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Research Agenda. For each case I will collect a
sample of advertisements and interview
individuals involved with marketing in order to
then classify advertising themes in line with
the
schemas described above.
Conclusion.
While this prospectus has primarily been
concerned with explaining the “cultural work”
accompanying the legitimation of a global
gambling industry, I will here briefly consider
three additional
debates this research could address. First, in
both South Africa and California we find many of
the same
(primarily Nevadan) gambling firms seeking to
enter these new markets. This story is thus also
the most
recent chapter in the history of the Nevada
casino industry. Stigmatized originally as a
corrupt vendor of
vice, early Nevada casino operators had great
difficulty raising capital to begin new or
expand existing
facilities (Eadington 1984). Such were the
conditions in which various partnerships between
casino
owners and organized crime syndicates emerged
and flourished (Skolnik 1978). With Nevada’s
1969
Corporate Gambling Act, however, corporations
were for the first time allowed to own casinos.
The
increased legitimacy and access to capital such
corporate sponsorship afforded contributed to
the state’s
transformation into a national tourist
attraction. The third stage of Nevada casino
history occurred in the
late 1980’s, which witnessed increased
centralization among firms and a transformation
in firm structure
26
form privately-held to public -traded
corporations (Eadington 1999; Gottdiener et
al.). And while these
Nevada-based firms initially opposed the spread
of casino gambling outside the state, over the
past ten
years, I argue, their strategies have switched
to one of penetrating and dominating these new
markets.
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