptions of casinos were explicitly tied to the poor image of the Nevada model. Changes to the corporate structures of the Nevada casinos during the 1970s and a more professional approach to management proved to be the major factors which eventually led to public approval via referendum in 1976 for the legalisation of

From glamour to grind

251

commercial casinos in New Jersey. By the 1980s, fourteen commercial casino facilities were concentrated along the Boardwalk in Atlantic City in a ‘strip’ development reminiscent of that in Las Vegas. The United States has rejected government-run casinos from a deeply embedded philosophical opposition to government involvement in the economy. It is widely believed that any profitable industry, other than those perceived as ‘vices’ or those controlled by organised crime, should be open to market competition rather than protected or regulated by government. With the decriminalisation of casino gambling and its control by respectable casino corporations, the market was accepted as the most appropriate mechanism for casino management. Casino operators in Nevada since the 1930s had firmly established a structural model based on commercial enterprise, and it was unlikely that any government could have seriously questioned the concept of private ownership. Nevada’s highly competitive, open casino market is evidence that the state lacked the inclination or the capacity to prevail over private control of the market. The New Jersey regulatory approach, however, is unusually interventionist for an American state government, a stance which has not been accepted without a struggle (Lehne 1986:57–118; Ransom 1991; Seton Hall Legislative Journal 1982). Critics from academia and the industry have claimed that the New Jersey casinos are over-regulated, that officials are over-zealous, and that the bureaucratic inflexibility of the regulatory process has undermined profitability (Abt et al. 1985:217–20; Lowenhar et al. 1991; Lehne 1986:119–222; Satré 1982). These problems are seen as the inevitable outcome of unwarranted government involvement. Nor has the government been able to prevent bankruptcies and market failures resulting from over-capitalisation and reliance on debtfinancing for expansion in the 1980s. Under considerable pressure from commercial interests to protect profit margins (and thus state revenue), the New Jersey authorities have gradually adjusted the legal and administrative framework to facilitate commercial viability and further expansion of the industry.14 Casinos in Nevada and New Jersey operate primarily as amenities for destination tourism. Casino developments in both states have been driven fundamentally by commercial competition and are owned and operated by large corporations with other heavy tourism investments. Management strategies are directed towards attracting a mass market, using sophisticated marketing techniques to stimulate gambling (Macomber 1984). In contrast to efforts by British and European governments to limit the social problems associated with casinos, American casinos operate twenty-four hours a day, there are no entry requirements and the traditional European table games have been complemented by versions of American games (craps, stud poker) and thousands of ‘slots’.15 The primary focus is on the ‘grind’ market, as in Nevadan casinos, and the proportion of slots to table games in most casinos has increased progressively to attract the occasional gambler. The bulk of patrons are small and irregular gamblers who go to the casino for entertainment and sightseeing. Casinos also compete vigorously for the lucrative, but more unstable, market for international tourists and high-rollers, particularly from the newly affluent industrialised economies of Asia. Modern American-style casinos above all are distinct entertainment venues where a variety of table and machine games can be played ‘in a timeless hermetic environment of elaborate unreality’ (Abt et al. 1985:79). The large American casino is a far cry from the hushed and sedate small casinos of nineteenth-century European spas. Commercial

Gambling cultures

252

operators have adapted and exaggerated the games and ambience of traditional aristocratic casinos to attract a mass market and maximise profits. Modern casinos are self-contained social settings clearly separated from ordinary life activities: they usually have neither clocks nor windows; alcohol and money flow freely; normal constraints over conduct and spending no longer apply (Goffman 1967; Hawkins 1982; Rosecrance 1988:8–4; Skolnick 1978). A matrix of constant activity and bright flashing lights, gamblers crowding around hundreds of gaming tables, the continual clatter of coins from seemingly endless rows of electronic gaming machines have created a frenetic social world which combines the features of a fantasy playland and a money factory. Gambling is not the only facility offered to attract patrons. Typical casino-hotels provide luxurious but relatively inexpensive accommodation, high-quality restaurants and entertainment, a range of convention facilities and indoor and outdoor resort amenities. In the intensifying competition for customers, the most recent and largest casinos (Caesar’s Palace, the Mirage, the Taj Mahal, Excalibur, the MGM-Grand, the Luxor) have introduced a new fantastical dimension to the casino industry, creating lavish, selfcontained resorts constructed around exotic themes. Each distinctive theme creates an extravagant fiction, building an illusory image of a luxurious and exciting world where visitors can escape from the mundane reality of twentieth-century life. While the corporate emphasis on mass markets has promoted commercial advances, the regional concentration of casinos in only two American states, Nevada and New Jersey, and the high cost of travel have restricted access to casino gambling for most American citizens. The commercial success of Nevada and the regulatory innovations in New Jersey failed to overcome public scepticism in other American states about casinos. Policy-makers in Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Colorado, Michigan and Illinois tried to persuade the general population that a European type of casino development would be more acceptable to local needs and expectations than the current American approach (Dombrink and Thompson 1990, 1991). Each of these proposals was defeated after opposition by several organised anti-casino groups, mobilised around arguments of public morality, adverse community impacts and competing development objectives.16 Debates continue to be influenced by allegations of links between Nevada and New Jersey casinos and criminals and political corruption (Adams 1983; Eadington 1986a; Lehne 1986; Rose 1979:258). With proposals to introduce urban casinos, the concern for adverse community impacts assumed greater significance. The failure of the New Jersey casinos to achieve the promised urban renewal in Atlantic City has raised doubts about the social and economic merits of casino developments (Eadington and Cornelius 1991:8; Hawkins 1982; Rubenstein 1984; Sternlieb and Hughes 1983). While Americans may be willing to travel considerable distances to gamble in casinos, it seems that many view the prospect of casinos in their own community with suspicion or determined defiance. Against this cautious response, two casino innovations have been introduced: riverboat casinos have been legalised in five states along the Mississippi and on the Gulf Coast, and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 has allowed Indian tribes to introduce forms of casino-style gambling on their reserves in a number of states (Eadington 1990; Kelly 1994).17 These developments have provided the impetus to legalise casinos further throughout the United States and introduced cultural dimensions which may represent a resurgence of inherited meanings and vernaculars. But in the face of continuing political and cultural obstacles to market expansion in their own country, many American casino

From glamour to grind

253

corporations have sought to establish new markets in other nations which were being integrated into a global economic order. The spread of American influence has come to represent the defining feature of casino development in the late twentieth century, as a major force in shaping economies and gambling cultures in many areas of the world. Globalisation of casinos: transnational linkages The recent expansion of casino gambling throughout the world has brought a qualitative change to national gambling cultures and policies. The commercial orientation, technology and style of the modern American approach to casinos has strongly influenced the objectives and character of global casino developments over the past twenty years, in large part due to the investment strength of American casino corporations and the market structure of international tourism. However, the growing acceptance of the tourism potential of casinos is not unambiguous or relentless. Some governments have resisted the drift to commercial casinos; and in many nations, American-style commercial imperatives have been modified to a greater or lesser extent by local conditions and social expectations derived from British and European models. Long before Nevada and New Jersey, several small island nations in North America— notably the Bahamas and Puerto Rico—had encouraged large-scale investment in resort casinos as the central strategy to revitalise tourism (Clark 1990; Selesner 1984). Casino gambling in the Bahamas was legalised in 1939 and has been actively promoted as an important component in economic development and as a source of government revenues. In this regard, the pattern of casino development has been similar to that in Nevada. However, strong cultural and legal links with Britain have meant that the Bahamas have emulated some aspects of the socially restrictive British approach to casino policies. Theoretically, casinos in the Bahamas are provided only for tourists and visitors, although this is difficult to enforce. Like Britain and Nevada, flaws in crime-control policies have led to the Bahaman casinos being accused of having criminal connections and to problems of casino mismanagement, bribery, corruption and widespread cheating.18 In Puerto Rico, casino-hotels form ‘the base of the island’s tourist industry’ (Morin Commission 1976:100). However, the comprehensive political controls over Puerto Rican casinos contrast sharply with the market forces which prevail in Nevada and the Bahamas. Since their introduction in 1948, Puerto Rican casinos have been closely regulated and supervised, with direct government controls over investment in order to ensure that they will contribute to commercial and tourism development. Restrictions have been placed on the number of casinos, and specifications for large, quality facilities have limited successful applicants to reputable corporations in the field.19 Priority is given to regulating the extent and type of development which does occur and to alleviating impacts on the local community. Local advertising and admittance of local residents are prohibited so as to ensure that revenues come from tourists to the island. In the post-war period, numerous American-style resort casinos also have appeared in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa (Kent-Lemon 1988; Levy 1992). In most cases, governments have introduced casinos explicitly to encourage destination tourism and to increase revenues. With the exception of Asia, which has seen the emergence of powerful indigenous gambling corporations, most of the large casinos which have been established in these countries are managed by experienced American

Gambling cultures

254

operators such as Hilton, Ramada, Hyatt and Holiday Corporation. Some successful Asian casino operators have themselves become transnational investors, using American casino management techniques and investment strategies.20 However, conditions in each country have required adaptation of the basic features of the archetypical American destination resort casino in order to suit local needs. Different national cultural and religious values are reflected in the wide variations in architecture, dress codes, conditions of entry, games played and employment practices. Whereas gambling tourists are viewed as a valuable source of foreign exchange, it is common for the local population to be restricted or prohibited from gambling, often on religious grounds.21 In Malaysia, for example, Genting Berhad’s casino in the highlands resort above Kuala Lumpur was designed to be invisible to resort patrons who might be offended by gambling. Islamic beliefs, which reject gambling as evil, have been one factor which has limited the growth of casinos in parts of Africa and Asia. However, the proximity of casinos in neighbouring countries attracts many gamblers from these nations; for example, Indonesians denied gaming opportunities in their own country have ready access to the Christmas Island casino, itself owned by an Indonesian plantation operator. However, American-style destination resort casinos have been rejected as inappropriate in some countries. Canada, for example, has been influenced more by the restrictive British and European approaches, despite its proximity to the commercial casino developments of the United States.22 Canada has not had a history of aristocratic support for gaming as in Britain and Europe or of entrenched illegal casinos as in the United States.23 Casino gaming in Canada, as in Britain, is treated as a social phenomenon which should not be stimulated for private profit (BC Gaming Commission 1988; Osborne and Campbell 1988; Campbell and Lowman 1989). Where casino gaming is allowed, it is in a restricted form so as to minimise its social effects, and the revenues generated are used for social purposes. Two western provinces (Alberta and British Columbia) award temporary casino licences to charities which engage operators to manage the games and raise funds (Campbell 1987; Campbell and Ponting 1984). In the eastern provinces of Manitoba and Quebec, the provincial governments have viewed the task of keeping organised crime out of the casinos as more important than allowing welfare agencies to control their own revenue raising and have taken over casino ownership and operations themselves. In Ontario and Nova Scotia, the governmentowned casinos are operated by the private sector. This focus on a crime-control model reflects the traditional emphasis of Canadian governments on social issues and concern that the entrenched corruption and crime in some states of the eastern United States has the potential to infiltrate Canadian casinos.24 The historical nexus between welfare and gaming revenues and concern for the potential for crime and corruption thus far have prevailed over economic imperatives in Canada (Beare 1990). Even so, the commercial success of the United States’ casinos has not been lost on Canadian provincial governments confronting the difficult task of finding ways of attracting investment to their local economies and solutions to their fiscal problems. The appeal of commercial casinos and destination tourism, and the leakage of Canadian gambling revenues as Canadians flock to the more glamorous casinos in Nevada and Atlantic City, ultimately may convince Canadian legislators to take a more pragmatic view of casino policies (Campbell and Lowman 1989). It was similar pressures

From glamour to grind

255

which convinced some Australian state governments in the 1970s to turn to commercial casinos as a way of solving their immediate political and economic problems. Australian casino developments have been distinctive in several respects: casinos have been introduced to all Australian states in three waves of expansion associated with the regional impacts of global economic recessions; Australia’s fourteen casinos are all situated in major urban centres with a stable population base; and each casino has a regional monopoly (McMillen 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 1993). Even so, Australian casinos have derived many of their characteristics from the models of development which have evolved in Britain, Europe and the United States.25 The first Australian casinos opened in the 1970s adapted the discreet ambience and restrained operating style of British clubstyle casinos, and were small facilities in remote locations. Casinos legalised since 1980, however, are fashioned on the glitter, luxury and showmanship of the American prototype, in many cases albeit in a less ostentatious way. Their structural form differs quite markedly from the smaller casinos which operate in Britain and Europe. As interstate rivalry for the tourist market accelerated in the 1980s, the earlier Australian casinos also have been compelled to adopt a more aggressive commercial approach so as to maintain market share. More importantly, Australian casinos do not restrict access of the local population in the way that British and European casinos do; nor are casinos isolated in destination resorts as in the United States. On the contrary, in line with popular cultural expectations, Australian casinos are more ‘egalitarian’ and accessible to the whole population. While the stimulation of tourism has always been a stated policy objective, in practice most Australian casinos have derived the bulk of their revenues from local gamblers. Casino operators and governments aim to stimulate mass consumption and mass spending within acceptable cultural and political limits. With further intensification of interstate competition during the global recession of the early 1990s and the rapid growth of an affluent Asian middle class, however, the potential of the growing and lucrative Asian tourist and ‘junket’ markets have assumed a new importance (McMillen 1993). Yet despite the cultural predilection of Asian societies for gambling, Asia itself has been the area of the world most resistant to casino development, often for ideological and commercial reasons. As communist governments have opened their national economies to trade and integration with the global capitalist economy, some newly developing Asian countries (Cambodia, South Korea, Laos, Vietnam) have authorised casinos in order to stimulate regional economic growth, but with limitations on participation of the local population. The large prosperous nations have maintained an even more cautious policy on casinos, although most have legalised other forms of gambling. Japan seems to be content to capitalise on casino developments elsewhere. Japanese corporations have invested in casinos in several nations, and manufacturers of gaming machines and equipment have become major suppliers to casinos around the world. Gambling in Hong Kong is dominated by a thriving horse-racing industry; the political uncertainty as the former British colony approaches its takeover by China in 1997 is an additional disincentive to casino development. The government of the People’s Republic of China overcame its ideological reluctance to legalise any form of gaming in 1987 to permit a number of small provincial lotteries to raise funds for designated welfare services, and in 1994 an American-style casino-resort was approved for Hainan Island as part of China’s economic diversification into global tourism. However, China’s commitment to state

Gambling cultures

256

socialism and its strong rate of economic growth during the 1992–93 global recession make casino development on the mainland less likely in the immediate future.26

CONCLUSION The result of the processes described above is the rise of global casino markets. From their marginal origins as either the exclusive recreation of aristocratic and wealthy elites (in Europe) or the commercial ‘front’ for organised crime (in the United States), casinos since the 1960s have become a legitimate and integrated part of the world economy. The global spread of casino gambling represents borderless networks of corporate alliances quite different from those of the past and the flow of gamblers across local and national boundaries. In some respects this has meant the centralisation of power and control in the core (often American) corporations exercising structural power through their command over finance, technology and marketing. In other ways globalisation has produced a chain of localised casino developments and markets scattered around the world yet increasingly connected with one another. Within this general pattern of globalisation, regional and national forces acting primarily through the state have created a variety of different types of casinos and achieved different policy outcomes. At least three different conceptions of casinos represent recognisable policy options: the British ‘non-stimulatory’ approach guided by a realist tolerance of the inevitability of gaming in the community but a reluctance to encourage further growth, using state power to restrict both market expansion and public access to casinos; variants of a European approach, which is more accepting of the integration of casinos and economic development, but strengthening the directive capacities of the state to deliver benefits for the local community; and the US model, which is guided on the one hand by a residual moralism, confining development to remote regions devoted to ‘fantasy’ tourism, and on the other by principles of economic liberalism which facilitate profit maximisation and market expansion. Related to the globalisation of casinos is the rise of cultural flows across local and national frontiers, both in the migration of casino management practices and in the intensification of transnational gambling markets. This is not a simple process of American cultural hegemony but the fusion of a range of core meanings (consumerism, play, competitive individualism) with local identities and beliefs (nationalism, folklore, welfarism). The emerging global casino culture is a heterogeneous phenomenon, a juxtaposition of sameness and difference, conformity and novelty, in divergent social settings. It remains to be seen if the rise of global casino projects dominated by the west, particularly in Asia, ultimately represents an homogenising threat to distinctive local cultural identities. At one level, the state remains the crucial pivot for political conflict over issues of culture and cultural identity in casino development. The growing sensitivity to the relationship between global markets and local outcomes, and the uneasy balance between unique local cultural identities and the reshaping of that uniqueness by transnational influences, ranging from commercialisation of gambling to the universalisation of machine gaming, stresses the contested and undecided nature of the encounter between global and local forces. At another level, the transnationalisation of casino gambling has

From glamour to grind

257

reduced the cultural and economic arena controlled by the nation state and intensified the pressures its domestic constituencies have to bear. The cooperative political constituencies and institutions needed to manage the problems of contemporary global casino developments are relatively underdeveloped. In their absence, the interests of transnational casino corporations with access to international markets have found expression in the policies of liberalisation of nations around the world. The articulation of these interests within the state provides some insight into the real impact of American capitalist hegemony. By the same token, the encounter between global cultural flows and local inherited identities constitutes an opportunity to recognise the power of local culture in resisting and thereby reshaping globalisation. In the case of Asia, where the state historically has had a more directive economic and social role, defence of distinctive local cultures could supplant moral and commercial concerns as the major site for contested casino politics.

NOTES 1 The word ‘casino’ refers to premises primarily devoted to the playing of games of chance. The concept originated in Europe where the wealthy established small garden houses specifically for entertainment, including music, conversation and playing table games. As the domain of the aristocracy and wealthy, casinos were clearly distinguished on class lines from the ‘gaming houses’ of the poor. 2 For convenience, casinos have been grouped by geopolitical location; but it is important to note that in practice there are many commercial linkages and overlapping features between the different groupings as well as variations within each group. 3 Rose (1979) suggests that there are four models of control: the ‘free enterprise’, ‘tourist revitalisation’, ‘social control’ and ‘complete or partial state ownership’ models. These categories seem to conflate the basic methods of control with more general state objectives for casino development. 4 Not all of these were legal. The Belgian casinos, for example, operated outside the law but none the less with the tacit approval of the governments which collected taxes from each casino (BC Gaming Commission 1988:9). 5 See Spanier (1980) for a description of the various games played in European casinos. 6 In Chapter 11 of this volume, Sytze Kingma explains the distinctive combination of religious, social and political factors which have shaped gambling policies in the Netherlands. 7 Persistent regulatory failure in France is the result of a number of factors: inadequacy of enforcement powers, continuing criminal involvement in casino ownership, ownership wars between different casinos and the use of illegal gaming machines as a source of revenue by criminal groups (Kelly and Eadington 1986:62–3). 8 Although common gaming houses were often dilapidated and bawdy establishments, easy credit and prostitution were additional attractions available to the nobility. 9 Police have played a critical role in the liberalisation of British betting and gaming policies, both by corrupt police ignoring the laws and by police pressure for changes to unenforceable laws (see Dixon 1982, 1984). In the case of gaming, widespread police corruption had been an important factor in the continued existence of illegal gaming clubs (Rothschild Report 1978). 10 In 1989 there were only twenty-one casinos in London, but they generated 70 per cent of Britain’s casino revenues (Miers 1989:28). 11 High-rollers are regular players who gamble large amounts of money; casinos compete strongly for these players and offer them VIP services.

Gambling cultures

258

12 The frontier gambler became a central figure in American folklore and popular culture, as James F.Smith explains (see Chapter 5). 13 One enterprising argument was that rumours of criminal involvement may actually attract patrons seeking excitement (Marcum and Rowen 1974:35). 14 For example, in 1979 temporary licences were granted to two casino corporations although neither had complied with statutory requirements. 15 In the United States, ‘slots’ is the term given to all gaming machines, including poker machines and other video gaming machines. 16 A proposal for a monopoly urban casino in New Orleans was approved in 1993 (Esoten et al. 1994). 17 This federal legislation, which overrides state authority over gambling managed by Indians, was unsuccessfully challenged in the Supreme Court. 18 Some of these revelations came to light during investigations of casino operators by New Jersey authorities. Despite such evidence, these casinos have been granted operating licences for Atlantic City (Rose 1979:286–7). 19 It has not been unusual for a casino applicant to be refused a licence to operate in Puerto Rico because there are doubts about the company’s probity or connections. Puerto Rican casinos have been relatively free of accusations of corruption or criminal involvement. 20 For example, Genting Berhad of Malaysia has extended its casino operations to the Bahamas and Australia; and Stanley Ho, operator of nine casinos in Macau, has been granted a casino licence in the north Vietnamese port of Haiphong. 21 Such discriminations can backfire, as occurred in Turkey. Local gamblers were restricted to machine gaming in the country’s twenty-five casinos, while only two casinos offered table games which were reserved for tourists. Following a dispute over a large machine prize claimed by a local citizen, the government forbade residents from playing the machines, thus effectively denying itself the major source of casino revenue and forcing the closure of the casinos (Kent-Lemon 1988). 22 As in the United States, sub-national governments have formal powers over gaming policy. Amendments to the Criminal Code in 1970 and 1985 allowed provinces to expand gambling opportunities. 23 Illegal gaming among the working class, the indigenous population and ethnic groups has been a problem, however (Starr and Menczer 1989). Canadian Indians have challenged the constitutional authority of provincial governments to regulate gambling on Indian reserves, an issue which remains unresolved. 24 Similarly, Canadian governments have owned and controlled another popular ‘vice’, the liquor industry. 25 Australian government reports on casino proposals have often given detailed accounts of European, British and American casino developments and are useful reference sources on the varied history of casinos. Further information about international casinos also can be found in the growing body of literature on casinos. 26 Ironically, lotteries and casinos continue to be banned by the more market-orientated government of Taiwan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V., Smith, J.F. and Christiansen, E.M. (1985) The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Adams, R. (1983) Report of Attorney General Robert Adams in Opposition to Legalised Casino Gambling in New York State, in Board of the Inquiry into Casinos, Report of the Board of the Inquiry into Casinos (Connor Report), Appendix J, Melbourne: Government Printer.

From glamour to grind

259

BC Gaming Commission (1988) Report on the Status of Gaming in British Columbia, Vancouver: BC Gaming Commission. Beare, M. (1990) ‘Current law enforcement issues in Canadian gambling’, in C.S. Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 177–98. Campbell, C. (1987) ‘Casino gambling and the peripheral state: charitable gaming in British Columbia’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research 1, Reno: University of Nevada-Reno: 332–72. Campbell, C.S. and Lowman, J. (eds) (1989) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University. Campbell, C.S. and Ponting, J.R. (1984) ‘The evolution of casino gambling in Alberta’, Canadian Public Policy 10(2):142–55. Clark, R.C. (1990) ‘Puerto Rico: Caribbean gaming and tourism’, The National Association for Gambling Studies 2(1):5–11. Clotfelter, C.T. and Cook, P. (1989) Selling Hope. State Lotteries in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Commission of the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling (1976) Gambling in America: Final Report of the Commission on the Review of the National Policy toward Gambling (Morin Commission), Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Dixon, D. (1982) ‘The state and gambling: developments in the legal control of gambling, 1867– 1923’, Paper presented to the Fifth National Conference on Gambling and Risk-taking, Las Vegas, Nevada. ——(1984) ‘Illegal gambling and histories of policing in Great Britain’, Paper presented to the Sixth National Conference on Gambling and Risk-taking, Atlantic City, NJ (9–12 Dec.). Dombrink, J. and Thompson, W.N. (1990) The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos, Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press. Eadington, W.R. (1982a) ‘The evolution of corporate gambling in Nevada’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics 6(1):13–22. ——(1982b) ‘Casino gambling and tourism: recent experiences and future considerations’, in W.R.Eadington, Materials Pertaining to Casino Gambling in America, Reno: University of Nevada: 1–5. ——(1986a) ‘Impact of casino gambling on the community: comment on Pizam and Poleka’, Annals of Tourism Research 13. ——(1989) ‘Issues and trends in world gaming’, in C.S.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 3–26. ——(1990) Indian Gaming and the Law, Reno: University of Nevada. Eadington, W.R. and Cornelius, J.A. (eds) (1991) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada. Eadington, W.R. and Hattori, J.S. (1976) ‘A legislative history of gambling in Nevada’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics 2(1):13–17. Ebel, R.D. (ed.) (1990) A Fiscal Agenda for Nevada, Reno: University of Nevada Press. Elliott, R.R. and Rowley, W.D. (1987) History of Nevada, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Emy, H. (1993) Remaking Australia: The State, the Market and Australia’s Future, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Esolen, G., Morgan, T., Mouchly, E., Stone, D.L. and Zuchelli, D.R. (1994) ‘Urban casinos: a new public-private partnership; the New Orleans experience’, Paper presented to the Ninth International Conference on Gambling and Risk-taking, 31 May-3 June, Las Vegas. Goffman, E. (1967) ‘Where the action is’, in Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behaviour, New York: Anchor Doubleday: 149–270. Hawkins, M. (1982) ‘The Atlantic City experience: casino gambling as an economic recovery program’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) The Gambling Papers: Proceedings of the Fifth National

Gambling cultures

260

Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno: Bureau of Business and Economic Research, College of Business Administration, University of Nevada, n.p. Hicks, A.J. (1981) ‘No longer the only game in town: a comparison of the Nevada and New Jersey regulatory systems of gaming control’, Southwestern University Law Review 12:583–626. Kelly, J. (1994) ‘American Indian gaming law’, Paper presented to the Ninth International Conference on Gambling and Risk-taking, 31 May-3 June, Las Vegas. Kelly, J. and Eadington, W.R. (1986) ‘The regulation of casino gambling in Europe: a comparative analysis’, Nevada Public Affairs Review 2:56–64. Kent-Lemon, N. (1988) ‘New gambling markets in Turkey’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Seventh National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 1, Reno: University of Nevada: 401–11. La Fleur, T. and Hevener, P. (1992) ‘Gaming at a glance’, Gaming and Wagering Business 14(9):34–41. Lampen, B. (1982) ‘The role of legalized gambling in New Jersey as a stimulus for tourism and urban development: a regulator’s viewpoint’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) The Gambling Papers: Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno: Bureau of Business and Economic Research, College of Business Administration, University of Nevada, n.p. Lehne, R. (1986) Casino Policy, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Levy, E.J. (1992) ‘The Asian market’, Paper presented to the Second Australian Casinos and Gaming Conference, 26–27 October. Lowenhar, J., Lonoff, C. and Smith, R. (1991) ‘Regulatory requirements and legalised casino gaming in New Jersey: the case for change’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A. Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno: 261–8. Macomber, D.M. (1984) ‘Management policy and practices in modern casino operations’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474: 80–90. McMillen, J. (1987) ‘Gambling for high stakes: developments in Australian casinos’, Current Affairs Bulletin 64(4):20–5. ——(1989) ‘The future: golden goose or trojan horse?’, in C.S.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 371–410. ——(1990) ‘Casino policies: have Australians had a fair deal?’, Journal of Gambling Studies 6(1):3–29. ——(1991a) ‘Casinos and tourism: what’s the big attraction?’, in P.Carroll et al., Tourism in Australia, Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 153–72. ——(1991b) ‘Urban casinos as agents of development: case studies from Australia’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada: 87–122. ——(1993) ‘Risky business: the political economy of Australian casino developments’, Unpublished PhD thesis: University of Queensland. McMillen, J. and Eadington, W.R. (1986) ‘The evolution of gambling laws in Australia’, New York Journal of International and Comparative Law 8(1):167–92. Marcum, J. and Rowen, H. (1974) ‘How many games in town? The pros and cons of legalized gambling’, Public Interest 34:25–54. Marin, B. (1985) ‘Austria—the paradigm case of liberal corporatism?’, in W.Grant (ed.) The Political Economy of Corporatism, London: Macmillan: 89–125. Miers, D. (1980) ‘Eighteenth century gaming: implications for modern casino control’, in J.A.Inciardi and C.E.Faupel (eds) History and Crime: Implications for Criminal Justice Policy, London: Sage: 169–92.

From glamour to grind

261

——(1981) ‘The mismanagement of casino gaming’, British Journal of Criminology 21(1):79–86. ——(1983) ‘Malpractices in casino gambling’, in M.Clarke (ed.) Corruption, London: Francis Pinter: 24–38. ——(1984) ‘The regulation of commercial gaming’, Journal of Law and Society 11(1): 33–63. ——(1987) ‘The Gaming Board for Great Britain: enforcement and judicial restraint’, in R.Baldwin and C.McCrudden (eds) Regulation and Public Law, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson: 81–106. ——(1989) ‘Developments in commercial gambling in Great Britain’, in C.S.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 27–52. ——(1991) ‘The national regulation of gambling and the completion of the internal market in the European Community’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada: 409–24. Osborne, J.A. and Campbell, C.S. (1988) ‘Recent amendments to Canadian lottery and gaming laws: the transfer of power between federal and provincial governments’, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 26(1):19–43. Polders, B. (1987–88) ‘Legalizing gambling as a weapon to combat illegal gambling in the Netherlands’, Nevada Review of Business and Economics 22(1):31–3. Ransom, B. (1991) ‘Public policy and gambling in New Jersey’, in W.R.Eadington and J.A.Cornelius (eds) Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada: 155–68. Reuter, P. (1983) Disorganised Crime: Illegal Markets and the Mafia, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ——(1984) ‘Police regulation of illegal gambling: frustrations of symbolic enforcement’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:36–47. Rose, N. (1979) ‘The legalization and control of casino gambling’, Fordham Urban Law Journal 8(2):245–300. Rosecrance, J. (1988) Gambling without Guilt: The Legitimation of an American Pastime, Belmont: Brooks/Cole. Royal Commission on Gambling (1978) Royal Commission on Gambling. Final Report (Rothschild Report), 2 vols, London: HMSO. Rubenstein, J. (1984) ‘Casino gambling: issues of development and redevelopment’, in J.H.Frey and W.R.Eadington (eds) Gambling: Views from the Social Sciences, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 474:61–71. Satré, P. (1982) ‘A report on the impact of the New Jersey Casino Control Act and related regulations on Harrah’s Marina Hotel Casino’, in W.R.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Reno: University of Nevada: n.p. Selesner, G. (1984) ‘Cable Beach: a casino-hotel by, for and of the people’, Gaming Business Magazine (March): 54–8. Seton Hall Legislative Journal (1982) ‘New Jersey Gaming Symposium’ 6(1) (Summer). Skolnick, J.H. (1978) House of Cards: Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling, Boston: Little, Brown. Spanier, D. (1980) The Gambler’s Pocket Book, London: Mitchell Beazley. Special Senate Committee to Investigate Organised Crime in Interstate Commerce (1951) Report of the Special Senate Committee to Investigate Organised Crime in Interstate Commerce (Kefauver Committee), Washington, DC: US Government Printer. Starr, V.A. and Menczer ([1989] 1990) ‘Submission to Task Force on Gaming on Reserves, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs’, in C.S.Campbell and J. Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 149–76.

Gambling cultures

262

Sternlieb, G. and Hughes, J.W. (1983) The Atlantic City Gamble, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Strange, S. (1986) Casino Capitalism, Oxford: Blackwell. Stubbs, R. and Underhill, G.R.D. (eds) (1994) Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, London: Macmillan. Thompson, W.N. and Dombrink, J. (1989) ‘A politically acceptable model of casino gaming for American jurisdictions’, in C.S.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada: Golden Goose or Trojan Horse? Vancouver: Simon Fraser University: 337–70. Wykes, A. (1964) The Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling, New York: Doubleday.

15 OBJECTIVES AND SYSTEMS IN THE REGULATION OF COMMERCIAL GAMBLING David Miers

This chapter seeks to analyse the principal objectives and systems constituting regimes intended to regulate commercial gambling in any of its five principal forms: casino gaming, gaming by machine, betting (both pool or pari-mutuel and fixed odds), lotteries and bingo. The analysis that is presented here was prompted by the decision taken in early 1990 by Directorate 12 of the European Commission to contract research into the national regulation of betting, gaming and lotteries in the member states of the European Community in view of the completion of the internal market in 1992. The object of the research was to identify areas of common control, potential conflict and transferable regulatory mechanisms. The scope of the study included all commercial gambling and similar transactions—in particular, those that could be, or were already, operated across national frontiers.1 The research findings were published in 1991 (European Commission 1991). The research undertaken implies an analysis of the regulatory regimes operated by each member state in connection with each gambling medium allowed by its law, according to a standard set of factors. It was intended by the Directorate that the findings would allow comparisons to be made of the manner in which gambling is regulated: (1) between the different media permitted within one member state; and (2) in respect of a given medium, between different member states. Besides discrete analysis of individual states or of individual gambling media, it was also intended that the research findings should present gross outcomes in terms of the patterns of control preferred throughout the European Community. On this basis, informed judgements could be made about the likely impact within a member state not currently offering a given gambling medium, or offering the medium but under different terms from other member states, of its adoption of a given regime regulating that medium. These matters are of considerable importance to those involved in the commercial gambling industry within the European Community. Its regulation is currently a matter for domestic governments, but the enactment of the Single European Act in 1986 and the adoption of further mechanisms at the Maastricht summit in November 1991, both intended to bring about a closer degree of economic and social union within the Community, carry with them the possibility that the European Commission will in due course seek to harmonise aspects of the law governing gambling across the Community. The design and play parameters of both machines and lottery products, for example, are

Gambling cultures

264

readily amenable to the kind of technical prescription that the Commission has already brought to such matters as food products and carbon emissions from motor cars. A further important dimension concerns the kinds of legal controls that could be exercised by a member state or introduced by the European Commission where gambling opportunities lawfully offered in one state become available in another; in particular where the gambling medium in question is not lawfully available there, or is lawful but is offered on different terms. Such availability can and does arise in one or both of two ways: first, by the deliberate export of a gambling medium; and second, by ‘spillage’, that is, the inevitable availability that occurs across national frontiers. The first is readily illustrated by the delivery of lottery tickets from one jurisdiction to another. A traditional example is the promotion in Great Britain of the Irish Sweepstake, a lottery with a substantial prize structure that has had no counterpart in the lotteries that, until recently, may lawfully be promoted there. During the late 1980s there was a revival of interest in the establishment of a national lottery (which is available in virtually all other member states) in the United Kingdom. Following publication in 1992 of a White Paper (Home Office 1992), legislation introducing a national lottery was enacted in 1993. The first draw under the National Lottery Act 1993 took place in November 1994. Apart from considerations concerning the income to its beneficiaries, two factors influenced the government’s decision. One was that the continuation of the unlawful status of foreign lotteries beyond 1 January 1993 might contravene Community law.2 The second was that, whether lawful or unlawful, foreign lotteries would represent an increasingly competitive diversion of domestic gambling revenue: ‘without a national lottery of our own, the United Kingdom market would continue to be attractive to lotteries from other EC countries and elsewhere…. The British public might therefore be able to participate in lotteries benefiting the citizens of other countries but not their own’ (Home Office 1992: paras 9–10). The smaller national lotteries available in Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands have for some years been similarly vulnerable to aggressive marketing by the German Klassenlotterien (European Commission 1991:I, 18). Spillage may occur in one of two ways: by the deliberate purchasing of gambling opportunities across frontiers, and by the availability of gambling opportunities across frontiers as a consequence of technological diffusion. The former is illustrated by the tradition among French nationals to cross into Belgium on certain days because it is cheaper to bet on the French Tierce in Belgian than in French francs.3 There is also extensive osmotic cross-border purchasing of El Gordo, the Spanish Christmas lottery, by Portuguese nationals. The latter is illustrated by the ready availability in Belgium and the Netherlands of televised horse-racing (and the accompanying betting odds) from Britain. As the European Commission’s research observes: ‘With the development of international banking systems, international telecommunication and international audio-visual programming, it is impossible to control cross-border horse racing and event betting without the co-operation of these three industries’ (European Commission 1991:I, 23). So far as the transferability of regulatory mechanisms is concerned, the issues raised by this initiative are clearly of more than parochial relevance to the European Community. Of the proliferation of gaming media during the 1970s and 1980s throughout the world, Eadington remarked:

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

265

in all these jurisdictions, the same types of issues keep coming up: how can legal gaming operations be managed and regulated in such a manner as to protect the honesty of the games and the integrity of the revenues generated, to make significant contributions to government coffers through taxation, and to protect society from the possible negative sideeffects, such as political corruption, organised crime, and compulsive gambling, that have historically accompanied legal gaming? (Eadington 1988:2) Like the Canadian provincial governments (Beare 1989:184; McMillen 1989:403), others may therefore be contemplating the introduction of, or amendment to, regimes regulating commercial gambling, perhaps through the adoption of measures currently operating, for example, in Great Britain, Australia or the United States. In so far as it may encourage an appreciation of what factors conduce to, and what prejudice, the likely success of a chosen regime, this chapter has, like the European Commission’s study, an instrumental purpose. As other chapters in this book indicate, cultural variations may have an important effect on the configuration and impact of regimes designed to regulate gambling. Whatever these local differences, no appreciation of the likely effect of the selection of one regime over another can be made without an analysis of the factors that, first, are common to, and that, second, differentiate, existing regimes.4 It is obviously not possible to provide here a conspectus of all extant regimes, but it is possible to present what constitute their objectives and systems as ideal types, with some examples.5 The argument that is advanced here can be summarised as follows: 1 Any analysis of the regulation of commercial gambling that posits the elimination of criminal elements from the supply of gambling opportunities (crime control) as the sole or the main objective of regulation is misleading. 2 The crime control model is misleading because, when set against the objective of revenue generation, it is apparent that that objective will not be efficiently realised if it is the case that uncontrolled (illegal) suppliers remain within the market. 3 It is also apparent that social control, which is the other ideal-type objective, will also fail to be efficiently realised if it is the case that uncontrolled (illegal) suppliers remain within the market. 4 Viewed as a means for achieving an objective, rather than as an objective in itself, crime control thus merely becomes one aspect of a broader systemic question: how is the demand for commercial gambling opportunities to be managed (regulated) in order to achieve either social control, revenue generation or, since these represent two idealtype objectives, some chosen mix of them? 5 Viewed as a system of demand management, the regulation of commercial gambling involves a complex interplay of controls, first over the supply of gambling opportunities, and second over participation by the consumer. These matters are elaborated in the sections which follow; first, I make some observations about the value of making comparisons between regulatory regimes.

Gambling cultures

266

COMPARING THE AVAILABILITY OF GAMBLING FACILITIES The availability of gambling facilities, as well as the characteristics of particular regimes, vary both across jurisdictions and across gambling media. It is a relatively simple task to compile tables (first) showing the extent to which a given gambling medium is available in any given group of countries, or indeed throughout the world, and (second) showing the variety of gambling media available within any one country.6 Table 15.1 contains this information as it relates to the European Community. It can be seen that casino gaming and lotteries are available in eleven of the twelve member states (though the odd one out in each case is not the same member state), while bingo is least well represented, and that the United Kingdom has the most and Greece the least extensive variety of gambling opportunities.

Table 15.1 Commercial gambling outlets in the European Community Country Bingo Casino Machines Bookmaking Pari mutuel Lottery Belgium Denmark Eire France Germany Greece Italy Lux. N’lands Portugal Spain UK

No No Yes No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No No No No Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes

However, while depicting availability, this kind of comparison does not indicate market salience, either in terms of the total share of the market within the European Community taken by each gambling medium, or the share of the market in each gambling medium taken by individual member states. As might be expected of a medium offered in only four of the member states, bingo has the smallest market share, 4.85 per cent, while lotteries account for the biggest, 36.04 per cent. However, casino gaming, though available (like lottery products) throughout the European Community (with one exception), has less than a fifth of the market (16.95 per cent). If we then consider the market share claimed by each member state, it becomes clear that any regulatory changes proposed by the European Commission will be very much more important for some countries than for others. The lottery market, for example, is, by comparison with the other sectors, fairly evenly spread between member states, with Germany and Spain accounting for 54.80 per cent of turnover. On the other hand, 55.21 per cent of the horserace betting market, which is the second largest market segment (31.29 per cent), lies within the United Kingdom; while casino gaming, widely available throughout the

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

267

European Community, is dominated by France, Germany and the United Kingdom (86.96 per cent of the market) (European Commission 1992:7–15). Variations will also exist concerning the nature of the regulatory regime where gambling media are permitted, and though they are less easy to depict, they also offer two bases for comparison. First, comparisons can be made concerning the ways in which any one gambling medium is regulated across all the jurisdictions in which it is available. For example, most member states within the European Community permit pari-mutuel (or totalisator) betting. However, its management varies as between private monopoly (the Netherlands, Portugal), public monopoly maintained by a statutory body (the United Kingdom), and management by a department of state (France, Italy). In addition, there is variation in the events that may lawfully be the subject of pari-mutuel betting—they all extend to horse-racing, but some are confined to that (France, the Netherlands), while others are more extensive (the United Kingdom and Ireland permit pari-mutuel betting on dog-racing—and on whether such bets can be made only on-track (Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) or both on- and off-track (Belgium, France and the United Kingdom). Comparisons of this kind help to answer such questions as whether, viewed across all the jurisdictions in which it is available, there is a preferred regime regulating any given gambling medium, and if so, what are the necessary and sufficient characteristics of the successful regulation of that medium. Second, comparisons can be made concerning the ways in which any one jurisdiction regulates the gambling media that it makes available. For example, McMillen and Eadington (1986) have described the development in Australia of a variety of regimes involving greater or lesser degrees of governmental involvement. Off-course betting is directly managed by each state government through a Totalisator Agency Board (TAB), which permits pari-mutuel betting only, and lotteries are in most states likewise run by government. By contrast, the poker machines that are permitted in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and the Northern Territory have been available only in stateregistered casino clubs; but in Queensland and Victoria, which are both in the process of introducing poker machines, new and distinctive roles for government are contemplated. In Queensland, the government will own the machines which will be leased to clubs and hotels, while in Victoria machines will be jointly owned by the TAB and Tattersall’s (the private lottery operator). In both states an independent commission has been appointed with statutory powers to regulate the industry and to monitor the administration of policy. Comparisons of this kind generate answers to such questions as whether, viewed across all the gambling media it makes available, there is a prevailing or consistent ideology underlying, first, the regulatory objectives within any given jurisdiction and, second, the systems it employs to secure those objectives. This is of central importance, since a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition of the successful regulation of commercial gambling is a match between regulatory objectives and regulatory systems. One conclusion to which McMillen is drawn in a later discussion (1988) is that there have for many years been significant differences of opinion within Australia as to what are the most appropriate measures for the regulation of its casinos. This is substantially attributable to shifts in objectives: from a desire merely to cater for existing demand, to the active promotion of the resort locations in which the casinos are situated. This exercise also demonstrates the tensions that accompany the adoption of this objective where the regulatory authority is closely implicated within the institutions of government.

Gambling cultures

268

As has been the case elsewhere,7 the desire of Australian state governments to generate revenue for public purposes from the taxation of off-course betting and lotteries has regularly been in conflict with the persistent and powerful consideration that governments should not, as a general proposition, promote gambling. The results of these comparisons can be used as a basis upon which to identify the characteristics and the impact of the detailed prescriptions of any regime regulating commercial gambling; this is a main purpose of the European Directorate’s initiative. Since the commercial considerations that affect the supply of gambling facilities are broadly the same as those that affect other regulated industries—for example, capitation, investment, product management and development, staffing controls and costs, marketing (O’Donnell 1980)—it may also be possible to identify constant features of regulation as a method of economic and social control. Thus, although, as Fels has noted, the definition of regulation ‘varies with the purpose of the discussion’ (1982:31) and is often used in different senses, regimes regulating commercial gambling nevertheless present structural characteristics that are persistent and shared features of other regimes regulating, for example, communications and the supply of financial services, both of which have important parallels with the gambling industry.8 When regulated, the collective aspects of a given enterprise are subject to a regime under which either entry is validated or performance is monitored (or both) by an agency that (1) is formally independent of the enterprise, (2) has powers to set or to initiate the modification of standards of entry and/or performance, and (3) may, in the event of noncompliance, invoke sanctions which, in addition to monetary penalties, typically entail temporary or permanent exclusion from the enterprise. It is this structural coherence that distinguishes a regulatory regime from a simple congeries of rules enforced by private individuals or by agencies of general social or fiscal control (though these may have a role to play within the regime) (Aranson and Miller 1980:851). It is therefore to be expected that the control of commercial gambling will encounter the difficulties that concern any regulatory regime, such as standard-setting, compliance-seeking, tendencies to monopoly, and capture (Breyer 1979; Skolnick and Dombrink 1980).

REGULATORY OBJECTIVES Formulating objectives: managing the demand for gambling facilities The regulation of commercial gambling typically involves the supply of those facilities that will meet such demand as would otherwise be satisfied by an uncontrolled (illegal) supplier or that will encourage consumer spending in turn to serve some specific or general economic purposes. Sometimes the aim is to achieve a mix of these objectives, but any permutation involves to a greater or lesser degree the containment (social control) or stimulation (revenue generation) of a demand for gambling facilities. By contrast with social control, it is commonplace within the gambling literature to posit, as one objective of regulation, the elimination of illegal gambling or, where it is otherwise lawful, criminal involvement in gambling. This has been so, for example, in the case of histories of the regulation of off-course betting in the United Kingdom and Australia (McMillen and Eadington 1986; Dixon 1987, 1991), and is one of the bases

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

269

employed in Abt, Smith and Christiansen’s analysis of commercial gambling in the United States (1985). Given its historical background, the pre-eminent example is the regulation of casino gaming in Nevada (Skolnick 1978; King 1980; Eadington 1989). Analyses of the Morin Commission (United States 1976) similarly emphasise its origins in the Organised Crime Control Act 1970 (Snyder 1980; Reuter 1982). Given the circumstances in which casino gaming in Nevada in particular came to be regulated, such characterisation is clearly understandable. Nevertheless, it should not be permitted to obscure other ways in which the regulation of commercial gambling may arguably be more usefully analysed (Aranson and Miller 1980; Suits 1982). Over-emphasis on criminal involvement in gambling implies first that once all or at least the most undesirable suppliers have been eliminated, the state has no further interest in the supply of gambling facilities, save to prevent such suppliers re-entering any tolerated gambling markets. This is clearly at odds with what governments have sought to do when regulating commercial gambling. One might, for example, compare what is typically the explicit and primary purpose of laws penalising drug trafficking: to eradicate the supply, irrespective of the existence of any demand for it, and if possible to neutralise the demand itself (Skolnick and Dombrink 1979; see also Dombrink, Chapter 2 above). Prohibition of gambling facilities was, and in some states continues to be, an option, but a closer analogy to the regulation of commercial gambling lies with the control of alcohol (Eadington 1988): here the object is to permit a market to exist in which demand is satisfied on the state’s terms, not on those of the supplier. Of course, governments would not need to remove the uncontrolled supplier if the social costs of the supply of gambling facilities (or liquor or drugs) did not in their view justify such action, as was the case in Nevada, Australia and the United Kingdom, but given the existence of demand, one objective of gambling regulation typically involves the substitution of controlled for uncontrolled suppliers, not the elimination of all suppliers. This requires emphasis, because the presence of uncontrolled suppliers is also a relevant consideration for the success of attempts to stimulate demand for the purpose of revenue generation. Here the need to regulate the supplier arises not primarily for the purpose of controlling the social costs of commercial self-interest, but to prevent the diversion of revenues from the intended beneficiary. As is widely acknowledged, the realisation of either objective, social control or revenue generation (or a mix thereof), requires that those supplying whatever gambling facilities are permitted are fit and proper. To posit the elimination of criminals as one objective of gambling regulation, and the generation of gambling revenues as a second, both confuses the function of regulation (to manage demand) with one of its systemic characteristics (control of the supplier), and elides the fact that this characteristic is central to the realisation of any instance of demand management. There are some further reasons why the depiction of the objectives of gambling regulation in terms of the management of demand is attractive. First, it can be clearly shown that there is a continuum in the supply of gambling facilities both within and between jurisdictions from containment to stimulation. Concerning casino facilities, for example, social control is typified by the British approach, which is to provide only such facilities as will satisfy any ‘unstimulated demand’ for them, while revenue generation is typified by the florid casinos of Las Vegas and Atlantic City; but between these are what have been described as commercial gambling ‘hybrids’ (Eadington 1989:16–18). These

Gambling cultures

270

are gambling facilities whose revenues are intended for public expenditure, but which do not emulate the facilities supplied in Nevada or New Jersey. Instances of the ‘modified version of the United States “gambling for revenue” model’ (Beare 1989:187) are especially to be found in Canada—for example, in the lottery and bingo arrangements of Quebec (Caron 1989) and in the charitable casinos of the western provinces. These ‘tend to be relatively austere; there are no restaurants, entertainment facilities, alcoholic beverages, or hotel facilities’ (Eadington 1989:16). An instructive comparison is the British betting shop, a gambling facility whose object is, like the policy with regard to casinos, to contain demand. Other locations in the United States have also investigated the merits of revenue generation tempered by the less exploitative style associated with casino facilities in continental Europe (Mitler 1985; Kelly and Herbig 1988), in some cases with the explicit aim of creating a ‘relatively unexciting’ facility (Eadington 1989:343). These investigations have, however, seldom resulted in ‘a bit of Europe being introduced into today’s Detroit’ (Thompson and Dombrink 1989:354). As the objective of revenue generation may be operationalised in different ways, so what comprises containment is open to negotiation. As has been noted, the primary objective of the supply of off-course betting facilities in Britain is social control. Allowing for the difficulties of talking meaningfully about the existence of an ‘unstimulated’ demand, it is nevertheless clear that the government now perceives the nature of this demand differently than when the regime was established in 1960. While the government adheres to the rhetoric of containment, it has abandoned the view that the provision of light refreshments (non-alcoholic drinks, crisps and peanuts) will stimulate demand (Miers 1989:39–40).9 The depiction of gambling regulation in terms of demand management also helps to show, as the example of Canadian charitable casinos illustrates, that the same kind of facilities may serve differing objectives, and second, as the following example illustrates, that the same objective may be served by the supply of radically different facilities. Anyone who has visited both a casino and a betting shop in Britain would surely remark on the very substantial differences in the gambling environment; the one typically wellfurnished, with restaurant and licensed bar facilities, the other typically sparsely decorated and with minimal refreshments. Not all of these differences are attributable to legal compulsion, but the supply of each set of facilities is intended to respond only to unstimulated demand. The justification for the differential treatment between the two outlets is that in the case of the former, leaving aside members’ bona fide guests, no one may use the facilities who has not already expressed an intention to game in one of the 120 casinos in Britain (by applying for membership and having to wait 48 hours before gaming on the first occasion), while in the case of the latter, anyone over 18 years can walk in from the street and make a bet in any of the approximately 9,800 betting shops. Objective failure: the inevitability of unmanaged demand On the basis that social control and revenue generation are, in their pure forms, mutually incompatible objectives (no regime can consistently seek both to stimulate and to contain existing demand), it is important to identify accurately the different effects that control of the supplier is intended to achieve. Another reason why it is misleading to describe the elimination of criminals as the objective of gambling regulation is that to do so makes

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

271

analysis of the efficacy of such control incomplete. Since one systemic characteristic of all regimes regulating commercial gambling is the exclusion of uncontrolled suppliers, questions that only concern their exclusion are of limited analytical value. The question for regulators is not simply whether the regime has succeeded in eliminating such suppliers, but whether the regime has succeeded, in the case of social control, in meeting the existing level and variety of demand such that no uncontrolled supply now exists (or if it does, is de minimis), and in the case of revenue generation, in ensuring the full and efficient delivery of gambling revenues to their intended beneficiary. Viewed in terms of the management of demand, an economic analysis of gambling regulation asks what effects the controlled (legal) supply of gambling facilities has upon demand for them. Take, for example, the question whether the regimes regulating offcourse betting in Britain and Australia respectively have been successful. Dixon (1987; see also Chapter 4 above) shows that whereas the objective of social control has been substantially achieved in Britain by the controlled supply of off-course bookmaking, the supply of off-course pari-mutuel betting via the TABs has been largely unsuccessful due to a preference among the Australian states for revenue generation. The evidence is the presence of a very substantial illegal betting market, but there is an explanation for this failure other than that the wrong objective was given priority. The illegal market in Australia principally supplies the consumer with betting at starting prices (SPs), which is also the main betting option lawfully supplied by off-course bookmakers in Britain. There is also some illegal SP betting in Britain, but it has never been suggested that there is any illegal pari-mutuel betting either there or in Australia. The reason why there is a substantial illegal market in Australia may therefore be attributable not to state governments preferring the ‘wrong’ objective, but that having given priority to revenue generation they did not permit the supply of the gambling medium for which there was the greatest demand. However, even if, as in the British case, the supply of controlled gambling facilities had met the demand, the evidence shows that there would continue to be a complementary illegal sector (Snyder 1980; Blakey 1982; Hybels 1982). In part this is attributable to the fact that uncontrolled suppliers can offer services possibly denied to the legal supplier: credit, better odds, anonymity, a wider choice of event on which to bet, and tax-free winnings (Beare 1989:186).10 It is also attributable to the increase in the price of a bet that is implied by a controlled supplier being subject not only to the usual taxes on income, but also to specific betting and gaming duties. This price will of course be further increased where, even though seeking to contain demand, the state nevertheless looks for some revenue generation. Thus it has been argued that the existence of an illegal SP betting market in Britain is attributable to bettors wishing to avoid paying the higher price per bet caused by the aggregation of general betting duty and the horse-race betting levy, a tax hypothecated to the benefit of horse-racing (Home Affairs Committee 1991). Even though the levy is the lowest by comparison with other jurisdictions in which a similar tax is imposed (less than 1 per cent of turnover), like instances in which revenue generation is the primary objective, uncertainties about the extent of the illegal sector have in turn traditionally inhibited the scope of proposals to increase the levy. Revenues generated by the stimulation of demand for gambling may be realised as a simple tax benefiting the state or a charitable organisation, or indirectly as the regeneration of a local economy. The latter may assume a variety of forms: tourism,

Gambling cultures

272

convention services, the construction industry and so on (Cohen 1982).11 Viewed in terms of the management of demand, it would seem that a regime whose objective is revenue generation must neither stimulate any greater or more varied a demand than it can supply, nor impose so high a level of take-out in the form of levies and taxes (thus increasing the price) that players look instead to uncontrolled suppliers. These are no doubt relevant considerations, but they merely serve to aggravate a subsisting and inevitable problem. If the demand that is to be stimulated is to be profitable for the state, it must also be so for the uncontrolled supplier: When the state steps into the picture and provides gambling or other services banned to private producers, it places itself in a peculiar position. By offering the service itself, the state announces that the activity is not, per se, contrary to the public interest; rather the state has merely attempted to transfer to itself the monopoly of the product by continuation of the prohibition of private production. To the degree that this monopoly is profitable to the state, however, it remains potentially profitable to the private operator. (Suits 1982:52) In other words, whether preference is given to social control or revenue generation, there will inevitably be some level of unmanaged demand for gambling facilities. For revenue generation, there will be further questions concerning the impact of the controlled facilities upon other lawful gambling media (Christiansen and Shagan 1980:856; McMillen 1989:380; Peters 1989), and, of course, the levels of revenue actually generated (Hawkins 1982; Kaplan 1989; Smith et al. 1989; Christiansen 1991).

REGULATORY SYSTEMS Although the detailed measures of regulatory systems vary (McMillen 1989:403), it is generally acknowledged that there are certain characteristics that will need to be present in any system if the objectives of gambling regulation are to be met. These characteristics in turn comprise two principal subsystems (Miers 1984). One will consist of measures designed to ‘provide a workable method to screen undesirable elements from the gaming enterprise and ensure the continued integrity of the operation’ (Nevada State Gaming Control Board 1983). The most obvious paradigm lies in the highly sophisticated controls over the supplier of casino gaming; but a system of supplier control applies, to a greater or lesser extent, to all regimes. The second will consist of measures controlling the conditions under which participation by the player occurs.12

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

273

Supplier controls Market entry controls The first characteristic of a regulatory system is the imposition of quality controls upon prospective suppliers of gambling facilities—and possibly also upon those who are to be the regulators (Cohen 1982:13–15). These vary in their intensity, usually in accordance with the susceptibility of the medium in question to exploitation by the supplier. Typically such controls envisage the vetting of an applicant’s prior record in this or similar regulated activities and of the applicant’s known or reputed associates, the existence of sufficient capitation and resources to comply with the law, the legal status of the applicant, if it is not autonomous, the other entities of which it is a part, the applicant’s internal financial, managerial and administrative structures, the applicant’s external financial condition, and any present and predicted ability to establish and enforce controls by which the conduct of the facilities will comply with the law. Such vetting may also extend to an applicant’s employees and to the premises on which the facilities are to be located. A primary feature of such controls will be the inclusion of highly discretionary decisions (Lehne 1986:85–118), turning on judgements of an applicant’s ‘character’ (Skolnick and Dombrink 1980; Michael 1982), or on whether the applicant is likely to be ‘capable of and diligent in’ securing the integrity of the facilities (Miers 1987:85–8). Where they are based in part on hearsay and uncorroborated evidence, such decisions inevitably raise questions of due process, but the desirability of such individualised screening is generally held to be beyond question, even if, as in the case of small-scale lotteries, it is no more than a registration procedure. A second characteristic is the imposition of restrictions on the number of suppliers who may be permitted to operate at any one time. The question which arises here is what criteria of quantity are employed. These may broadly be distinguished on the one hand according to some conception of existing or potential demand, and on the other by the imposition of arbitrary controls based on demographic or geographical factors. Using examples concerning the availability of casino gaming, demand criteria may thus depend on (controversial) assessments by the regulatory body (such as the Gaming Board for Great Britain), may exclude some indicators of demand altogether (for example, from those other than tourists—as in the Bahamas—or of those under 18 years—this is commonplace), or they may require positive evidence of demand on the part of individuals (as in Britain). Arbitrary controls may place gambling facilities beyond what is, or was at one time considered, the reach of certain members of a community (for example, there are no casinos within 60 kilometres of Paris, a distance that prior to automotive travel was thought to be too far for a day’s return journey), be established to discourage citizens from going to other countries to gamble (as in Denmark) or confine facilities to areas popular for tourism (for example, Portugal and Spain). Management controls Gambling involves the making and re-making of countless exchanges of cash sums, in some instances, notably casino gaming, unrecorded. It follows from this feature of what

Gambling cultures

274

is in most other respects a normal commercial transaction (Meyer 1980) that the opportunities for defalcation by employees and theft by customers are endemic. For this reason alone, some basic principles of effective gambling control need to be adopted (Santaniello 1982:37; McMillen 1989:388). The need is greater where the primary objective is revenue generation, since such opportunities are likely to subvert its realisation. Equipment and procedures need to be secure, reliable and durable. Compliance with these requirements is typically ensured by the setting of standards, followed by inspection and testing, both by employees and by the regulatory authority (Vernooij 1988). Each transaction should ideally be recorded—for example, where cash or cheques are exchanged for chips in a casino—but where it cannot—such as each bet at a blackjack table—other controls, such as counting and recording the total of chips and money deposited at or taken from the table, may serve to protect the destination of gambling revenues. The efficacy of equipment and transaction controls inevitably depend upon the levels of honesty and training of employees. Certain levels of expertise and of surveillance are also necessary in connection with ensuring the integrity of the game, in particular where participation controls aim to protect players from over-commitment. Accordingly, a fourth area of management control concerns the training and supervision of the employees themselves; the greater the degree of reliance upon the honesty and skill of the employee, the greater the need for the regulatory authority to insist upon strict compliance with exemplary standards. Participation controls Like supplier controls, participation controls can be more or less intensive, depending in part on the regime’s objectives. Whether the preference is revenue generation or social control, there is good reason to ensure that the player is not conspicuously being placed at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the supplier. It is clear, however, that there are considerable differences between the environment of a Las Vegas casino and that of one located in Vancouver, London or Sydney, or between casino gaming and other gambling facilities. Participation controls centre upon a variety of factors which may be manipulated as part of the process of demand management. Broadly speaking, there are three sets of such controls. The first are access-related controls. These concern advertising, personal attributes as conditions of entry to the facilities—typically, age or membership conditions (Thompson and Dombrink 1989:345), financial attributes as a condition of participation—typically, restrictions on the availability of credit, prohibitions on junkets (Donnelly 1982),13 and hours of play. Game-related controls may stipulate the number and variety of games offered, place restrictions on their attractiveness, provide for universal and routine information about the odds against winning, eliminate mug bets and counting techniques that systematically work to the disadvantage of the bettor (for example, rounding down in pari-mutuel betting),14 and require legal modifications where technological change alters the manner in which a game is played (Holmes 1985; Eadington 1989:14–15). Environment-related controls concern the physical appearance of the premises in which the gambling facilities are set, their layout, and the provision of refreshments and entertainment. A further consideration that is wholly absent from the European Commission’s proposed study is the question of what public provision, if any, should be made for the

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

275

diagnosis and treatment of problem gambling. Governments may well take the view that they need make none, leaving these matters to voluntary effort. Nevertheless, in the light of the evidence on the impact of over-commitment on gamblers and their families (Lesieur and Rosenthal 1991), it seems right that if the European Community is to consider the social costs associated with the regulation of gambling, it should also consider the costs borne by the individual. Given the regressivity of gambling as a form of taxation (Aranson and Miller 1980; Suits 1982; Livernois 1987), the argument that the state should take an interest is stronger where it stimulates demand for the purpose of revenue generation.

FACTORS AFFECTING THE CHOICE OF CONTROLS The salience of supplier and participation controls While both systems are necessary to the realisation of any regulatory objective, their salience varies, in particular where the preference is for revenue generation (Thompson and Dombrink 1989). The salience of participation controls is high where the objective is to contain demand for gambling facilities, but it decreases as the objective of revenue generation becomes more important. As noted above, efforts have been made in both Canada and the United States to introduce lower-key gambling facilities that generate revenue, much as the Morin Commission had in mind when it reviewed the desirability of extending casino facilities to states other than Nevada and Puerto Rico (United States 1976). Its view was that serious consideration should be given to the enactment of stringent measures controlling both the opportunity of individuals to participate in casino gaming (such as restricting the number and location of premises and their advertisement and ease of access), and the subsequent reinforcement of that initial decision (such as restricting entertainment and refreshment, and hours of play). The economic imperatives of revenue generation may also impinge upon the integrity of a regime’s supplier controls, as the decision to grant a temporary licence in Atlantic City in 1978 illustrates. The Casino Control Act 1977 initially included the recommendation of the Interim Report of the New Jersey Staff Policy Group on Casino Gambling (New Jersey 1977), that neither conditional nor temporary licences should be permitted. By early 1978, with no casino in operation, and there being no likelihood that Resorts International, the major active applicant, would be cleared in time for that summer’s tourist season, those who had supported the Act were becoming apprehensive. In the event, a compromise was reached; the Act was amended and Resorts were granted a six-month licence. State officials presented this as a triumph of good sense: the investigation into Resorts (who would have every incentive to operate honestly for the duration) could continue unpressured by economic demands, while the state reaped the financial benefits. Critics were less sanguine; their argument was not so much that it would in turn be difficult to refuse the full licence, but that the regime’s authors had, at the first test, reversed the regime’s priorities (Skolnick and Dombrink 1980). Their criticisms assumed further significance when, in March 1981, the regime’s executive branch (the Casino Control Commission) granted a conditional licence to the Bally Park

Gambling cultures

276

Place Casino notwithstanding a recommendation by the regime’s investigative branch (the Division of Gaming Enforcement) against the grant of a full licence (Beare 1989:191).15 Acknowledging the pressures that inevitably affect the salience of supplier and participation controls, the issue is whether there is a match between those controls that are employed and the regime’s objectives. Mismatches occur when a system is initially chosen that is inappropriate for the desired objective, or is not appropriately adapted when objectives change. They may also occur, though no change in objective is desired, when systems are amended in consequence of implementation problems. In other words, shifts along the continuum may be unintended, implementation-led movements as well as the consequence of deliberate choices. These points are illustrated first by the development of casino regulation in Australia, which McMillen (1988) identifies as comprising two stages. In the first, casinos were permitted as modest elements in attempts to resuscitate the economies of Tasmania and the Northern Territory, states that had little other than tourism as a focus for exploitation. In choosing their regulatory systems, their governments rejected the highly restrictive participation controls associated with British casinos as being antithetical to the regulatory objective; but while the objective was revenue generation there was also a widespread disinclination to replicate the more aggressive style associated with the gaming industry in Nevada. As ‘the market objectives of Australian casinos directly corresponded to neither the British nor the American approaches’ (McMillen 1988:158), the regulatory systems chosen at this stage sought to combine elements of each, though they still exhibited aspects of the pronounced stringency of the British regime. These systems were, however, rejected during the second stage of development, in which ‘a different style of casino based on a more explicitly competitive set of commercial criteria’ was favoured. The system now adopted was very much more akin to that introduced in Atlantic City, with the greater importance given to supplier controls reflected in the incorporation of the regulatory bodies into central government institutions and ‘a strengthening of their directive powers over operators’ (McMillen 1988:161). While there may be questions concerning the efficacy and the impact of these arrangements (McMillen 1990), they represent a deliberate effort to match controls to the regulatory objective. By contrast, the recent history of casino regulation in the Netherlands discloses what Thompson and Pinney (1990) describe as a mismatch between objective and system. The objective was social control, but the system that was preferred created exactly those conditions which are conducive to increased participation. Instead of being located in those relatively affluent urban areas where demand existed, casinos were authorised for resort areas. This produced two unwelcome consequences: existing demand continued to seek uncontrolled suppliers, and those frequenting resorts were drawn into casino gaming. Even when the Dutch government acknowledged the need to provide a controlled supply in urban areas, it chose expensive central hotels, again the kind of location likely to frustrate the stated objective. The government’s response to this further stimulus to gambling was to redefine its regulatory objectives: having created the conditions for revenue generation, it announced that this was now the preferred objective. This in turn raises the question whether the system that had unintentionally stimulated demand was the one best suited to the newly declared objective. Thompson and Pinney

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

277

argue that, due in part to a failure to regulate casino employees adequately (that is, a failure of management controls), it was not. National and local interests A second factor concerns the extent to which the regulation of commercial gambling should be determined by national as opposed to local criteria, an issue that also concerns the balance between federal and state interests. In the case of the European Community, there is likely to be an additional conflict between national and supra-national interests. Local criteria hold out the possibility of sensitivity to the interests of those most closely affected by the presence of gambling facilities. Where, for example, facilities need to be in fixed locations (casinos, betting shops, bingo parlours), local residents may wish to object to aspects of the ecological conditions of those locations: exterior presentation, hours of opening, transport and parking, numbers of users and so on. Their objections may be the more acute where particular facilities are unavailable to them—for example, being open only to tourists. Conversely, any attempt to match supply with unstimulated demand must make some effort to test the existence of such demand, even if, as is the case concerning casinos in Great Britain, this issue is in fact mediated by existing and potential suppliers. Some of these concerns may properly be made the subject of the same planning and zoning regulations that apply to the location of all commercial premises (Hawkins 1982); others may be specifically catered for by the regulatory regime. However, the existence of local variations in the supply of commercial gambling facilities may subvert rather than advance the regulatory objective. One disadvantage is the proliferation of smallscale regimes operating to idiosyncratic standards. This increases implementation costs, since regulators will be unable to apply uniform standards throughout the industry. In addition there will be opportunities for suppliers to maximise uncertainties in the regime, to the disadvantage either of the consumer or of the Exchequer. Costs will also be increased for suppliers who, as McMillen (1988:161–6) has demonstrated in connection with Australian casino regulation, will be required to adjust the conditions under which they supply gambling facilities in accordance with irregular standards. Thus, as in the case of the control of casino gaming, bingo and off-course betting in Great Britain, a mix of national and local controls may offer an effective base. Such matters as the type, variety and conditions under which gambling facilities are permitted, by whom and after what vetting procedures, can be uniformly imposed on all suppliers, with consequent advantages for the enforcement agencies. Those local preferences which do not compromise these national criteria, such as the particular location of an outlet, may also be accommodated. Nevertheless, such a division of influence may still be controversial. For example, local preferences concerning casino gaming are only permissible within the nationally imposed criteria of the Permitted Areas Regulations (Gaming Board for Great Britain 1971). Even if there were overwhelming evidence of unstimulated demand within an area of the country not stipulated by these regulations, there is no possibility of such local preference being accommodated within the law.16 Within federal jurisdictions, the ease with which gambling media may be operated across state lines naturally gives a federal government an interest in their control (King 1980:745–6; Snyder 1980:670–1), but the response in Australia, Canada (Osborne and

Gambling cultures

278

Campbell 1989) and the United States reflects their cultural diversity as much as any homogeneity of interest (McMillen 1989:384). The allocation of influence between national and supra-national interests will of course be one of the major issues facing the European Commission, should it seek to put forward proposals for the harmonisation of commercial gambling within the Community. This matter is already exercising the gaming machine industry in those countries mainly involved in their manufacture, supply and use: Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain. During 1991 there were a number of meetings at which efforts were made to identify those matters upon which the industry itself could adopt a common stance, such as staking levels, prize values, prize-stake relationship, machine registration and inspection, by way of anticipation of any Commission proposals. Public and private suppliers A third important factor concerns the extent to which gambling facilities should be operated by public as opposed to private suppliers. For the casino industry in the United States, the view which has prevailed is that, within a clear and stringent regime, it is the private operator who can most efficiently supply the appropriate facilities (O’Donnell 1980:729; King 1980:751); but as the Canadian experience with charitable casinos shows, this is not the only option. One of the primary characteristics of state lotteries, in particular, is the extent to which they are operated by governments themselves. Manness (1989), for example, has described the shift from private to public control that followed the success of charitable and religious lotteries in Manitoba. The assumption of control by the Manitoba Lotteries Foundation was prompted by a concern to ensure closer supplier and participation controls after it was observed that public expenditure on lotteries had increased by 500 per cent, that lottery tickets were of poor quality and were thus open to abuse, and that the fees and overheads charged by some private operators were significantly reducing the amount of revenue potentially available to the beneficiaries. The form of control may therefore vary (Steeves 1989). It embraces facilities wholly owned and operated by the state (for example, charitable casinos in Manitoba and the Australian TABs), those privately owned and operated by licensees subcontracted to a state regulatory authority (for example, France Loto), those privately owned and operated by persons licensed by a state regulatory authority (for example, British, Australian and American casinos), and those privately owned and operated by persons who need do no more than comply with certain statutory requirements, possibly allied to notification requirements (as with lotteries in Great Britain). But the form does not necessarily dictate the manner in which the facilities will be promoted. As Eadington has remarked: the push for greater revenues has encouraged state operated lotteries to acquire many of the attributes that they would have been expected to acquire if they had been part of the private commercial gambling sector… if past trends continue, it is likely that lotteries will continue to develop products [such as video and mechanical lottery devices] similar to those now found in modern casinos. (Eadington 1989:12)

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

279

The assumption by state-operated gambling facilities of the characteristics of the private supplier, together with the elision of some of the traditional distinguishing features of games in the interest of revenue generation, places greater emphasis on the visibility and maintenance of stringent participation controls if the state also wishes to protect the consumer and to provide value for money controls. The difficulty for governments is, however, that they may be perceived as having too close an interest in their citizens’ gambling losses, and that participation controls have traditionally been accorded less importance where revenue generation is the preferred objective. The tensions created by a government’s promotion of gambling are well illustrated by the response of the existing commercial market to the introduction in Great Britain of its National Lottery. In line with its explicit objective of revenue generation, the government has permitted the promoter of the National Lottery (Camelot plc) a number of advantages over its rivals in the long-odds market. Notable among these is access to prime-time television advertising. In consequence, existing commercial gambling interests have brought considerable pressure to bear on the government to relax the regimes under which they operate, these being, in their view, outdated, intrusive and unnecessary. This pressure has also proved difficult for the Gaming Board for Great Britain, which finds itself seeking to hold on to a regime for which it is statutorily responsible, while the government of the day is, arguably, undermining the very objective (social control) which that regime traditionally has sought to realise. ‘The promotion and stimulation of gambling necessary if the [National] Lottery is to be a success is regarded as difficult to reconcile with the Government’s established policy, under which the Board operates, that the demand for gambling should not be unduly stimulated’ (Gaming Board 1994: para. 8). The government’s response to these commercial pressures has been to relax aspects of the regimes that have, for some thirty years, governed the supply of gaming machines, casino, bingo and off-track betting facilities.17 This relaxation is of importance because it is being driven not by any perceived changes in the level of demand for the facilities, but by commercial self-interest in substituting for a social control model, a regulatory system whose characteristics more closely follow a revenue generation model. These characteristics imply a less rigorous management of demand; accordingly, we may see the development of a cycle in which controls become progressively weaker, resulting in homogenisation of once discrete regulatory systems. Thus, in pursuit of a revenue generation model, the government introduces a national lottery whose regulation permits greater rather than lesser player access to the opportunity to gamble; this preferential access encourages existing suppliers who have been operating under a regime aimed at social control to seek a relaxation in the system applying to them. Once this is granted, the operator of the National Lottery will return to government to seek yet greater access (or other changes to operating conditions) because, it will argue, the revenue generation objective is being subverted by the greater access now offered to what are, by virtue of these progressive relaxations, its competitors. Thus changes in gambling regulation come increasingly to reflect what the supplier, not the government, conceives to be the appropriate management of the demand for commercial gambling facilities.

NOTES 1 The Directorate described the research as comprising:

Gambling cultures

280

the preparation of a comparative analysis of the situation in all member states in relation to the relevant regulations and controls and the actual nature and degree of the activities involved. The analysis should identify the different categories of activity covered and clearly indicate the ways in which such activities are regulated, controlled and conducted in each member state. The principles underlying the different ways in which such activities are authorised and controlled, or prohibited, should be explained. The ways in which these principles are enforced and the effectiveness of the controls applied should be examined. (European Community Directorate 1990: para. D2) 2 The Court of Justice of the European Communities has decided that member states’ domestic law proscribing the importation of lottery products from elsewhere within the Community is lawful: Commissioners of Customs and Excise v. Gerhart Schindler (The Times, 30 March 1994). 3 A number of states in the United States deliberately locate gambling media near state lines so that they can benefit from any unsatisfied demand from their neighbours. This location also means that the associated costs of problem gambling return to the neighbouring states. 4 Gambling can also be controlled, not for its own sake, but for the sake of public order in the conduct of some other activity, such as laws prohibiting or curtailing gambling in premises licensed for the consumption of alcoholic drinks. This chapter is not concerned with this kind of incidental control. 5 Commercial gambling comprises the organised supply of gambling opportunities by groups or individuals for the primary purpose of extracting business profit. It is the presence of organisation that distinguishes commercial gambling from casual profiteering, though this says nothing about the legality of the organisation. 6 Tables showing the availability of gambling media throughout the world are published annually by Gaming and Wagering Magazine; see also Rosecrance (1988:138–55). 7 For example, concerning the promotion of state-run lotteries in Canada (Beare 1989; Manness 1989:74). 8 See the collection of essays on regulation in Great Britain in Baldwin and McCrudden (1987). 9 Other shifts in government policy have resulted from the inertial force generated by the National Lottery; see text below. 10 On the other hand, legal gambling markets are, in general, more likely to be honestly conducted and offer greater security of payment to the player (King 1980:750–1; Christiansen and Shagan 1980:864). 11 Revenue generation is by no means a novel objective; lotteries have for centuries been so employed (Brenner 1990). 12 For a fuller working out of how these subsystems can be used as part of a regulatory structure controlling a national lottery, see Miers (1996). 13 As a participation control, prohibition on junkets serves to deny access to specific groups of privileged gamblers (high-rollers) and as such tend to be highly selective. Unlike other access-related controls, this prohibition does not primarily seek to minimise participation as a means of protecting the player (although it may do this); the objective typically is to exclude ‘foreign’ criminal elements and such activities as money-laundering and ‘kickbacks’. It may also serve as a management control to protect the casino against scams. 14 In pool betting, the practice of declaring dividends rounded down to the next (or possibly lower) whole currency unit; sometimes also called ‘breakages’. 15 A special issue of the Seton Hall Legislative Journal, 6, 105–316, contains the New Jersey Control Commission’s opinions in each of the following licence applications: Resorts

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

281

International (1979), Caesar’s Boardwalk Regency (1980), Bally’s Park Palace and Bally’s Manufacturing (1981), GNAC (1981) and Marina Associates (1981). 16 These regulations were under review in April 1995. 17 Since the summer of 1994, the Home Office has proposed or introduced changes involving, in the case of betting shops, the installation of AWP machines, the sale of racing publications and societies’ lottery tickets, the payment of pools winnings, the removal of their ‘dead frontage’, which shielded betting activities from the gaze of passers-by, and the installation of drinks vending machines; in the case of greyhound totes, course-to-course betting; in the case of casino, bingo and members’ clubs, increases in the number of jackpot machines; and in the case of AWP machines, the introduction of an all-cash machine (they currently give a mix of cash and tokens).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abt, V., Smith, J. and Christiansen, E. (1985) The Business of Risk, Kansas: University of Kansas Press. Aranson, P. and Miller, R. (1980) ‘Economic aspects of public gaming’, Connecticut Law Review 12:822–53. Baldwin, R. and McCrudden, C. (1987) Regulation and Public Law, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Beare, M. (1989) ‘Current law enforcement issues in Canadian gambling’, in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 177–98. Blakey, G. (1982) ‘State conducted lotteries: history, problems and promises’, Journal of Social Issues 35:62–86. Brenner, R. (1990) Gambling and Speculation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Breyer, S. (1979) ‘Analysing regulatory failure: mismatches, less restrictive alternatives, and reform’, Harvard Law Review 92. Caron, M. (1989) ‘Quebec lotteries’, in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 53–60. Christiansen, E. (1991) ‘The New Jersey experience and the financial condition of Atlantic City casinos’, Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming Newsletter, 2, Reno: University of Nevada. Christiansen, E. and Shagan, M. (1980) ‘The New York off-track betting law: an exercise in selective decriminalisation’, Connecticut Law Review 12:854–69. Cohen, R. (1982) ‘The New Jersey Casino Control Act: creation of a regulatory system’, Seton Hall Legislative Journal 6:1–22. Dixon, D. (1987) ‘Responses to illegal betting in Britain and Australia’, in W.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 1, Reno: University of Nevada: 247–79. ——(1991) From Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking, Anti-gambling and the Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Donnelly, J. (1982) ‘Junkets: regulation of casino marketing under the Casino Control Act’, Seton Hall Legislative Journal 6:71–84. Eadington, W. (1988) ‘The changing face of gambling in America in the 1980s and some comparisons to changes in the rest of the world’, in W.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 1, Reno: University of Nevada: 1–17. ——(1989) ‘Issues and trends in world gaming’, in Gambling in Canada, C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds), British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 3–26.

Gambling cultures

282

European Commission (1991) Gambling in the Single Market: A Study of the Current Legal and Market Situation, 3 vols, Luxembourg: Office for the Official Publications of the European Communities. European Community Directorate (1990) Study of National Regulation of Betting, Gaming and Related Activities in View of the Completion of the Internal Market, Luxembourg: Office for the Official Publications of the European Communities. Fels, A. (1982) ‘The political economy of regulation’, University of New South Wales Law Journal 5:29–60. Gaming Board for Great Britain (1971) Gaming Clubs (Permitted Areas) Regulations 1971 SI 1971/1538, London: HMSO. ——(1994) Report of the Gaming Board for Great Britain 1993/94, London: HMSO: HC 465. Hawkins, M. (1982) ‘The Atlantic City experience: casino gambling as an economic recovery programme’, Seton Hall Legislative Journal 6:85–104. Holmes, W. (1985) ‘Video games: concepts and latent influences’, in W.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Studies: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 1, Reno: University of Nevada: 191–208. Home Affairs Committee (1991) Levy on Horserace Betting, Fourth Report of the Home Affairs Committee, Session 1990–91, HC 146, London: HMSO. Home Office (1992) A National Lottery Raising Money for Good Causes, Cm. 1861, London: HMSO. Hybels, J. (1982) ‘The impact of legislation on illegal gambling participation’, Journal of Social Issues 35:27–35. Kaplan, H. (1989) ‘Can lotteries save us?’ in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 307–14. Kelly, J. and Herbig, H. (1988) ‘A comparison of German and Austrian casinos and slot machine operations’, in W.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 1, Reno: University of Nevada: 180–9. King, A. (1980) ‘Public gaming and public trust’, Connecticut Law Review 12:740–61. Lehne, R. (1986) Casino Policy, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lesieur, H. and Rosenthal, R. (1991) ‘Pathological gambling: a review of the literature’, Journal of Gambling Studies 7:5–40. Livernois, J. (1987) ‘The redistributive effects of lotteries: evidence from Canada’, Public Finance Quarterly 15:339–51. McMillen, J. (1988) ‘Gambling in casinos: a political economy of Australian developments’, Journal of Gambling Behavior 4:152–70. ——(1989) ‘The future: golden goose or Trojan horse: symposium summation’, in C. Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 371–410. ——(1990) ‘Casino policies: have Australians had a fair deal?’ Journal of Gambling Studies 6:3– 30. McMillen, J. and Eadington, W. (1986) ‘The evolution of gambling laws in Australia’, New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law 8:167–92. Manness, G. (1989) ‘Views from the regulators: Manitoba’s situation’, in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 69–77. Meyer, R. (1980) ‘Accounting for the winnings—auditing gambling casinos’, Connecticut Law Review 12:809–21. Michael, G. (1982) ‘Whose licence is it anyway? The evaluation of the suitability of a corporation for a casino licence’, Seton Hall Legislative Journal 6:41–54. Miers, D. (1984) ‘The regulation of commercial gaming’, Journal of Law and Society 11: 33–66.

Objectives and systems in the regulation of commercial gambling

283

——(1987) ‘The Gaming Board for Great Britain: enforcement and judicial restraint’, in R.Baldwin and C.McCrudden (eds) Regulation and Public Law, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 81–106. ——(1989) ‘Developments in commercial gambling in Great Britain’, in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 27–52. ——(1996) ‘Regulating Great Britain’s National Lottery’, Paper presented at the Ninth International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, Las Vegas, Nevada, May 1994. To be published in W.Eadington and J.Cornelius (eds), Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives, Institute for the Study of Gaming and Commercial Gambling, University of Nevada, Reno. Mitler, E. (1985) ‘A tale of two systems and two cities’ casino regulation: Wiesbaden, West Germany, and Atlantic City’, in W.Eadington (ed.) Gambling Studies: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 1, Reno: University of Nevada: 414–35. Nevada State Gaming Control Board (1983) Report on the Queensland, Australia Gaming Regulatory System by Nevada‘s Attorney-General, Carson City, NV. New Jersey (1977) New Jersey Staff Policy Group on Casino Gambling, Second Interim Report (17 Feb.). O’Donnell, W. (1980) ‘A chief executive’s views on the necessity for comprehensive state control and regulation in the United States gaming industry’, Connecticut Law Review 12:727–39. Osborne, J. and Campbell, C. (1989) ‘Recent amendments to Canadian lottery and gaming laws: the transfer of power from federal to local governments’, in C.Campbell and J. Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 127– 48. Peters, M. (1989) ‘Canadian horse racing industries in the age of modern lotteries’, in C. Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 315–22. Reuter, P. (1982) ‘Easy sport: research and relevance’, Journal of Social Issues 35: 166–82. Rosecrance, J. (1988) Gambling without Guilt: The Legitimation of an American Pastime, Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole. Santaniello, M. (1982) ‘Casino gambling: the elements of effective control’, Seton Hall Legislative Journal 6:23–40. Skolnick, J. (1978) House of Cards: The Legalisation and Control of Casino Gaming, Boston: Little, Brown. Skolnick, J. and Dombrink, J. (1979) ‘The legalisation of deviance’, in E.Sagarin (ed.) Criminology, London: Sage. ——(1980) ‘The limits of gaming control’, Connecticut Law Review 12:762–84. Smith, G., Williams, B. and Pitter, R. (1989) ‘How Alberta amateur sports groups prosper through legalised gambling’, in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 323–36. Snyder, L. (1980) ‘Regulation of legalised gambling: an inside view’, Connecticut Law Review 12:665–726. Steeves, B. (1989) ‘Canadian lottery schemes and their regulation: a view from New Brunswick’, in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 93–8. Suits, D. (1982) ‘Economic background for gambling policy’, Journal of Social Issues 35: 43–61. Thompson, W. (1986) ‘“You haven’t seen anything yet”: a comparative summary of casino gambling in Northern Europe and the United States’, Unpublished paper, Department of Management, Las Vegas: University of Nevada. Thompson, W. and Dombrink, J. (1989) ‘A politically acceptable model of casino gaming for American jurisdictions’, in C.Campbell and J.Lowman (eds) Gambling in Canada, British Columbia: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University: 337–70.

Gambling cultures

284

——(1990) The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos, Reno: University of Nevada Press. Thompson, W. and Pinney, K. (1990) ‘The emergence of Dutch casinos: a case study of mismarketing’, Journal of Gambling Studies 6:205–22. United States (1976) Gambling in America: Final Report of the Commission on the Review of the National Policy on Gambling (Morin Commission), Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Vernooij, M. (1988) ‘A new legal system for gaming machines in the Netherlands’, in W. Eadington (ed.) Gambling Research: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, 1, Reno: University of Nevada: 198–205.

I

INDEX Abbia (dice game) 167 Abbott, M. and Volberg, R. 164 abortion 43, 44, 45, 46, 49–50, 58, 59, 60 Abt, V. et al. 7, 17, 18–19, 22, 24, 26, 48, 65, 66, 78, 79, 80–1, 113, 114, 115, 175, 179, 180, 182, 186, 187, 189, 274–5, 276; and Smith, 113, 183 Adams, G. 66, 68 Adams, R. 277 addiction 227–8, 239; consumption curves 228–9; cross- 229–30; and effect of tolerance/withdrawal 231 Adler, J. 21, 229 AIDS 51, 53, 51, 53 Akpaca, M. 175 Albagli, C. 177 Albanese, J. 14 Alchin, T.M. 9 alcohol 48, 58, 82, 161, 163, 228, 229–30, 238, 246, 272, 274, 295 Alcoholics Anonymous 230 Alford, R. 185 Allcock, C.C. and Dickerson, M.G. 238 Altman, D. 52, 53 Altman, J. 7 Altman, R. 113 Alvarez, A. 105, 107–8, 113 American Psychiatric Association 160 amusement arcades 213 Andrews, B. 131 anti-gambling 30, 78, 90, 92–4, 190, 274 Aranson, P.H. and Miller, R.L. 8, 294, 301 aristocracy 266–9, 270 Armley survey 139–41, 150 art 44–5 Asbury, H. 179 attribution theory 236 Australian Post 127 Avery, J. 89 Bacon, 147 Baker, A. 105 Baldwin, R. and McCrudden, C. 307

Index

286

Banker, L. 106 Baritz, L. 111, 112, 115 Barlett, D. and Steele, J. 185 Barthes, R. 32, 125 Beare, M. 279, 290, 295, 297, 302, 307 Beasley, J. 129 Becker, H.A. et al. 213, 214 Becker, H.S. 15, 16, 45 Bejerot, C. and Bejerot, M. 227 Bell, F. 139 Belladonna, Georgio 235 Bergler, E. 13 betting 66, 67, 79, 288; female 139; shops 295, 296, 303 Betting Duty (1926–29) 91–2 Betting and Gaming Acts 136, 270 bingo 3–4, 136–41, 158, 187, 205, 207–8, 211, 215, 220, 244, 288, 295, 303, 304, 307; as a club 146–7; explained 141–2; ritual of 144–6; sociability of 142–3; winning/losing at 143–4; and women 147–50; as working-class preoccupation 141 birth rate 83 Blackmun, Justice 59 Blackstone, W. 88, 97 Blake, J.D. 129 Blakey, G.G. 120, 297; and Kurland, H.A. 11 Blascovich, J. et al. 21 Blaszczynski, A.P. 238; et al. 14, 227; and McConaghy, N. 230 Bloch, H. 13, 17 Block, A. and Chambliss, W.J. 88 Bluestone, B. and Harrison, B. 185, 186 Blume, S.B. 230 Board of Inquiry into Poker Machines 156 Bolen, D.W. 23 Bolt, B. 113 Bolton, R. 44 Bongiorno, B.D. 97 Bonnie, R. and Whitebread, C.H. 54 Booker, C. 140 bookmakers/bookmaking 86, 88, 90–1, 93, 96, 104, 139, 180, 191, 196 Boorstin, D. 109, 114 Booth, C. 139 Bottom, B. 97 Bourdieu, P. 220 Bowman, D. 69

Index

287

Box, K. 139 Box, S. 30 Bradshaw, R. 131 Brasey, E. 175 Brennan, N. 118 Brenner, G.A. et al. 175 Brenner, R. and Brenner, G.A. 170, 174, 177 Breyer, S. 294 bridewealth 171, 177 Brinner, R.E. and Clotfelter, C.T. 189 Brockner, J. and Rubin, J.Z. 237 Brown, D. 89 Brown, R.I.F. 14; and Robertson, S. 234 Browne, B.R. 235 Brunson, Doyle 105, 107–8 Buffy, H. 118 Bulbeck, J. 130 The Bulletin 83, 119 Bursik, R.J. and Grasmick, H.G. 50 Bush, George 44, 54, 183, 195 Business Week 175 Cabot, A.N. and Schuetz, R.J. 9, 24, 27, 255 Caillois, R. 12, 104, 167, 179 Caldwell, G.T. 17, 153, 154, 236, 237; et al. 7, 94, 230 Campbell, C.S. 30, 279; and Lowman, J. 7, 279; and Ponting, J.R. 25, 30, 31, 279 Campbell, F. 17, 20 Campbell, J. 113 Capling, A. and Galligan, B. 18 card games 103, 104, 110, 112, 169–70, 187 Carlson, N.R. 226, 227, 231 Caron, M. 295 Carter, Jimmy 183 Casino Control Act (1977) 301–2 casinos 5, 23, 24, 43, 48, 57, 102, 104, 110, 111, 112, 152, 157, 182, 186, 188, 192–5, 205, 208–9, 213, 215, 219, 230, 244, 249, 251–5, 257–8, 288, 291, 304, 307; American 272–7; British 269–72, 281; control and regulation of 295, 296, 299, 300, 301–2; defined 282; development of 25–9, 31; European 266–9; evolution of contemporary 265; globalisation of 263–5, 277–81, 283 Chafetz, H. 23, 112 Chambliss, W. 14, 30 charitable gambling 249, 256–7

Index

288

Charlton, P. 17, 65, 77, 86, 93 chess 232–4 Childress, S.A. 52 Childs, K. 122 Chinn, C. 91 Christiansen, E.M. 48, 101, 102, 113, 114, 183, 298; and Shagan, M. 298, 307 Chuter, C. 71–2, 74, 75 Cilento, R. 70 cinema 113, 138–9, 146 civil rights 53, 56, 60 Clapson, M. 91 Clark, A. 89; et al. 87 Clark, R.C. 278 Clinton, Bill 45 Clotfelter, C.T. and Cook, P.J. 43, 49, 58, 65, 66, 67, 78–80, 81, 82, 109, 111, 112, 114, 249, 250, 274 Cochrane, T. 71 Cohen, K. 27 Cohen, M. 175 Cohen, R. 298, 299 coin-operated gaming devices 102, 108, 113 Colasanto, D. 54 competition 101 computer games 234–5 Comstock, G.D. 53 consumption 111; curves 228–9 control see regulation and control control theory 13–14 Cook, D.R. 229 Coopers and Lybrand 259 Coral 96 Corbitt, 226 Cornell Law Project (1977) 11, 47, 57 Cornish, D.B. 11, 25, 136, 153 corruption 89–91, 174–5, 177, 245, 268 Costigan, F. 93–4, 94, 97 Council of Churches 76, 84 Council on Compulsive Gambling 83, 83 Courier-Mail 82 Cowan, J. 13 credit-card lotteries 197 Cressey, D.R. 30 crime 14, 20, 25, 26, 29–32, 243, 245, 268, 272–7, 281, 294, 296, 307; and the law 46–7 Crime Control Act (1970) 29 Criminal Justice Commission (CJC) 88, 89, 90, 95 Crisp, L. 131 Crombie, J. 92 Currie, E. 54, 55

Index

289

Custer, R.L. and Milt, H. 227 Daily Express 137 Daily Telegraph 136 Daley, K. 163, 236 Dandalos, Nick ’the Greek’ 106 D’Angelo, R. 17 Dark, E. 129 Das, A.K. 229 Davies, A. 91 Deem, R. 147 D’Emilio, J. 53 Dennis, N. et al. 17, 153 Dessant, J. 11 Devereux, E.C. 8, 13, 15, 17 deviancy theory 15, 16 Devlin, P. 46 dice-playing 103 Dickens, C. 199 Dickerson, M.G. 13, 159, 160, 224, 238; and Baron, E. 154, 164; et al. 158, 161, 236; and Hinchy, J. 158 Dielman, T.E. 12 Dixey, R. 22, 147 Dixon, D. 8, 14, 23, 25, 32, 67, 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 96, 97, 294, 297; and Miers, D. 8, 31 dog-racing 292, 307 Dombrink, J.D. 14, 30, 33; and Thompson, W.N. 8, 14, 26–7, 43–4, 49, 57, 179, 251, 277 Donnelly, J. 300 Doogue, J. 122 Dostoevsky, F. 232 Dowie, J. 21 Downes, D.M., et al. 15, 16, 20, 21, 141, 144, 148, 153, 179; and Rock, P. 13 Downs, D.A. 51 Downton, F. 21 Driehuis, W. 211 drugs 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 58, 59, 161, 224, 225–6, 229, 232, 246, 295; changes in legal/societal treatment of 53–6; effect of tolerance/withdrawal 231; and inheritance 226–7; and physiology 227 Duhig, J. 71 Dulles, F. 142 Dunleavy, P. 33 Duster, T. 58 Dutton, M. 131 Duyne, et al. 209 Dylan, B. 126–7

Index

290

Eadington, W.R. 7, 8, 23, 24, 26, 27, 57, 60, 252, 273, 274, 277, 290, 294, 295, 296, 301, 305; and Cornelius, J.A. 7, 26, 277; et al. 29; and Hattori, J.A. 9, 26, 273 Ebel, R.D. 26, 274 Eco, U. 220 Economic Intelligence Unit 171 Eldershaw, F.S. 118 Elias, N. 219; and Dunning, E. 218–19 Elliott, R.R. and Rowley, W.D. 273, 274 Emy, H. 263 Encel, S. 18 Esolen, G. et al. 283 ethnic minorities 212 European Commission 288, 289, 290, 292 euthanasia 45 Express Loterie 168, 169 Ezell, J.S. 177 Faderman, L. 52 Featherstone, M. 220 Feinberg, J. 60 Fels, A. 293 Ferrioli, M. and Ciminero, A.R. 229 Fey, C. Le 154, 155 Findlay, J.M. 101, 103, 112, 181, 184, 191, 194, 196 Finnane, 89 Fitzgerald, G.E. 90, 94, 97 Fitzgerald, R. 71 Focus 181 Fokker, G.A. 200, 219 football 140, 217 Foucault, M. 32 Fox, C. 86, 92, 97 France, C.J. 6 free enterprise 28, 30 Freud, S. 13 Frey, J.H. 56; and Eadington, W.R. 7 Fricke, G. 122 Friedman, M. 54; and Savage, L.J. 15 Frow, J. 122, 130 fruit machines 154, 208 Fuller, N.P. et al. 227 Fuller, P. 136 Gaboury, A. and Ladouceur, R. 237 gamblers 15, 17, 22, 33, 112;

Index

291

in Africa 170–3; age distribution of 172–3; as blacklegs 103; compulsive 167; frontier 103, 273, 283; heavy 223–4; image of 93–4; types of 114, 129 Gamblers Anonymous 83, 230, 235 gambling 139; acceptance of 46, 243; ambiguities in 14, 260–1; attitudes towards 17–18, 102, 243–4, 258; by exception 180; and choice 158, 163; commercial 2, 19, 23, 29, 57–8, 102, 181, 260, 267–9, 270, 275–7, 290, 293–4, 307; compulsive 246–7; as controversial 243; conventional views of 11–12; cultural transformation of 179–85; defined 6–7, 9, 16, 21–2; demand for 244, 296–8; different forms of 1–2, 3; disapproval of 7; economic objectives 257–8, 259; effect of tolerance/withdrawal 231; excessive 224, 232, 238; explanations of 2–3, 9–10, 23, 32; facilities for 291–6; in fiction 116–31; frequency of 159–61; future direction 4; globalisation of 277–82, 283; as goal-orientated activity 236; growth of 108, 111–12, 182–4; heavy 229–30, 239; history of 7–10, 190–5, 200–1; image of 102–3; legalisation of 9–10, 24, 196, 205–6; medical model of 4, 223–4, 235, 239, 246; moral/social considerations 4–5, 8, 245, 247–8, 260, 260–1, 274; motivations for 170–1; negative view of 12–15; opposition to 247; and policy issues 4, 24–5, 92, 243–4, 244–8, 257–8, 259; popularity of 3, 170; positive perspective 15–24; private 77–8; problems of 224, 237–8, 238; and public debate 245; rebellion of 102, 104; and reform 190–5;

Index

292

social administration 12, 20–4; status of 56–8, 103–4; traditional 104; uncertainty of 130 games of hazard 202, 207 games/gaming 6, 66, 67, 79, 101, 104, 110, 288; active 211, 220; and addiction 215; age, gender, class distinctions 214–15; autonomy and independence of 213; of chance 108, 235–7; cheating at 103; commercialisation of 201, 217; and consumers 213–14; as controversial 214; fraudulent 170; growth of 215–16; (il)legal 209–10, 247, 249–57; as instant pleasure 216–19; move to computerisation 111; permissive culture of 205–10; postmodern 211–16, 216, 219; role of 212; scientific understanding of 214; short-odds/ long-odds 211; of skill 235; style of 212 Gaming Acts 203, 204, 217, 271 Gaming Board for Great Britain 31, 137–8, 299, 304, 306 Gaming and Wagering Business 26 Garland, D. 25 Geertz, C. 7 Geis, G. 47, 48, 57, 60 General Dutch Lottery (ALN/SUFA) 205 Giddens, A. 220 Goffman, E. 16, 17, 107, 276 Golden Casket Art Union 65–6, 69–74, 80; maintaining success of 74–8 Golden Ten 209–10 Goldman, M.S. 51 Goldthorpe, J. et al. 15, 16 Gollan, D. 131 Goody, J. 144, 177 Graham, J. 235 Great Depression 191–2, 195, 196 Greek, C.E. and Thompson, W. 51 Greenberg, D.F. 52, 53 Greenfield, C. 130, 131 Grichting, W.L. 13 Griffiths, M.D. 237 Grinspoon, L. and Bakalar, J.B. 54 Gruen, A. 9, 15

Index

293

Gurstein, R. 45 Gusfield, J. 48, 58 Haig, B.D. 9 Hall, R. 94, 97 Haller, M. 190 Halliday, J. and Fuller, P. 13 Hand, I. 231 Hanlon, E. 69, 73, 76–7 Hardy, F. 17, 116, 117–19, 120–1, 131; But the Dead Are Many 119, 125–6, 128, 129; Journey to the Future 118–19, 121, 127; Power Without Glory 118, 119, 120, 122, 127, 128; The Four-Legged Lottery 119, 121, 125, 127, 128; The Great Australian Lover 122; The Hard Way 122, 129; The Loser Now Will Be Later to Win 126; The Obsession of Oscar Oswald 126; The Outcasts of Foolgarah 124–5; The Unlucky Australians 124; The Yarns of Billy Borker 122–3 Harrah, W.R. 193 Harris, M. 123 Harrison, P. 139 Hart, H.L.A. 46 Harvard Law Review 56 Harvey, D.219, 220 Hawkins, G. and Zimring, F.E. 51 Hawkins, M. 275, 276, 277, 298 Hayano, D.M. 17, 107, 235 Herald-Sun 127 Herman, R.D. 11, 13, 17 Hermkens, P.L.J. et al. 214 heroic gambling 105–8, 109, 110, 113, 114 Hickey, J.E. et al. 227 Hickie, D. 88, 89, 97 Hicks, A.J. 273 high-rollers 271, 283, 307 Hill, C.R. 23 Himmelstein, J.L. 44, 45, 54, 58 Hindess, B. 131 Hirst, P. 131 Hofstadter, R. et al. 191 Hogg, R. 89 Holland Casinos 208–9, 213, 217 Holmes, W. 301 Holthoon, F.L. 202 Home Affairs Committee 297 homosexuality 43, 45, 46, 52–3, 56 Hood, C. 8, 24 Hornadge, B. 124

Index

294

Horne, D. 123, 124; and Beal, D. 131 horse-racing 6, 47, 68, 103, 106, 120, 140, 169, 186, 188, 191, 195, 196, 203, 217, 247, 257, 264, 280, 290, 297 Huddersfield Friendly and Trade Societies Club 137 Huizinga, J. 7, 12, 114 Humphry, D. 45 Hunter, I. 130 Hunter, J.D. 44 Hunter, N.D. and Rubenstein, 53 Hybels, J. 297 Inciardi, J.A. and McBride, D.C. 55 income 171, 176–7, 189 Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) 90, 97 Indian gaming 152, 182, 244 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (1988) 182, 251, 252, 253, 277 informal economy 173, 177 information/communication 122 Inglis, K. 17, 93, 116 Irish Sweepstake 81, 289 Islam 167, 168, 174, 175 Jacobs, D.F. 227 Jacobs, J.B. 55 jambo 168 Jenness, V. 50 Jewison, N. 113 Johnson, J. 9, 26 Johnson, L. 131 Jordan, P.K. 70 Kadish, S. 47 Kalb, and Kingma, S. 220 Kallick-Kaufman, M. 20, 21 Kamisar, Y. 45 Kaplan, H.R. 48, 109, 298 Kaplan, J. 54, 55 Kaplan, L. and Maher, J. 21 Kapteyn, P. 204 Kefauver Committee 273 Kelly, J. 277; and Eadington, W.R. 264, 267, 271, 282; and Herbig, H. 296 Kent-Lemon, N. 278, 283 kienen 205, 207–8 Kimmel, M.S. 51 Kimura, M. 60 King, A. 294, 304, 305, 307 King, N. 130 King, R. 14

Index

295

Kingma, S. 207, 220 Kinsella, E.P. 86, 92 Kisch, E. 119 Kleiman, M.A.R. 54, 55 Kok, I. et al. 214 Korac, B. 60 Kornblum, A. 30 Kozlowski, P. 24 Krivanek, J. 224 Kuper, L. 138 Kurata, K. 60 Kutchinsky, B. 52 La Fleur, T. and Hevener, P. 264 Ladbrokes 93, 96, 212 Lampen, B. 275 Land Act Amendment Act (1920) 71 Lang, J. 77 Langer, E.J. 162 ‘Las Vegas nights’ 244, 253 Lasch, C. 111, 112 Lasch, S. 219, 220 Lasky, A. 60 law/legislation 28, 29–32, 33, 47–9, 202–5, 218, 247–8, 259, 267, 269–71, 274–5, 282, 283, 302; see also regulation and control Lawson, H. 117, 119 Le Fleur, I. 197 Leach, R. 111, 115 Ledermann, 229 Lees, S. and Senyard, J. 131 Lehne, R. 8, 9, 24, 28, 29, 275, 277, 299 leisure/recreation 15–20, 78, 223, 259–60 Lelart, M. 177 Lemon, A. 23 Lesieur, H.R. 13, 14; and Custer, R.L. 13; et al. 230; and Puig, K. 13; and Rosenthal, R. 301 Levin, B. 136 Levy, E.J. 278 Lewis, S. 191 Light, I. 14 Lindesmith, A.R. 54 Livernois, J. 301 Lloyd-Jones, J. 95 Lockwood, D. 140 Loterie congo 169 Loterie Nationale 169 Loterie Nationale du Sénégal (LONASE) 169, 176

Index

296

lotteries 4, 6, 24, 43, 48, 49, 57, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 140, 158, 167, 170, 177, 181, 199, 219, 244, 249–51, 264, 288, 291–2, 295, 299, 305, 307; absence of private enterprise control 80–1; in Africa 173–5; and community projects 72, 78; as controversial 78–9, 81; demographics of 109; drawing systems 75–6; exclusive 200; factors conducive to 70–2; and finance of public works 181–2; illegal 81; mammoth 73, 76; moral motives for participating in 200; popularity of 65–6, 82, 102; private 78–9, 80; prohibited 67–9, 79; scandals connected with 75–6; as source of government revenue 77; see also Golden Casket Art Union Lottery Bill (1966) 77 lotto 109–10, 111, 114, 164, 169, 188, 205, 217, 264 Louisiana Lottery scandal 48, 185, 186 Lowenhar, J. et al. 27, 275 Lowy, M. 185 Lucas, A. 75 Luker, K. 44, 45, 50, 58 Lund, J. 75–6 Lusher, E.A. 95 Lynch, R. 17, 126, 154, 236 Maastricht 288–9 McCall, G.J. 14 McCormack, William 74 McCoy, A.W. 23, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 97, 117 MacGinley, M. 71 McGregor, C. 131 machine gaming 4 Macintyre, S. 67 McKernan, S. 118 McKibbin, R. 23, 139 McLaren, J. 117 Maclean, N. 7 McMillen, J. 7, 18, 23, 24, 33, 94–5, 95, 130, 280, 290, 293, 298, 302–3, 304; and Eadington, W.R. 14, 18, 67, 158, 292, 294; and Lafferty, G. 18 Macomber, D.M. 26, 276 Mafia 88 Mahon, G. 194 Manness, G. 305, 307 Maples, D. 60

Index

297

Mapplethorpe, Robert 45 March, J.G. and Olson, J.P. 33 Marcum, J. and Rowen, H. 265 Marcuse, H. 124 Marin, B. 268 Marotta, T. 53 Marshall, A. 119 Martinez, T. 17, 179 Marty, M. and Appleby, S. 44 Marx, K. 32 materialism 101 Maternity Act (1922) 72, 73 Matthews, J.J. 83 Matza, D. 15 Maze, J. 224 Meagher, D. 88, 97 Mecca 96, 138 Meeker, J.W. et al. 53 Meller, H. 138 Meyer, R. 300 Michael, G. 299 Middelburg, B. 209 Miers, D. 7, 8, 13, 14, 24, 25, 31, 264, 269, 270, 271–2, 296, 298, 299, 300, 307; and Dixon, D. 25 Mill, J.S. 46 Minangoy, R. 177 Mitchell, A. 117 Mitchell, M. 106 Mitler, E. 296 Model Penal Code 47 Moffitt, A. 97 money 170, 176, 218, 219 Monteil, V. 168 morality 4–5, 8, 14, 200, 245 Morin Commission 20, 29, 48, 273, 274, 275, 278 Morris, M. 131 Morrison, J. 121 motherhood 72–3, 83 Motherhood, Child Welfare and Hospital Fund 72–3 Musto, D. 54 Nabokov, V. 232–4 Nadelman, E.A. 54 National Council on Problem Gambling 183 National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) 44 National Foundation for the Exploitation of Casino Games 208 National Lottery (Camelot plc) 305–6 National Sports Totalisator (SNS) 203, 205, 207, 210, 213, 217 Nederlandse Staatswetten 203 Negrete, N. 60 Neumann, M. and Eason, D. 126

Index

298

Nevada State Gaming Control Board 298 New Deal 191 New Right 45 Newman, O. 12, 24, 136, 139 News Chronicle 136 Nieti Xob 169 Nile, F. 93 Niskanen, W.A. 33 Njoh Soppo, A. and Tiako, M. 168 Noble, W. 75 Nova 137 numbers games 189 Observer 149 O’Connor, J. 30, 183, 185, 191 O’Donnell, W. 293, 305 O’Farrell, P. 71 off-course betting 86, 93, 158, 183, 212, 292, 294, 296, 297, 304, 306; enforcement and corruption 89–91; and information/communication 87–9, 94; local/national state differences 94–5; and taxation 91–2 Offe, C. 185, 191 O’Hara, J. 14, 17, 18, 23, 65, 66, 67, 67–8, 86, 89, 92, 94, 97 Oldfield, L. 164 Oldman, D. 13, 17, 21 Olson, M. 33 O’Malley, P. 89 one-armed bandits 154 Orford, J. 224, 228 Osborne, J.A. and Campbell, C.S. 30, 279, 304 Packer, H.L. 47 Paglia, C. 45 Painter, M. 18 Palmer Raids 192 Palmer, V. 118 Pari Sportif 168–9 pari-mutuel 112, 114, 168–9, 175, 177, 182, 187, 192, 194, 247, 249, 255–6, 257, 288, 292, 297, 301 Parker, S. 16 Paterson, A.B. ‘Banjo’ 117 Paton, J.H. 13 People 127 Pertschuk, M. and Shopland, D.R. 45 Peters, M. 298 Peterson, V.W. 13 Philadelphia Inquirer 110 pillarisation 203, 219 Pivar, D.J. 51 play 101, 181;

Index

299

defined 114 player activated lottery machine (PALM) 187 poker 105–8, 110, 126, 187, 235, 292–3; machines 154, 164 Polan, A.J. 130 police 31, 88, 89, 90–1, 97–8, 283 Pollak, M. 122 Polsky, N. 14 pornography 43, 46, 51–2, 246 positivism 20–3, 30, 32 Posner, R. 33 Postal Act (1901) 68 power 117, 123 pragmatism 212 Preston, ‘Amarillo Slim’ 105 Prichard, K.S. 117, 118 privacy rights 59 Proctor, C. 89 Prohibition 192–4, 272 prostitution 43, 46, 49, 50–1, 82, 246, 272, 274, 283 Protestant ethic 183–4, 191, 195, 202 Pryor, F.L. 16 psycho-social theories 153 public choice theory 25–9 Queensland loans affair 70–1 Queensland Parliamentary Papers 76, 77 Quiggin, P. 70, 83 Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organisations (RICO) 52 Rangel, Charles 55 Ransom, B. 24, 27, 275 Ranulf, S. 58, 59 Reagan, Ronald 45, 54, 58, 183, 195 regulation and control 3, 5, 7, 97, 163–4, 288–91, 293–308; factors affecting choice of 301–6; management 300–1; national/local interests 303–4; objectives 294–8; public/private suppliers 304–6; supplier 299; systems 298; see also law/legislation Reisz, K. 113 religion 45, 46 Reuter, P. 14, 21, 29, 272; and Rubenstein, J. 14, 30, 181 Rich, D. 145 RICO see Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organisations Ridge, V. 128 risk 102, 112, 179, 180

Index

300

riverboat gambling 49, 56, 103, 152, 180, 183, 252, 253, 257 Robins, L. 109 Roosevelt, F.D. 191 Rose, N. 8, 24, 26, 27, 57, 60, 246, 265, 277, 282, 283 Rosecrance, J. 8, 9, 13, 14, 17, 276, 307 Rosen, R. 113 Rosenthal, F. 167 Rosett, R.N. 13 Rothschild Report (1978) 20, 93, 95, 270, 283 roulette 204, 210, 211 Rowlatt, S. 90 Royal Commission on Gambling (1977) 148 Rubenstein, J. 277 Rubner, A. 13, 24 Russian roulette 176 Ruthven, K.K. 130 Ryan, T. 69, 71, 74 Sané, O.B. 175 Santaniello, M. 300 Sarason, I.G. and Sarason, B.R. 226 Sartin, H.G. 238 Satré, P. 275 Schalken, T.M. 210 Schama, S. 199 Schultz, George 54 Schur, E.H. 47; and Bedau, H.A. 47 Scimecca, J.A. 16, 21 Scorsese, M. 113 Scott, J. 60 Scott-Fitzgerald, F. 106, 191 scratch games 82, 84, 156 Segal, L. and McIntosh, M. 51 Seigel, Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ 193–4 Selesner, G. 278 Self, P. 24, 33 Semmler, C. 119, 126, 129 Servet, J-M. 170, 176 Seton Hall Legislative Journal 275 Shelton, Revd Louis 53 Shilts, R. 53 Shonkwiler, J.S. 26 Simmel, E. 13 Simmel, G. 219 Simon, A. 60 sin tax 59–60, 180 Single European Act (1986) 288 Skinner, B.F. 161 Sklansky, D. 105 Skogan, W. 50

Index

301

Skolnick, J.H. 8, 24, 26, 30, 47, 48, 60, 255, 273, 274, 276, 294; and Dombrink, J. 43, 48, 55, 294, 295, 299 Slater, P. 111 Slim, Amarillo 235 slot machines 110, 114, 152, 168, 208, 211, 212, 213, 219, 220, 229, 236, 237–8, 276, 308; access to 157; and causes of impaired control of play 161–2; and computerised monitoring 156; and control over individual expenditure 161; development of 154–7; excessive/problematic players 160–1; government control/regulation of 163–4; high frequency players 160; low/medium frequency players 159–60; and psychological process of playing 157–61, 163 Small Lotteries and Gaming Act (1956) 137 Smith, G. et al. 298 Smith, J.F. 113 Smith, R.I. 193 Smith, R.W. and Preston, F.W. 17 smoking 59, 161, 163, 246 SNS see National Sports Totalisator Snyder, L. 29, 297, 304 Soja, E. 143 Solomon, R.L. and Corbitt, J.D. 227 Soper, W.B. and Miller, M.J. 234 The South Wales Argus 148 SP see starting price odds Spanier, D. 235, 282 Sparrow, M.K. et al. 90 spillage 289–90 Spiro, M. 189 sports betting 48, 49, 104, 106, 187 Spring-Rice, M. 148 stagflation 211–12 Stalinism 118–19, 125–6, 129–30 Starr, V.A. and Menczer, 283 starting price odds (SP) 87, 88, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 297 state, fiscal crisis of 185–90; fiscal needs of 192, 195; legalisation policy of 180–1; role of 15, 19, 20, 25, 27–9, 30–2, 82, 181–5, 218, 264–5, 267–8 state lotteries 67–8, 70, 82–3, 182, 185–90, 196, 201, 204, 216–17 Steeves, B. 305 Steffens, L. 190 Sternlieb, G. and Hughes, J.W. 58, 254, 277 Stigler, G.J. 33 Strange, S. 263 Strauss, Jack 105 Street Betting Act (1906) 31, 86 Stubbs, and Underhill, 263 Stuurman, S. 202

Index

302

Suits, D. 9, 24, 298 Sullivan, G. 176 Sullivan, R. 44, 46 Summers, A. 22, 131 Sunday Times 119 Suppression of Gambling Act 74 Swaan, A.de 200 sweepstakes 68, 80, 81, 83 Sykes, T. 164 Symanski, R. 50, 51 Syme, D. 247 Taft, R. 230 Tattersall 66, 68, 74, 77, 77–8 tax 48, 59–60, 84, 91–2, 111, 167, 173, 174, 175, 180, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 194–5, 196, 267–8, 295, 297, 301, 305, 307 telephone gambling 197 television 139, 141, 213, 219 Thalheimer, R. 247 Theodore, Edward (Red Ted) 69, 71 Thomas, W.I. 153 Thompson, E.P. 148 Thompson, W.N. and Dombrink, J. 27, 296, 300, 301; and Pinney, K. 303 Thorp, E.O. 17 three cards 168 Time International 82 The Times 137, 307 Tocqueville, A.de 103 tontine 173, 177 Totalisator Agency Boards (TABs) 87, 88, 92, 95, 96, 124, 292 tourism 23, 264, 268, 269, 280, 281, 299 Traditional Values Coalition 53 Tremblay, A. 175 Tribe, L.H. 45 Turner, W. 13 two-stage model 153, 157–9 United States 18–20 Uston, Ken 105, 235 Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offences Bill (1931) 74 Vamplew, W. 23 van der Roer, R. 209 van Poelje, G.A. et al. 203 Veblen, T. 15 Vernooij, M. 300 vice/s 7, 43, 82, 103, 180, 246; changes in legal/societal treatment of 47–56; classic 43–6, 47, 57, 60; decriminalisation of 46;

Index

303

liberalisation of 43–4 video lottery terminals (VLTs) 108, 110, 111, 114, 187–8, 195, 197, 250–1, 261 Vila, B.J. 54 Volberg, R.A. and Steadman, H.J. 49 Volstead Act (1919) 191 Vorenberg, J. 45 Wagenaar, W.A. 163 wagers 101–2, 103, 112, 113, 176, 247 Walker, M.B. 7, 235, 236, 237, 238 Walkowitz, J.R. 51 Wannan, B. 121 Ward, R. 17, 67, 119, 121 Warwick Daily News 73 wealth 111–12, 115 Weber, M. 13, 32 Weinstein, D. and Deitch, L. 8, 20, 24 Weitzer, R. 50 Whitlam, E.G. 124 Whitton, E. 97 Wikler, A. 226 Wild, P. 138 William Hill/Mecca 96 Williams, L. 51 Williams, P. 130 Willink, H. 86 Wills, G. 46 Wilson, R.R. 122 Wilson, T. 65, 66, 68, 78, 83, 84 Wimbush, E. and Talbot, M. 147 Wise, R.A. 226, 229 Wittgenstein, L. 122 Wolfe, T. 191 Wolfenden Report (1963) 43, 46, 52 women 58, 139, 141, 145–6, 147–50, 168, 176, 212 work ethic 111, 204 working class 14, 16, 17, 21, 71, 80, 82, 92–4, 126, 139–41, 145, 149, 215 World Bank 169, 171, 174, 176, 177 Woung, S. 17 Wouters, C. 204, 218 Wray, I. and Dickerson, M.G. 231 Wykes, A. 6, 7, 264 Young, J. 25, 30 Zijlstra, A.A. 210 Zola, I.K. 14, 17, 153 Zuckerman, M. 160 Zurcher, L.A. 235; and Kirkpatrick, R.G. 51