Over the past decade the casino industry has expanded throughout the U.S. and the world. Rather than a convergence of institutional forms, however, we find within the growing "global gambling industry" a diversity of ownership and regulatory structures. My dissertation compares two cases of casino industry structuring contrary to theoretical expectations: a competitive, capitalist one in South Africa and a monopolistic, restricted one in California. To explain these different modes of regulation, I elucidate the different definitions of development mobilized by casino proponents during the symbolic struggles surrounding legalization: the economic empowerment of South African Blacks versus the political/cultural autonomy of California Indians. I then ethnographically compare how these different framings of development affect managerial practice within the emergent casino fields in three key areas: institutional relations between corporations and indigenous peoples, labor relations and marketing.