George Ritzer, and Todd Stillman 2001 The Modern Las Vegas Casino-Hotel: The

---

George Ritzer, and Todd Stillman 2001

The Modern Las Vegas Casino-Hotel: The

Paradigmatic New Means of Consumption,

M@n@gement, 4(3): 83-99.

M@n@gement is a double-blind reviewed journal where articles are published in their original 

language as soon as they have been accepted.

Copies of this article can be made free of charge and without securing permission, for purposes of

teaching, research, or library reserve. Consent to other kinds of copying, such as that for creating

new works, or for resale, must be obtained from both the journal editor(s) and the author(s).

For a free subscription to M@n@gement, and more information:

http://www.dmsp.dauphine.fr/Management/

© 2001 M@n@gement and the author(s).

ISSN: 1286-4892

Editors:

Martin Evans, U. of Toronto

Bernard Forgues, U. of Paris 12

---

M@n@gement, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2001, 83-99

Special Issue: Deconstructing Las Vegas

83

George Ritzer . Todd Stillman

University of Maryland

Department of Sociology

eMail: [e-mail]

[e-mail]

The Modern Las Vegas Casino-Hotel:

The Paradigmatic New Means of Consumption

Over the past decade, the senior author of this essay has written a tril-

ogy of books on structures (fast food restaurants, credit cards, means

of consumption) that have facilitated the expansion of contemporary

consumption and consumer culture. A recurring issue associated with

this work has been the identification of the paradigms for each of these

structures. In the case of the fast food restaurant, and more generally

the McDonaldization of society, it is clear that McDonald’s is that

paradigm (Ritzer, 2000; see also, Ritzer, 1998). Similarly, a strong

case can be made that Visa is the paradigmatic credit card company

(Ritzer, 1995). But the paradigm for the “new means of consumption”

(or the “cathedrals of consumption”) is less clear (Ritzer 1999). Strong

cases can be made for the fully enclosed shopping mall, the mega-

mall (e.g. Minneapolis’s Mall of America), the superstore (e.g., Toys R

Us), the cruise ship, and the theme park (e.g., Disney World). It is the

thesis of this essay, however, that the strongest case can be made for

the Las Vegas casino-hotel as the paradigmatic cathedral of con-

sumption.

What makes for paradigmatic status? For one thing, the paradigm

must be among the earliest of its kind, though it need not be the first.

While several fast food chains (e.g., Dairy Queen) preceded McDon-

ald’s, some by several decades, the founding of the McDonald’s chain

in 1955 was a decisive early moment in the development of fast food

This essay argues that the Las Vegas Casino-hotel is a paradigm for the new means of

consumption. The new means of consumption are designed to attract and service large

numbers of customers by rationalizing their operations while enchanting their setting.

Casino-hotels create a spectacular environment usually by simulating well-known attrac-

tions from the past, present, or imagined future. Further, they implode boundaries

between gambling, shopping , travel and entertainment thereby making it possible for

gamblers to bring their families, to reduce the regrets associated with excessive gam-

bling by normalizing it, and to increase expenditures on things that are peripheral to

gambling. The casino-hotels also manipulate time and space to create settings in which

time seems not to matter and spatial boundaries to consumption are eliminated. Last,

through the “comp” system they create incentives for those who frequently gamble large

sums of money. As a result, the Las Vegas casino-hotel increases the likelihood that

guests will spend more than is prudent.

---

M@n@gement, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2001, 83-99

Special Issue: Deconstructing Las Vegas

84

George Ritzer and Todd Stillman

restaurants and McDonaldized consumer culture. Similarly, Visa had

predecessors (Diners Club began issuing cards in early 1950), but it

was the founding of BankAmericard (which later became Visa) in 1958

that was key to the massive expansion of universal credit cards. The

new means of consumption emerged with the consumer boom after

the end of WWII. By 1946, the very first modern Las Vegas casino, the

Flamingo Hotel, opened its doors. Although there were less elaborate

casinos in Las Vegas and stylish, even spectacular, casinos in Monte

Carlo (and elsewhere) before this time, the Flamingo initiated the

development of the modern hotel-casino.

A paradigm should also serve as a model for subsequent structures.

McDonald’s quickly became, and still is, the model not only for all fast

food chains, but also franchises of all types. As, by far, the most suc-

cessful universal credit card, Visa has been copied by its competitors

in many different ways (for example, American Express developed its

own universal card, Optima, to compete more directly with Visa). The

“themed” Flamingo served as the model for many of today’s lavish Las

Vegas casinos, the growing number of casinos around the world, and

other new means of consumption.

Finally, a paradigm is also a model for the process undergirding a

structure. For example, McDonald’s is the proximate source of the pro-

cess of McDonaldization that is at the base of the success of the fast

food restaurant. This process is characterized by increasing efficiency,

calculability, predictability, and control through the replacement of

human with non-human technology. The McDonald’s chain has clear-

ly taken the lead in the process of McDonaldization, as well as in each

of these sub-processes. Similarly, the processes that characterize the

credit card industry—increasing consumer debt, fraud, invasion of pri-

vacy, and rationalization—are best exemplified by Visa. As we will see

below, the Flamingo and, more generally, the Las Vegas casinos that

followed in its wake are the best examples of the processes that char-

acterize the new means of consumption—rationalization, disenchant-

ment, re-enchantment, spectacularization, simulation, implosion, and

manipulations of time and space.

Given this general background, let us turn first to an explanation of the

idea of new means/cathedrals of consumption and then to the argu-

ment that the Las Vegas casino-hotel is paradigmatic of this structure.

THEORETICAL BACKDROP

Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Con-

sumption  (Ritzer, 1999) introduced the interchangeable concepts of

the means of consumption and the cathedrals of consumption. Both

concepts relate to the settings in which people consume but the former

is derived from the spirit of Marxian social theory while the latter places

an emphasis on the Weberian aspects of consumption settings. The

notion of means of consumption makes it clear that these settings

make consumption, indeed many different types of consumption, pos-

sible, while the idea of cathedrals of consumption suggests that these

---