Beyond the Wager: Urban Macau through the Lens of Animal Welfare

As a popular tourist destination, the Macau story is often told through exhilarating stories of gambling, glitz, and glamour. When greyhound racing operated, for a few years in the 1930s and for almost six decades until 2018, Macau’s reputation as a gaming city swelled beyond its borders, though not consistently for positive reasons: competition between gambling options was stiff, the careers of greyhound racers were impacted by the overall gaming economy, and by the second half of the twentieth century, the welfare of the animals within the canidrome came under international scrutiny. Using the sluggishness of social, legal, and institutional developments in animal protection as a point of access, this study digs into issues submerged in the broader picture of a successful gambling city to reconsider the incessant relationship between Macau’s gambling economy and its modern environment and urban culture.