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Effects (Micro) (The outcome of the meeting of
gambling and development)
In Table 2 I summarize the relevant similarities
and differences between the emergent South
African and California casino industries. In
general, South Africa is characterized by:
legitimation
through reference to the industry’s potential
for economic development (both growth and
justice), the
encouragement of relations between (Western)
firms and African PDI’s, and a competitive
industry
organized according to free market principles.
In California, meanwhile: legitimation was
accomplished
through the industry’s potential for
non-economic development (political and cultural
sovereignty), firmtribal
partnerships are stigmatized, and the industry
is monopolistic and relatively non-competitive.
In this section I will investigate the relation
between, on the one hand, the strategies of
legitimation and macro-industry structure
discussed above and, on the other, practices on
the micro-level
(i.e., in and around the actual casinos). For
the purpose of this paper I hypothesize a
harmony between
the two. But of course the possibility of
discord—i.e., of some sort of “decoupling” of
interorganizational discourses within the field
of power (i.e., among capital, state elites, and
non-profit
organizations) from the four discrete areas of
casino operations I discuss below—exists as
well. I then
conclude by considering possible, if unintended,
outcomes of the use of casino gambling as a
development tool in developing states, as well
as the relevance of such outcomes to
contemporary debates
on the globalization of Western institutional,
economic and cultural forms.
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