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Paradigmatic New Means of Consumption

money consuming, whether gambling in the casinos, trying out the

rides in the amusement parks, or shopping at the malls. The boundary

between touring and consuming has also been imploded in the sense

that Las Vegas casinos aim to simulate tourist attractions from around

the world, making it conceivable to “tour” by simply promenading on

the main drag and visiting “places” like Venice, Paris, Bellagio and

New York.

One of the interesting things about the use of implosion in Las Vegas

is the way in which it has confounded the meanings associated with

gambling. Las Vegas is, in the main, no longer associated with “vice”

or “sin” in the popular imagination and, in fact, has become something

of a “family” destination in recent years. This is in large part due to the

deliberate implosion of casino facilities with other, more mainstream,

forms of leisure and consumption like those outlined above. The result

is twofold. On the one hand, gambling is normalized as a legitimate

form of entertainment, comparable to visiting a shopping mall or theme

park. This reorientation is reflected in gaming industry periodicals such

as Casino Player which position gambling as a part of a “high-living”

lifestyle that also includes gourmet meals and up-market consumer

goods. On the other hand, implosion has made Las Vegas a more

attractive destination for families on vacation. Thus, the implosion of

casinos with other consumer settings has made Las Vegas a more

attractive setting for people who may have once had qualms about

gambling and for people who have families.

The Las Vegas casino-hotel is not the only setting in which we have

witnessed implosion. The amusement park and the shopping mall

have imploded at the Mall of America and the Edmonton Mall; the casi-

no, the mall, and many other means of consumption (e.g., the health

spa) have imploded into the cruise ship. However, as was the case

with simulations, the casino-hotel is the paradigm of this process.

TIME AND SPACE

In recent years, many sociologists have focused on the centrality of

time and space in contemporary social life. Perhaps the most relevant

formulation for this essay is Harvey’s (1989) notion of time-space com-

pression. Harvey believes that a central fact of the contemporary cap-

italist economy is the tendency for production processes to speed up

over time and spread over space. At the same time, new “post-Fordist”

production processes enable production for smaller niche markets

rather that the traditional mass market. What results is the “condition

of postmodernity” in which consumer goods, among other things,

appear to be in flux with an increased availability of a mélange of new

products.

The new means of consumption have tended to compress time and

space in ways that can be both spectacular and enchanting. For exam-

ple, goods, like Maryland crab cakes or Maine lobster, that were once

available only in local markets, are now available throughout the coun-

try and the world with improvements in transportation and storage. It’s

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

Special Issue: Deconstructing Las Vegas

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George Ritzer and Todd Stillman

simply astounding that practically any consumer product can be

ordered one day and arrive the following morning on our doorsteps.

Harvey’s view, while it is perhaps now (over a decade after his book

first appeared) outmoded, is that such a situation can be disorienting

and disruptive of our sense of order.

The idea of time-space compression has much in common with the

notion of implosion. With implosion, boundaries between differentiated

spheres dissolve thereby challenging traditional notions of appropri-

ateness and order. With time-space compression, the sense of the

world as divided spatially into discrete localities characterized by par-

ticular consumer goods, lifestyles, and material culture is overwhelmed

by the profusion of goods that are available around the world. A simi-

lar temporal compression is the recycling of old forms in which histori-

cally specific styles are revived in contemporary bouts of nostalgia

(Jameson, 1991). In this form of compression, the logic of fashion is

turned on its head as old and new styles intermingle in contemporary

art, architecture and consumer goods. A good example of recycling

and nostalgia is the recently modish Volkswagen Beetle that mimics

the fashion of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

In the new means of consumption, time-space compression becomes

a spectacle: it is manipulated to create magical effects. The manipula-

tion of time in casinos takes place in at least three ways: 1/ control of

the casino environment to create a sense of the absence of time pass-

ing; 2/ the availability of gambling beyond normal temporal constraints

in the sport’s books; 3/ and the use of images, styles, and architecture

from past, present and future to create extraordinary effects.

The overarching effect of moving around the new means of consump-

tion is the loss of a sense of time and a dream-like state in which the

passage of time seems not to be occurring or not to matter. This sen-

sation seems to work in conjunction with the gigantic size of the new

means of consumption (see below); being lost in space seems to

induce the feeling of being lost in time. Las Vegas casinos make efforts

to enhance a sense of timelessness that complements their twenty-

four-hour-a-day operations. This is accomplished by removing

things—windows and clocks, for example—that provide signs of the

time of day and of time passing. Moreover, the same activities take

place throughout the day and night—the gaming tables are open,

drinks are being served, slot machines are buzzing and flashing.

Although less busy in the morning than the evening, casinos are very

successful in eliminating a sense of time of day and of time passing.

In the sports books in all major casinos, betting on simulcast horse and

dog races around the country begins early in the morning and contin-

ues until late at night. A full day of wagering is made possible by

exploiting time zone differences. The day begins with betting on mati-

nee races run on the East Coast and ends with evening races run on

the West Coast. In this way, time is stretched so that gamblers can bet

on races for twelve or more hours a day compared to the four or five

hours available for betting at a given race track. The sports book is an

excellent example of the compression of space because it makes it

possible to gamble on races taking place in many different areas of the

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