Introduction: Integrated Mega-Casinos and Speculative Urbanism in Southeast Asia

In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, luxurious mega-casino resorts have become spectacles of economic growth across diverse destinations in Asia. With its emphasis on large-scale integrated resorts (IR), the casino and leisure industry is a site of economic rejuvenation even as it offers spaces of moral corruption. Integrated mega-casinos are ambiguous projects of development, driving the speculative processes of place-making for accumulation, social control, and global competition. This editorial introduction focuses on three main themes. First, mega-IR projects show the historical and complicated relations between state power and the gambling economy. Second, Southeast Asia’s new mega-casinos are emblematic of speculative urbanism and its experiments. Third, casino-as-development consolidates the differentiated treatment of citizen subjects and gives legitimacy to the biopolitical governance of citizen practices, claims, and urban participation.

导论：东南亚的综合性超级赌场和投机性都市主义

关键词：赌场，赌博，综合性度假村，新自由主义都市主义，东南亚，投机，都市发展。

2008年全球金融危机之后，奢华的超级赌场度假区成为纵跨亚洲的多地经济增长的奇观。赌场和休闲产业以大型综合性度假区的形式建造，即使仍然令人怀疑其藏污纳垢，滋生道德腐败，但已被视为可以带来经济复兴希望的所在。作为性质暧昧不明的发展项目，综合性超级赌场驱动着财富积累、社会控制和全球性竞争的空间的建构的投机性的过程。本编者前言集中关注了三个主题。首先，超级综合性度假区项目展现出国家权力和赌博经济之间历史性和复杂的关系；第二，这些项目展示了各种形式的投机都市主义试验；第三，以赌场为发展的模式巩固了对公民主体的有差别性的对待，并为公民实践、公民要求和都市参与的生命政治治理赋予了合法性。

Translated from English by Li Guo