A History of the International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking
2012; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1531-0930
AutoresWilliam R. Eadington, David G. Schwartz,
Tópico(s)Gambling Behavior and Treatments
Resumostudy of gambling is fascinating, perhaps because it is so easy to relate it to parallels in areas of our everyday lives. But the surface has only been scratched; many questions remain to be satisfactorily answered.-Preface to Gambling and Society (1976), William R. Eadington, editorThe above statement is a sound summary of why those who study gambling do what they do: gambling raises vital questions, many of which still lack definitive answers. And yet, the study of gambling is no longer the terra incognita it once was. The evolution of the International Conferences on Gambling and Risk-Taking is both a sign of the changes in the study of gambling over the past forty years and one of the driving forces behind that change.Started in 1974 as the National Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking, the conference began as a gathering of academics in a variety of disciplines from around the United States who were interested in the impact of gambling from several points of view, ranging from analyses of mathematical questions about gambling, to the fundamentals of pathological gambling, to understanding business dimensions of gaming enterprises, to broader inquiries into the impact of gambling on society. The First Conference was held at the Sahara Casino in Las Vegas in June ofthat year in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Western Economics Association.1This wasn't the first mainstream academic discussion of gambling (gambling has been the subject of academic study since at least the 16th-century career of Giralamo Cardano), but it was the first dedicated gathering that concentrated specifically on the topic. And, while those who studied gambling in the early 1970s and before were often scoffed at by academics with more traditional research foci, they were greeted with outright hostility by some in the gaming industry.These two disapproving attitudes about gambling research seemed to emerge from very different corners. Traditional academics were suspicious of those who studied gambling, suspecting that the researchers were themselves caught up in the thralls of gambling obsession; like studying prostitution or illicit drugs, such researchers must have impure ulterior motives if they are pursuing such perverse undertakings. A second attitude seemed to emerge from the gaming business community. Their attitude was, How could academics know anything about this business? Their only real interest has been to expose the gaming industry as a corrupting social influence, Mafiosi, or other disreputable characterizations. In light of the fact that the reputation of Nevada's casino operators still suffered from the prior legacy of mob activity and was tainted by associations with Teamsters Union financing, such paranoia was perhaps justified.But even at its first convocation in June 1974, the conference helped bring something of a rapprochement between academia and the gaming industry. Representatives of the Harrah's organization, based in Reno, had been publicly critical of the idea that professors could say anything meaningful about their industry, which they believed they already operated with a fair degree of competence and scientific management. Shortly after those comments received local media attention, George Drews, then the controller of Harrah's, received a phone call from Bill Eadington at the University of Nevada Reno: Would Mr. Drews like to attend the conference and organize a session around Harrah's operations?2Drews and his Harrah's management team put together a presentation that impressed the audience of several dozen academics, many of whom still viewed the casino industry with suspicions, as one if not run by organized crime, certainly as an organization of questionable repute. By the same token, those from the gaming industry were impressed with the various approaches to gambling that the scholars at the conference took.3 Previously, much of the academic study of gambling came from either the field of criminology, which was chiefly concerned with illegal gambling, political corruption, and degenerate behaviors; or the mathematics of casino games, which was primarily focused on how to beat the house. …
Referência(s)