Book Review: Addiction By Design
Having visited Las Vegas myself, many of the concepts that Schull brings to light coincide with my own experiences of gambling culture. I remember walking from my hotel room at the MGM grand, across the casino ‘floor’ and into an adjacent breakfast bar, and passing a middle-aged woman sitting, glued to the same slot machine as she had been the evening before. I recall thinking to myself, why is she still there; isn’t she tired?
If only I had read Natasha Dow Schull’s Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas to quench my inquisition. This I can imagine to be the bane of many a tourist’s visit to Las Vegas, as Addiction by Design is a meticulously well researched and fascinating read. Schull is vigilant, fastidious and stoic throughout; presenting an overall rich and fascinating ethnography that looks deep into the world of machine gambling and the processes that constitute its meaning. She believes that the ‘zone’ of machine gambling is a promising object for cultural analysis; offering a “window onto the contingencies and anxieties that riddle contemporary American life”. Through her narrative, Las Vegas and its world-famous gambling scene are exposed in a wonderfully real and unadulterated fashion; ceding an even closer look at the forces that drive the industry, most notably consumption.
Schull’s ethnography is aptly titled ‘Addiction by Design’, as in this, she is referring to the two pillars of the gambling addiction. On the one hand, she is referring to a natural characteristic and design flaw in many of us, as humans, that allows us to become addicted. On the other hand, Schull is referring to the machine itself – i.e. the design and technology of machines that engender addictive environments. Foucault characterised the relationship between humans and machinery as one of connection (Scott, D. 2017), and Schull acknowledges this and posits that both subject (gambler) and object (gambling machine) foster addiction through their cooperation in a capitalist society that glorifies consumption. This was the view of economist and Social Anthropologist David Graeber whose own theory is premised on a co-creation of consumption between the ‘consumer’ and the ‘product’. He argues that working people “do not simply swallow whatever marketers throw at them like so many mindless automatons; they create their own meanings out of the products with which they chose to surround themselves” (Graeber, D. 2011. pp.490). For example, in her chapter Addiction, Schull tells the story Mollie, a machine gambling addict from Las Vegas, who doesn’t ‘play to win’, but plays to “stay in the machine”. For Mollie, machine gambling is not about the competition or the chance to win; it is an escape from a “human world that she experiences as capricious, discontinuous and insecure.” She is not ‘consuming’ the opportunity or the chance to win, but rather she is consuming an escapism of everyday life. Mollie is what Schull and the industry refer to as a “Time on Device” player or (TOD). Someone who gambles just for the sake of staying in the game, where the appeal to gain capital is secondary. The irony for these players is that machine gambling “isn’t really a gamble at all…it is how individuals use technology to manufacture “certainties” in their life”.
Throughout her book, in every chapter, Schull uses the personal histories of individuals, such as Mollie, to anthropomorphize the socio-economic significance of American gambling culture. Through her persistent storytelling she is able to “reflect the geographical expression of individual and social identities” of multiple addictive gamblers in Las Vegas (Cosgrove, D. 2002. P.3). These social identities are geographically expressed in what Schull calls the ‘zone’; the specific space in which an individual expresses certain actions or behaviours in the casino at a given time. The slot machine, for example, is such a ‘zone’, and is designed to ameliorate highly efficient behaviours from consumers. In her Chapter Design, Schull showcases the ways in which the industry and their machines “engineer experience” as a means of maximising profit. This is indicative of a consumer capitalist ideology that underpins American gambling culture. In fact, “the idea that gambling could be a productive mainstream enterprise arouse in the 20th century with the rising importance of consumption to capitalist economies”. Schull proposes that the propensity of the gambling industry to manipulate space to increase consumption mirrors the time and energy management techniques of manufacturing labour.
The architectural layout of a casino and the design of its machines help to create an environment in which consumers are more likely to part with their capital, until they reach a state called “extinction” (when a customer has no more money). Schull talks of how the industry constantly invests in new ways to do this. For example, in one of the many industry meetings she attended, the “G2E” campaign, she describes of how better technologies serve to give the ‘player what they want’, whilst facilitating greater consumption, and thus higher profits. It becomes obvious that corporate concerns “lie closer and closer to the concerns of the consumer, and products are understood to emerge through a dynamic process of co-creation”. Schull gives multiple examples of how this alignment is becoming more and more observable in machine gambling zones. She reports that it is now easier than ever to satisfy all consumptive desires without leaving the ‘zone’. Consumers can order food and drink to their machine, they can watch television from integrated television sets in their machine, and they can deposit more money directly into their machine account, without leaving their chair. They are ‘consumption seats’; where consumption is the only activity. In effect, gamblers are paying for a consumption experience. Debra Curtis argues that it is this ‘plurality of the market’ that has been accentuated by gambling culture in an era of consumer capitalism (Curtis, D. 2004). She is arguing that the vast array of consumer choices has been met by a growing desire to consume more and more. In other words, because the choice for consumers is so extensive, the willingness to consume has inadvertently increased.
Schull addresses such ideas saying that consumption is fundamentally a theory of desire and fulfilment. Both the industry and the agent desire to consume. She observed that by “giving individuals the opportunity for heroic engagements with fate, gambling fulfilled an existential need for action… in a public setting of risk.” Graeber alludes to such notions in his reference to St Augustine’s belief that humans were “creatures of unlimited desire, and that if left to their own devices, they would always end up locked in competition” (Graeber, D. 2011. pp.493). Which supports Schull’s findings that machine gambling served to satisfy, not just Mollie’s personal desire to obliviate stress, but competitive gambling in general. Laqueur argued further in saying that “economies thrived on the proliferation of personal desires” (Curtis, D. 2004), making a strong case for the prospering of consumer capitalism.
Curtis argued that “commodities have become eroticised objects” and that a resultant desire is generated from our recognition of our deprivation lacking such objects (Curtis, D. 2004). This is what Marx referred to as Commodity Fetishism: where the value of commodities is no longer derived from the process of production that brought about its existence; instead, society sees commodity value as intrinsic (Marx, K. et al. 1967). For example, the value of a slot machine to the consumer/ addict is irrespective of the “three hundred people” and the immoral process that contribute to its creation (Roseberry, W. 1996). Schull talks of how the industry is morally culpable for facilitating consumer addiction, reporting that the industry “emphasized the toxic and debilitating effects of gambling itself rather than focusing on gamblers’ dispositions” when creating new technologies. At the G2E convention she attended and in her chapter Feedback, she focuses on how the industry is producing more technologies aimed at keeping consumers ‘hooked’ for longer. If value was based on the process of labour in the production of gambling machines, then consumption of, and addiction to, the product might be reduced.
In conclusion, Natasha Dow Schull’s Addiction by Design is a brilliantly researched ethnography offering a stark and informative representation of machine gambling in Las Vegas. She presents the debate as to whether Las Vegas, and its gambling culture, is a mirror or a model of America; she questions whether the “city should be seen as a shape-shifting marvel of human inventiveness or as a dystopic instantiation of consumer capitalism”. Nevertheless, she is clear that machine gambling addiction is both the result of innate human desires and wants, and of industry forces, most notably, the technological design of gambling machines. Consumption by gambling machine addiction is the result of a cooperation of an innate desire to consume, and the artificial creation of machines that facilitate this consumptive behaviour. Addiction by Designdoes more than just elucidate the concept of Consumption, it showcases an industry that thrives because of it. Marx argued that ideological success was dependent on a societal ‘superstructure’, and that the social role of institutions, was vital in support a dominant economic system: capitalism (Branston, G. 2010). Today, Schull posits the role of the gambling industry as part of a contemporary superstructure that proliferates consumer capitalist ideology, and consumerism in practice.
Bibliography
- - Dow Schull, N. (2012). Addiction by Design: machine gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton University Press
- - Scott, D. (2017). Understanding Foucault, Understanding Modernism. First Edition: Bloomsbury Academic, New York.
- - Graeber, D. 2011. Current Anthropology: “Consumption”. University of Chicago Press. Vol. 52, No. 4. pp. 489-511
- - Cosgrove, D. (2002). Landscape and the European sense of sight, in Anderson, K, Domosh, M, Pile, S. et al (eds) Handbook of Cultural Geography. Sage, London, pp.249-268.
- - Curtis, D. (2004). Commodities and Sexual Subjectivities: A Look at Capitalism and Its Desires. Cultural Anthropology; Washington Vol. 19, Iss. 1, (Feb 2004): 95-121.
- - MARX, K., & ENGELS, F. (1967). Capital; a critique of political economy. New York, International Publishers.
- - Roseberry, W. (1996). The Rise of Yuppie coffee and the reimagination of class in the United States. American Anthropologist; Dec 1996; 98, 4; ProQuest pg. 762
- - Branston, G. et al. (2010). The Media Students Book. Fifth Edition: Routledge, New York.
