Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Enclave Development and Socio-spatial Transformations in Asian Borderlands
- 1 Post-disaster Development Zones and Dry Ports as Geopolitical Infrastructures in Nepal
- 2 Onwards and Upwards: Aerial Development Zones in Nepal
- 3 Casinos as Special Zones: Speculative Development on the Nation’s Edge
- 4 Thinking the Zone: Development, Climate, and Heterodystopia
- 5 From Shangri-La to De facto SEZ: Land Grabs from “Below” in Sikkim, India
- 6 Development Zones in Conflict-Affected Borderlands: The Case of Muse, Northern Shan State, Myanmar
- 7 Smart Enclaves in the Borderland: Digital Obligations in Northeast India
- 8 Post-Disaster Economies at the Margins: Development, Profit, and Insecurities Across Nepal’s Northern Borderlands
- 9 Development from the Margins: Failing Zones and Suspended Development in an Indonesian Border Village
- 10 From Boom to Bust – to Boom Again?: Infrastructural Suspension and the Making of a Development Zone at the China-Laos Borderlands
- 11 Genealogies of Extraction: De Facto Development Zones in the Indonesian Borderlands
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
3 - Casinos as Special Zones: Speculative Development on the Nation’s Edge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Enclave Development and Socio-spatial Transformations in Asian Borderlands
- 1 Post-disaster Development Zones and Dry Ports as Geopolitical Infrastructures in Nepal
- 2 Onwards and Upwards: Aerial Development Zones in Nepal
- 3 Casinos as Special Zones: Speculative Development on the Nation’s Edge
- 4 Thinking the Zone: Development, Climate, and Heterodystopia
- 5 From Shangri-La to De facto SEZ: Land Grabs from “Below” in Sikkim, India
- 6 Development Zones in Conflict-Affected Borderlands: The Case of Muse, Northern Shan State, Myanmar
- 7 Smart Enclaves in the Borderland: Digital Obligations in Northeast India
- 8 Post-Disaster Economies at the Margins: Development, Profit, and Insecurities Across Nepal’s Northern Borderlands
- 9 Development from the Margins: Failing Zones and Suspended Development in an Indonesian Border Village
- 10 From Boom to Bust – to Boom Again?: Infrastructural Suspension and the Making of a Development Zone at the China-Laos Borderlands
- 11 Genealogies of Extraction: De Facto Development Zones in the Indonesian Borderlands
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter offers a reflection on the speculative ways in which global casino hotels become new zones of development in many Asian destinations. As ultra-modern integrated resorts developed to boost tourism and foreign direct investment, these casino and entertainment enclaves carve out exceptional spaces in search of profit and legitimacy. Looking at casino establishments in Asia's special economic zones, this chapter examines the development of casino zones as a strategy for progress in places still marred by underdevelopment. New casino zones create novel forms of territorialisation and responsibilisation, enabling differentiated biopolitics of control.
Keywords: casino, development, Integrated Resorts, special zones, zoning, control
Introduction: Casino Frontiers in Asia
About a decade ago, in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, a casino building boom swept across Asia where governments of different nationstates started to revamp their tourism and leisure industries centred around the global gaming economy. Luxurious mega-casino resorts mushroomed in diverse destinations in Asia, from Singapore to Macau, from Laos to the Philippines, including places that have long held conservative views against gambling and the vice economy associated with it. These new resorts featuring integrated business and entertainment interests have become the trendiest development projects that promise to improve foreign direct investment, state tax revenue, local employment, and to deliver transformative results to the national economy. As a potent antidote to the sluggish regional market, the casino industry carries high hopes for many Asian states to stimulate economic growth as well as to promote new national images as modern, cosmopolitan, and progressive. Packaged as global integrated resorts (IRs), these latest development projects decidedly separate themselves from the older model of casinos made for the main purpose of gambling. The modern IR fashions a specific “resort” appeal to shake off the stigma, sleaze, and crime around gambling by branding a destination venue with a world of funfair that incorporates conferencing and exhibitions, entertainment, theme parks, topped up by luxury shopping and fine dining. These new Asian casino IRs offer a broad range of entertainment options under one roof, with enough alternatives to suit every interest and desire. Mega-casinos are multi-layered social and political spaces where different networks and practices reshape power configurations. As socialspatial assemblages of gambling, entertainment, and speculation, casinos are productive sites where contesting practices produce new realities of citizenship, consumption, work, and governance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Development Zones in Asian Borderlands , pp. 73 - 96Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021