Marie Jouan 27876254 Robin Psaila 27246269 October 21st, 2016 Melanie Dean ANTH 315/B Research Proposal The casino: a symbolic cultural place for gambling Word count: 2796 Sometimes, members of society take life-threating risks when they are fooling around and playing with their money. This activity, also called gambling, will be the topic of our research. We will see how gambling behaviors reflects and affects cultural and sociological values. Clifford Geertz once claimed that realizing ethnographic research on a society’s game of chance and luck could highlight the society’s culture, history and structure (Sallaz, 2008). Therefore, casinos and their populations are a great subject for modern anthropologists since they encompass cultural and social relationships in a given society. They represent an institution as well as the basis to the post-modern gambling industry. Brevers et al. explain that “gambling is characterized by intermittent rewards and losses delivered on a variable ratio, which entails imperfect prediction of reward.” (p410) We will learn how to develop arguments about the symbolism of the casino by establishing a research method to observe gambling behaviours and people in the Casino of Montréal. Indeed, this place mixes together different individuals with various cultural backgrounds, which enables a diversity in the sample that represents Montréal’s population and the casino’s population. We are not without knowing that gambling games are played not only in casinos but also on the Internet or in private gambling nights. However, we will focus ourselves on the study of the Casino of Montreal, asking ourselves why is this casino the main symbolic area of gambling in Montreal? During our research we hope to learn about: Why do people choose to go at the casino to gamble? What makes them think that they could win? What makes the casino attractive for individuals (gamblers and non-gamblers)? Is this casino, the general place in Montreal, where anyone would be betting his money? Some may say that people gamble because they feel a rush of pleasure when winning. However, are there no other reasons to why people enjoy gambling with money? If so, why do 2 they choose to gamble at the casino and not in other gambling settings such as the ones that emerged with the Internet and the development of new technologies (Brevers et al., 2014). In what aspects could the casino attract people to come play? Brevers argued that people are attracted to gambling because it often happens in a specific environment such as the casino which is seen as a delightful atmosphere (Brevers et al., 2014). Casinos aren’t a new field sites for anthropological research. Many anthropologists have already done many studies about casinos and gamblers. However, anthropology is not the only discipline that is interested in casinos and gamblers. Other studies, especially in health, have been made in order to understand gambling addiction and to find means of prevention. As we’ve said, many studies have been realized and this is why we will pay attention to this literature background in order to look at previous research methods, questions and findings. First, we will put forward some context and key aspects about the casino of Montréal. The Casino is owned by the “Societé des casinos du Québec” which is a subsidiary of LotoQuébec, a government of Québec corporation. The Casino of Montréal, located on the Notre Dame Island, was inaugurated on October 9th, 1993. The first Canadian commercial casino opened in Winnipeg in 1989, followed by the Casino of Montreal. Recently, this place has been renovated through an architectural project by called “The revival of the Casino de Montreal” to welcome shows, bars and restaurants but most importantly gambling games. Although it embeds luxury and money, this place is still accessible for free to anyone over 18. Therefore, it can be categorized as an adult public place. We read loads of different journal articles about casinos, gambling behaviors and gamblers. As we’re interested in the physical and material utilization of gambling (i.e. machines, 3 card games…) present in casinos, we will not be looking at academic literature that talks about online gambling. In order to ease the understanding of the previous anthropological literature about casinos and gambling we will divide this section in two main parts. The first part will focus on the findings of the five different journal articles chosen while the second part will put forward the different methodologies used by the authors. The first journal article highlights that casinos are made to impact on gamblers’ decision making. In other words, the casino’s atmosphere is supposed to affect gamblers’ or costumer’s behaviors. Indeed, three main factors are related to this effect: lights, sound and other gamblers. The first factor, light or the lack of it, makes the casino an exciting place (red light and warm colors) or a place where gamblers tend to lose their bearings (no clocks nor natural light) (Brevers et al., 2014). The sound effect on gamblers is related to the fact that high-tempo music will enhance the betting speed of gamblers while reward-related sounds will make the casino a pleasurable environment (Brevers et al., 2014). Finally, the presence of other gamblers and their relationship with each other tend to increase the decision and the betting speed of gamblers, reflecting the competition between them (Brevers et al., 2014). This argument reflecting the influences of casino’s environment on individuals is valuable to our study as we’re trying to find the casino’s effect on gamblers. The second article can be easily related to the first one as it shows how casinos attract people and make its environment seen as pleasurable for gamblers. The author focuses on casino’s advertising in all kinds of medias. Targeting the youth, those advertisings attract gamblers by making them believe that wins are always possible (McMullan & Miller, 2009). Through those advertisements, gamblers will see the casino as an entertaining, convivial and 4 exciting place, which can be related to cultural values important to them (McMullan & Miller, 2009). Pleasure, leisure, success and happiness are key features found in casino’ ads, erasing economic losses (McMullan & Miller, 2009). This is useful for our research because important cultural values of the Canadian’s society can be reflected in the Montreal’s casino advertisings. We will study some. Therefore, McMullan and Miller’s arguments apply to the context of our research. The next authors were more interested in the influence of gambling involvement on personal problems and the variations in gender and age concerning gambling involvement (Afifi, LaPlante, Taillieu, Dowd, & Shaffer, 2013). Although they analyze gambling games which not useful for us (internet gambling), their study was noteworthy because it presented the relationship between gambling frequency and gambling problem and risk (Afifi, LaPlante, Taillieu, Dowd, & Shaffer, 2013). As they couldn’t find a significant interaction of gambling involvement regarding gender and age, we might have to find a different method in order to confirm this hypothesis. In this article, Sallaz made a comparative ethnography of gambling contests using his own ethnographic research in a casino in South Africa and Geertz’s ethnographic research on Balinese cockfight. He highlighted how wagering contest are organized, institutionalized and experienced in those two different communities and cultures (Sallaz, 2008). Gambling contests diverge in basic organizational structure (Sallaz, 2008). For example, in the Balinese culture, cockfights is a symbol of resistance to the state of authority and it creates status of honour while in South Africa, gambling is legalized making gamblers economic consumers (Sallaz, 2008). Sallaz’s access to the casino “privé” was helpful in his study; will we have access to it too in the casino of Montréal? 5 The last article is about what motivates people to gamble and how they react to gambling. Gambling is seen as a lot of different things for recreational gamblers. It is viewed as a way of learning, as a mean to feel a rush, as a way to define oneself, as a moment shared with others or as a competition (Cotte, 1998). It can also be used to classify oneself in a group or to take risk (Cotte, 1998). As said earlier we are now going to look at the authors’ methodologies. The first authors used the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a psychological task simulating real-life decision-making in order to see the impact of light, sounds and pairs on gamblers’ decision making (Brevers et al., 2014). They designed the experiment with different environment conditions and asked the participants to answer a questionnaire at the end of the experiment. After this experiment, they interpreted the results with statistic tools. McMullan and Miller’s methodology consisted in analyzing a large amount of casino advertisings extracted from different media sources such as TV, radio, or print media. This reflects a quantitative method of analyzing although they combined it with a qualitative technique. The third article used a sampling method representative of Canada’s population. Afifi et al. took data “collected during 2002, using a random, multi-stage stratified cluster design to select private-dwelling Canadian residents aged 15 years and older from 10 provinces’’ (p. 285). The last two articles used a participant observation method although Sallaz’s article used the heuristic revisit method which is a two field site research using the fieldwork of another ethnographer in order to compare it to your own research site. The two sites must have similarities. So Sallaz used participant observation for his study but also used previous 6 ethnographic research to make a comparative ethnography. Cotte collected data in the casino and the shuttle bus and people were unaware that she was a researcher so there will be no distorted responses. However, with that way of acting, the researcher couldn’t have perfect field notes since they were taking after the conversation, outside of the casino. This researcher tried to interrogate as many gamblers as she could: this is called the “big net” approach (Cotte, 1998). We have seen how the topic of gambling and casinos has been studied so far. In order to contrast our research with the previous ones, we will investigate the different aspects of the casino and its population through the use of various research methods. Kathleen M. DeWalt and Billie R. DeWalt affirm that “to improve the likehood of accurary and objectivity in a project.” The method of participant observation can’t be the only research method employed. Therefore, we decided that we would employ the participant observation method as well as other methods to provide data for our research. As a matter of fact, we came up with a few ways that we could classify and study the various variables that makes the casino, a symbolic cultural institution. Since casinos are adult public places where loads of individuals with different cultural backgrounds coerce. We will pay attention to its functions by observing the interactions between the casino and the people. For example, Marie had never been in a casino before, it seemed for her like an inaccessible, dreamy and blurred place. As she stepped in for her first time, she seemed confused but also satisfied to finally see what it looked like. The first impressions are always great to observe because it is as if you were making someone discover this place that he only could imagine or see in movies before. As anthropologists, we thought it would be a great way to learn about general patterns, behaviors and relationships of people in this public place. Furthermore, the casino is not only a place where 7 people gamble, but it is also a place where we can find lots of different activities such as cabaret, theater, bars and restaurants. So we will see gamblers but additionally we’ll observe nongamblers and people who are here just to have a good time. As you can see, we will try to give a description of the population by distinguishing gamblers from non-gamblers. If we can we will try to specify the difference between hardcore gamblers and casual gamblers within the gambler category. Since we have encountered some restrictions about interviewing costumers when they’re inside the casino we will be questioning them in the bus or outside the casino. The casino’s staff allowed us to observe customers and staff members in the casino. However, we won’t be able to disturb them from playing or working. In a sense, it could be a good thing since the anthropologist is not supposed to disturb the subject of his research in his environment. Whether, he should try to be as reliable as possible when objectively describing the relationships between the individuals and the casino. Therefore, we’ll develop a participant observation method with short, straightforward interview questions that we will ask to a sample of individuals in the bus. Since we are two researchers. We thought that the best way to obtain the most reliable set of answers would be to have a constant switch between official researcher and unofficial researcher. On the one hand, Researcher 1 should ask his questions on an interview based-model and on the other hand, researcher 2 would ask questions in an unofficial and more friendly way. We hope that this method will be a way to obtain the answers that the people think they should give us, and the immediate answer they give to an unknown person. This process refers to how the ‘entrée’ in the field of research is processed. There are two types of entrée covert and overt. (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2010) “In covert entrée, the researcher does not make explicit that s/he is 8 engaged in a research project.” (p41) Even though DeWalt & DeWalt “believe that taking a covert participatory role is not ethical.” (p42) We believe that gathering fieldnotes from a covert participatory role perspective could help us blend in the social atmosphere of the casino. Whereas if we keep the overt participatory role, we might be too overlooked as being a researcher than actually being a participant observer. Therefore, we will use both by sometimes altering roles during our study and we will compare our findings. This method would also help us to reach and explain the implicit culture which transcends people through their activities in the casino whether by asking, observing or listening to them. Since participant observation is one of the main means of learning the explicit and tacit aspects of the lives and culture of a group of people. (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2010) We hope that our method will capture both of those aspects to prove that the casino is one of the symbolic site of gambling for gamblers and/or non-gamblers because it is a part of their lives and culture. After the bus interviews between the Jean Drapeau Metro station and the Casino de Montréal, we will try to classify the population that goes to the casino between, gamblers, nongamblers and other categories to make hypotheses about the importance of the casino as a symbolic cultural site. Then, we will go inside the casino to pay more attention to the patterns, details and behaviors of those groups of individuals. These observations will mostly take the form of fieldnotes which highlights quantitative and qualitative data. We are also hoping on some pictures depending on the consent of the individuals. We will try to interact and participate in gambling or other casino activities if we determine it as a necessary component of our research. We also thought about doing a social experiment where we would bring some friends to analyze their first time in a casino. Even though, we are still thinking on how to conduct the 9 experiment. We will also try to analyze gambling behaviors in relation to the architectural structure of the casino, his representation and advertisements. Finally, we will try use quantitative data from Loto-Québec, if they give us access to it, and also we are looking forward to get an interview with one of the representative or an employee of the Casino de Montréal. We hope to see how gambling has become important in society through its implications with the everyday lives of some people’s routines. We still haven’t looked at closely at those implications but we have established our anthropological methods that will make us able to prove such kind of hypotheses. We have also gathered examples of previous researches around gambling which help us distinguish or establish similarities with our study. We hope to learn from this experience the basis to any kind of modern anthropological research. The casino and other leisure institutions have been integrated to society by governments to gather profits. Even though, we will focus our study on the people, they are huge amounts of money flowing in and out of this industry and we should not forget that casinos don’t limit themselves to their clients. However, they have caused numerous changes in gamblers’ gaming and social behaviors as well as dedicated a culture space for ‘playing with your money’. How does ‘being at the casino’ influences people’s behaviors and lives? Why was it so important for us, humans, to have casinos and why do we enjoy them so much? 10 Bibliography • Afifi, T., LaPlante, D., Taillieu, T., Dowd, D., & Shaffer, H. (2013). Gambling Involvement: Considering Frequency of Play and the Moderating Effects of Gender and Age. International Journal Of Mental Health And Addiction, 12(3), 283-294. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11469-013-9452-3 • Brevers, D., Noël, X., Bechara, A., Vanavermaete, N., Verbanck, P., & Kornreich, C. (2014). Effect of Casino-Related Sound, Red Light and Pairs on Decision-Making During the Iowa Gambling Task. J Gambl Stud, 31(2), 409-421. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10899-0139441-2 • Cotte, J. (1998). Chances, Trances, and Lots of Slots: Gambling Motives and Consumption Experiences. Journal Of Travel Research, 37(1), 87-87. vol. 29, no. 4,1997, pp. 380-406 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004728759803700157 • DeWalt & DeWalt. • McMullan, J. & Miller, D. . Participant Observation: A guide for fieldworkers. Ch 1, 2, 3, 7 . Advertising the New Fun-Tier : Selling Casinos to Consumers. 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