Betting on Macau

"In this timely and impressive book, Tim Simpson charts the predicament of Macau—a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China—as a laboratory of consumption, and of planning and architecture as disciplinary technologies, all employed toward prototyping a scholastic program for the production and naturalization of commodity-driven social imaginaries in post-Mao China. A must-read for scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture, particularly those working in or studying urbanization in China." —Miodrag Mitrašinović, coeditor of The Emerging Public Realm of the Greater Bay Area: Approaches to Public Space in a Chinese Megaregion

"Betting on Macau is a creative, engaging, wide-ranging, and insightful analysis that both dazzles the reader with a litany of the astonishing transformations Macau has undergone in the past two decades and provides a solid conceptual framework for understanding those changes in a world-historical context." —Cathryn H. Clayton, author of Sovereignty at the Edge: Macau and the Question of Chineseness

 

"Presented through a cross section of postcolonial studies and social theory with extensive insight into the global gambling industry, Betting on Macau uncovers the various roots of the territory’s lucrative casino capitalism. In turn, its trenchant analysis provides a distinctive view into China’s broader project of urbanization, its post-Mao economic reforms, and the continued rise of its consumer culture." —Progressive Geographies

"Betting on Macau is a worthy introduction to Macau and suitable for anyone, inside and outside academia, interested in a place of exception for Chinese gambling tourists." —Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change

"Tim Simpson’s book is a timely contribution to a slender yet growing volume of works that have sought to reposition Macau within a cocktail of national, regional, and global themes." —Current History


"This is a really enjoyable book, one that manages to see beyond the knee-jerk reading of Macau's kitschy casinos to propose some genuinely interesting theories about China's future development and the impact this may have on capitalism in the twenty-first century." —European Journal of East Asian Studies


"Simpson’s long-term residence in Macau and the sheer novelty of his research orientation make Betting on Macau of high interest and importance to many scholars in the social sciences...I highly recommend this book." —Eurasian Geography and Economics