Abstract
The present article analyzes processes of social reproduction among upper-middle- and upper-class individuals in contemporary Mexico City, using affluent golf clubs as a case study. Drawing on ethnographic data, it shows how private golf clubs are invisible sites for the average city dweller, both metaphorically and literally. This characteristic fulfills a dual political role, by (1) preventing any questioning over the monopolization of resources and (2) reinforcing social distance. The analysis then examines the relationship between old golfers (natives) and new golfers (newcomers) and how the growing participation of newcomers illustrates an important transformation in the world of affluent private golf clubs. This change reflects the inherent struggle between preservation and transformation that characterizes any social universe. The results demonstrate that Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, and habitus offer a flexible and powerful model to analyze affluent communities within the context of a developing nation.
Introduction
During an ethnography of affluent golf clubs in Mexico, a prominent female golfer in her late 50s agreed to talk to me, scheduling a meeting at her home, located in a traditional upper-class neighborhood in the southern part of Mexico City. After I announced myself through the outdoor intercom, a domestic worker in uniform came to open the door, asking me to follow her. Instead of taking the wide limestone stairs in front of us (which direct people toward an elegant wooden door), she started walking in direction to a modest aluminum door situated at the end of an underground garage. Half-way to the service door, the female golfer came out of the wooden door loudly saying, “don’t take him that way, come this way [pointing to the limestone stairs].” For the affluent golfer, who I met first at a golf club, it was clear which door I was expected to use, the distinction was not that ovious for the domestic worker. The world of golf in Mexico is full of fancy and modest doors; who uses one and who uses the other is a bodily matter organized through systems of relations.
The present research intersects the areas of sports, social clubs, and social stratification. First, despite the traditional isolation of the literature on sports from mainstream academic discussions (Eckstein, Moss, and Delaney 2010), physical games have demonstrated their relevance for exploring key scholarly debates (Elias 1971; Bourdieu 2010; Eichberg 1986). Most of the research on sport, however, has been mainly conducted on accessible games (Crossley 2006; Allen-Collinson 2011; Wacquant 1995; Jones 2002). In opposition, the literature on exclusive games is still underdeveloped (Baltzell 1995; Stempel 2005; DeLuca 2013). Second, unlike in the United States (Moss 2001; Crosset 1995), golf in Mexico is a sport exclusively played at affluent private clubs (Saliba 2003; Morales y Favela 1996). Therefore, any research on golf in Mexico is also an analysis of stratification and private clubs. There has been a lack of study in this area, not only in all Latin America (Cattani 2009) but also in the United States (Khan, 2012).
Through an ethnographic examination of golf clubs in Mexico City, and its upper-middle- and upper-class membership, this article seeks to elucidate how privilege and lack-of-privilege are internalized bodily. This study is part of a literature that draws on Bourdieu’s model to explore the relationship between physical games and the internalization of social structures (White and Wilson 1999; Mennesson 2000; Wacquant 2006; Noble and Watkins 2003). The analysis starts by elaborating on the methodological framework, particularly on the difficulties posed by doing research among affluent people (Mikecz 2012). The article then provides a definition of the three fundamental notions in Bourdieu’s model: habitus, field, and capital (Harker, Mahar, and Wilkes 1990). After the theoretical consideration, the article analyses how the privileged position of golf is not only constructed over objective structures (Taks, Renson, and Vanreusel 1995) but also through symbolic practices; practices in which the body plays a crucial role.
Methods
The article is based on an ethnography of three exclusive golf clubs in Mexico City, carried out during 7 months in the summers of 2010 and 2014. It draws on two types of sources: first, my field notes as a researcher trying to understand the relationship between “business and golf,” question used to open up a broader conversation about golf and the articulation of power differentials. Second, 58 semistructured, in-depth interviews conducted among corporate executives and businesspeople who use golf as part of their professional interaction, caddies, golf journalists, and other individuals related to this sport. For ethical purposes, the names of all participants have been changed.
Originally, I tried to developed a carnal sociological research (Wacquant 2005, 2014), a type of inquiry in which one seeks to learn bodily what one seeks to explain intellectually (Wacquant 2006). I rapidly learned, however, that this type of analysis is constrained by the same structural conditions that restrict social life. Researchers cannot escape from the material and symbolic hierarchies that organize the social world (Bourdieu 1996). My own lack of capital within the golf community prevented me from becoming a carnal golf sociologist. In the urban setting of Mexico City, being a member of a golf club means being located at the intersection between the upper middle and upper class. These two class groups represent 39.6 percent of the sample but only 7.2 percent of the overall Mexican population (Lopez Romo 2009). Caddies, by contrast, come from the working class. They represent 29.3 percent of the sample and 35.8 percent of the overall population (Lopez Romo 2009). The rest of the sample is composed of golf journalists (6.9 percent), who belong to the lower middle class; golf players without club (10.3 percent), who are part of the middle class; golf consultants (10.3 percent), who come from the same class origins of club members; and golf instructors (3.4 percent), who are part of the middle/upper middle class. 1
The interviews were collected using a snowball technique. Originally, I established contact with three golfer-businessmen. Only one of these early connections was part of my social circle before joining a graduate program at a western university. The other two contacts were established through the conversion of cultural into social capital that occurs through dynamics of socialization among third-world students at western universities. These three connections subsequently assisted me in extending the research to include 58 participants. However, not all golfers helped me to extend the sample. In some cases, golfers refused to provide me with more contacts to continue the study. This situation was linked to the composition of the field and my own positions on it.
My own class origins, situated near the intersection between the middle and the lower-middle class, hindered cooperation in some cases. For example, the amiable interaction with one club member changed toward the end of the interview when he realized that I commonly moved about in the city by public transportation (which is a strong class indicator). He was not rude but stopped elaborating on the answers as he had been doing up to that point. Power dynamics were, on most times, dominated by the interviewees, who were often in control of the symbolic and material resources in the local class hierarchy (Mikecz 2012). This situation was inverted when the interviewees were caddies; they were very timid and also commonly teased by other caddies. Rephrasing DeLuca (2013, 356), bodily confidence is a privilege of the privileged.
My subordinate position, vis-à-vis golfers, was ameliorated by my possession of cultural capital, objectified in my status of researcher/student in a western university. However, my cultural capital dwindled in its value at the invisible but firm boundary between the upper-middle and the upper class. The few contacts I made with members of the upper class produced no connections with other members of the same group, illustrating how the research process is also inserted in the symbolic and material dynamics that shape the field, including the hierarchical distribution of individuals inside it (Bourdieu 1996).
My ability to talk about the history of golf allowed me to develop an initial rapport with most golfers. This trust dwindled when I was invited to play; a situation that happened on four different occasions. My poor golf skills—acquired through a short course paid for by the office of research at my university and some practice at an inexpensive driving range—denoted my limited exposure to golf. On one of these four occasions, an old caddy gently pulled me aside and quietly said: “Si quieres hacer negocios con estos cabrones tienes que jugar chingon [if you want to do business with these dudes, you must play fuckin’ great].” After which, he tried to give me some technical advice. Playing skills represent a form of embodied cultural capital, where the latter is not understood in its scholastic sense, but rather, it is understood as a corporeal internalization of preferable disposition. In other words, being a great golfer means having been exposed to and disciplined by the field for a long period of time to the extent that one can follow its regularities bodily (Paradis 2012; Wacquant 1995).
In order to play “fuckin’ great” one needs to subject its own body to long periods of training until one can know-without-knowing and act-without-acting the regularities and techniques of the field (Wacquant 2006; Delamont and Stephens 2013). However, the privileged conditions of some sports impose its objective reality upon outsiders, preventing them from knowing the game. This is one of the reasons why it is more common to find fascinating ethnographic research about accessible sports, such as football, circuit training, Jiu-Jitsu, running, or boxing (Knapp 2014; Crossley 2004; Hogeveen 2013; Allen-Collinson, 2011; Wacquant, 2006) but limited studies about exclusive sports, such as rowing or lacrosse (Tsang, 2000; Schyfter, 2008). My poor golf skills prevented the possibility to interact bodily more often with the interviewees at the course, limiting most of the interaction to the bar and warming up areas of the clubs.
All of the interviews were recorded, except the four conducted at the golf course, and organized around three questions: why are businesspeople attracted to this game? How do you define a golfer? What are the most important transformations golf has experienced in your lifetime? The questions aimed to minimize the imposition of preconceived categories into the research. These queries seek to locate the “common sense” of the field, the taken-for-granted view of the world of those partaking in this sport. In doing so, my research wants to reveal the prevailing orthodoxies that make people misrecognize historically constituted dynamics for naturally determined categories (golfer / outsider, native / newcomer, men / women).
The coding process focused on the common stories that were regularly repeated; the shared topics that constitute the commonsensical understanding of golf. I listened carefully to the interviews, allowing the participants to classify the world by themselves, to let them explain the “order of things.” This helped me to form the outline of my arguments from the point of view of the participants, reducing the intrusion of my own preconceptions as much as possible. It is through the interviewees’ own understanding of golf that I developed the categories of natives (those who know-without-knowing or people who have spent many years playing this sport in private clubs), newcomers (those who need-to-know or people who in recent years joined this game), and outsiders (those who do-not-know or people who are unfamiliar with the sport but for economic reasons are associated to the game, such as workers). These three categories are complemented with the duality of visibility and invisibility. The next section provides a definition of the triad of concepts used to explore the universe of golf in Mexico City.
Defining the Triad: Field, Capital, and Habitus
Bourdieu suggests that the notion of society needs to be replaced by a more precise idea, arguing that the concept of field offers a better term. The latter captures how society is organized into a large group of “spheres of play” that cannot be reduced to a single collective logic (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, 16). The field does not imply that society is constituted by clearly demarcated, neatly organized spaces, like a group of tennis courts in a sports complex, but rather it is constituted as a system of multiple fields (Bourdieu 1983, 1994). Individuals constantly move from one field to another on a daily basis, as social space is formed by the confluence of many fields.
Different forces operate inside each field, creating a dynamic space where different potentialities exist. There are two central characteristics that define the internal composition of a field: (1) there is a social struggle taking place on it, and (2) there are structural forces imposing restrictions on all social actors inside it (Bourdieu 2000). The second argument represents the power social structures possess to restrain individual and communal action. The notion of struggle, by contrast, recognizes that despite the set of restrictions imposed on agents, they are able to make their own decisions, and even to develop, with greater or lesser success, strategies to change their own position inside the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).
The second component in Bourdieu’s model is the notion of capital, which is defined as “accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor” (Bourdieu 1986, 241). Bourdieu’s notion of capital draws on Marx’s understanding of the concept, to the extent that economic capital in the former and capital in the latter are very similar ideas. However, unlike Marx, Bourdieu argues that there are multiple forms of capital, the main three being economic, cultural, and social (Bourdieu 1986). Each one of these, in turn, includes its own subconfigurations. Symbolic capital must be added to the explanation, but this is a form that any of the three species of capital can take when they are socially recognized, through categories of perception, generating dispositions of respect (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). All forms of capital can be accumulated and interchanged but this process is strongly related to the idea of field, as it is in the field where capital acquires its full relational meaning.
The notion of the habitus is the third category in the theoretical model (Bourdieu 1990). Habitus bridges the concepts of field and capital, by offering an explanation of the regularities and creative individualities that actors develop in their daily lives. The habitus represents the way in which individuals embody their “life chances,” to use Weber’s famous concept (1978, 927), creating a mundane understanding of the social activities and spaces that are “for the likes of us.” The habitus is based on the assumption that the body is constantly and unconsciously absorbing and enacting the social information it is exposed to via social interaction at the level of the field (Bourdieu 1990). Bourdieu argues that the habitus operates beneath the level of discourse and consciousness (1998, 54–55). However, some of the most lucid insights about golf were expressed by individuals located at the margins of the sport (i.e., newcomers and caddies). This may suggest that Noble and Watkins’s criticism of Bourdieu’s argument is correct: that there are “forms of consciousness” that can be discursively articulated (2003, 529). In the next pages, I will offer empirical examples to illustrate how the concepts of field, capital, and habitus were designed to be used in conjunction, and how the habitus is sometimes available through acts of consciousness, or rather, self-consciousness.
An Invisible Land: Golf in Mexico City
In contemporary Mexico City and its metropolitan area, there are no public courses, club memberships are out of reach for the middle class, green fees for nonmembers are commonly very expensive, and most golf stores are located in the clubs (Saliba 2003). Inside the boundaries of the city, there are only three golf clubs, two of them built before the 1930s and a third one established in 1951. In the greater metropolitan area, however, there are eleven private clubs, seven of which were built during the 1960s and early 1970s, the other four were developed in the last twenty years (Wray 2002). All of these golf courses are almost invisible for those observers situated out of bounds (to borrow a golf expression that refers to a ball when it lands outside the limits of the playable area). The two golf clubs that are located inside the limits of the city that were established before the 1930s have seen their surroundings drastically changed, from open rural spaces conveniently connected to the city center (Terry 1911), to congested urban areas.
These clubs have adapted to the expansion of the city by building discreet entrances and erecting high walls, effectively disassociating the quiet golf course from the hectic life out of bounds. The tops of the trees are the only visible elements that offer the curious outsider a hint of the affluent geography that lies behind the tall walls. One of these two clubs is located within a fifteen-minute walking distance from a subway station in the southern part of the city. Despite the close proximity between the metro and the club, most of the taxi drivers parked outside of the station were surprised when I asked for directions to the golf club. One of the taxi drivers even added, “I don’t know of any golf club around here.” I asked these taxi drivers about the location of the club, having been told by a young caddy that the first time he visited the club for a job interview he arrived late, since, “nobody could tell me how to get here [the club] from the nearby metro station.” The architectural barriers that prevent nongolfers from peeking onto the course are the materialization of the objective order that determines the boundaries of the field.
In the other club funded before the 1930s, “the cost of a membership runs at US$ 135,000, plus a US$ 23,000 inscription fee” (Saliba 2003, 43). This club is not located near a metro station, but it is well connected to the financial heart of the city. I repeated the exercise of asking people who regularly passed in front of the club about the club’s location, and I found similar results. Paraphrasing Eichberg (1986, 103), by means of the architectonical barriers, golfers set themselves apart from common people. This case also illustrates that the notion of the field is not only conceptualized as a space for human action but also that it can be a site where nonhuman or material elements play an important role in human interaction (Bourdieu 1985).
The last of these three clubs is located in the southern part of the city and is also well connected by public transportation. I am very familiar with the area and knew that there was a golf course somewhere within it. The paradoxical impossibility of clearly identifying a large piece of land led me into an exploration of aerial maps of the city (google maps) and a reflection about why golf is played on an invisible land. 2
An Invisible Land
In a zoom-out view of the city, golf clubs, parks, and natural preserves are indistinctively perceived as big green areas (Figure 1). This wide-ranging scale does not provide enough resolution to distinguish between public and private land, providing no understanding of how the field of golf is connected to a process of naturalization of social hierarchies.
Zoom-Out view of the city.
If the perspective of the map is zoomed in to the point where the names of streets and parks can be seen (Figure 2), it is possible to appreciate the relationship between the comparable amount of space available for public leisure (parks) and the areas allocated for private recreation (golf clubs). If the map is zoomed-in again, and centered on the perimeters of golf courses, one can see that in most of the cases, there is no public land around these clubs.
Zoom-Around one of the three club inside the city.
The invisibility of the golf course for most outsiders becomes evident when we zoom in entirely into a street view (Figure 3). The course magically disappears from the screen. The architectural barriers, structured by the objective reality, effectively make a large piece of land invisible to the average gaze. Those individuals unfamiliar with golf, who pass outside the perimeter of the course—such as taxi and bus drivers—are unable to distinguish the beautiful golf setting that lies just beyond the other side of the wall from any other type of enclosed land.
Outsiders’ “view” of the golf club (located at the left-hand side).
The invisibility of the field fulfills a dual political role: on the one hand, it prevents any challenge that inevitably emanates from the public exhibition of the field (through the questioning, e.g., of who has access to the space, who benefits from such distribution, and why is the land used in this way). On the other hand, the restriction upon social contact serves to “mystify” the field, as Goffman argues (1959, 44–45). Barriers are physical elements that keep outsiders in a state of mystification in regards to what is hidden; they are legitimizing symbolic markers of superiority.
This is not to say, however, that these three clubs are equally distributed in the local hierarchy. Each one of them is positioned in a different location according to the overall amount of capital accumulated by the community. In the most exclusive of the three clubs, I only managed to gain access to one member, who first agreed to talk but rapidly changed his mind ending the interview four minutes after it had started, saying, “I am sorry, I need to catch up with someone else.” In contrast, I did not have problems interviewing caddies and other workers at this club.
The objective position of each participant became impossible to determine because of the current climate of insecurity Mexico experiences. In this context, questions about personal income and how much people paid for their membership were sensitive issues; I decided to not ask about it for their own and my own safety. Notwithstanding, according to Lopez Romo, what characterizes the two upper rungs of contemporary Mexican society (6.1 percent of the population in Mexico City) also characterizes the lifestyle of the golfers interviewed: high levels of private education, frequent holidays abroad, car ownership, and private club membership—among other things (2009).
To sum up, the structures that shape the field of golf effectively make the material reality of the game—the golf course itself—an invisible setting. This process prevents any questioning about the monopolization of resources implied in this sport, reinforcing the social distinction of the golfing community by keeping the game out of public view. The next section elaborates on how individual action is determined by the relationship between the field, habitus, and capital.
In the Rough
This section elaborates on the complex relationship between the structural forces of the field and the possibility of agency. I use the relation between the body of a golfer and the golf course as a metaphor that illustrates why some people are relegated to the margins of the field. In golf, to possess the “correct” amount of capital and habitus means both (1) to be able to predict “without-having-studied” the regularities of the field, and (2) to be able to hit the ball and often land it in the fairway (the well-maintained and short grass that is kept at the center of the field). In contrast, to possess an “incorrect” habitus and its associated capital means both (1) to know that one “does-not-know” the patterns of the field, and (2) to hit the ball and frequently land it in the “rough” (the unmowed perimeter of each hole of the golf course).
The rough contains thicker grass that is designed to punish unskillful and/or unlucky players who land their ball there. It is considerably more difficult to play from the rough than it is from the fairway. The rough as a metaphor of the relation field-action is not intended to offend newcomer or unskillful players but to capture the relationship between class and the limitations imposed by the material reality. The analogy emanates from (1) my bodily experience of constantly landing my own ball in the rough (when I was invited to play), (2) the difficulties I encountered to navigate the field, and (3) the pedantic remarks some natives made about newcomers. I will start by showing how the structural shape of the field is strongly related to the dominant form of capital on it.
Newcomers
When Horacio (a native in his mid-50s) was asked about what defines the universe of golf, he stated that “the main problem for those who want to play golf, but aren’t members of any club, is the issue of access [to a course] because green fees are really expensive,” adding, “in this country it is cheaper to have a fancy car than to play golf.” This type of answer was not an exception but the norm when interviewees were asked about the limits of the sport. Phrases such as “this is an expensive sport,” “this is not a sport for everybody,” and “unfortunately to be a golfer you need money” were expressed in a myriad of forms throughout the research. Daniel (a newcomer male in his late 30s) perfectly illustrated the experience of the middle class, like himself, when trying to join the sport, saying,
many people go to an inexpensive driving range, rent a set of clubs and pay for a course there, but they change their mind [about the sport] when they visit the golf shop and see the prices [of the equipment], and definitively abandon the idea of being a golfer when they realize the cost of the green fees, because they see that they won’t be able to play frequently, or not play at all.
Daniel started playing golf because of the social pressure that he felt at his job, which was expressed through multiple invitations to play from upper-ranked colleagues and clients. In a rational decision (within the range of possibilities available), he learned the basics of the game at an inexpensive golf range and bought a set of costly clubs in a job-related visit to the USA. Currently, he plays when he is at professional meetings (in tourist resorts), when clients invite him to their club (which happens at least twice a month), or when he has plenty of time to visit a relatively affordable golf club almost two hours away from the city (which happens infrequently).
Nonmembers’ incapacity to play golf at their own discretion stands in marked contrast to the gratuitous luxury that golf represents for those who, because of their possession of large amounts of capital, have immediate access to the course for no other purpose but leisure. I was surprised, for example, to find the club’s bars commonly well attended during midweek days. Golfers came to the club for lunch (which is the main meal in Mexico) and stayed for conversation afterwards. Some of them even seemed to be working from the bar (a deduction based on the instructions they were giving on the phone). The relaxed attitude of these golfers was in stark contrast with the hectic lifestyle one can see in most eateries in the city at lunch time, from street food stalls that serve clients in a matter of seconds to middle-class restaurants that still serve food promptly and expect clients also to leave promptly.
The mismatch between the habitus and the field leads people to know that they don’t-know and therefore to act-acting (in multiple degrees). The feeling of being self-conscious is how the misalignment translates into daily interactions, an awareness of which was commonly expressed by newcomers. For example, in Daniel’s words: “anybody can play with a cheap set of clubs and a glove bought at a discount store, but golf is about image; you need to dress appropriately in order to go unnoticed, if you intend to play with cheap stuff . . . well . . . golfers will look down on you. It isn’t easy.”
Appearance is one of the first indicators of class in Mexico; for example, job ads commonly request applicants with buena presencia [neat appearance], which means dressing in a “proper” ‘business’ fashion. Self-representation, however, is always a relational element. The ability to have buena presencia is constructed through the individual possession of the right amounts of the dominant forms of capital operating inside a field, and a habitus shaped by similar conditions of existence to the field in question. In the universe of golf, to go unnoticed or to have buena presencia is to possess the objective possibility to own and display scarce objects (such as costly equipment and clothing), and the bodily disposition and mental schemata that come with the “natural” ownership of such objects. The material world that gives a field its own distinctive shape and the habitus that emanates from similar conditions of existence to the field in question are deeply intertwined; they metaphorically mirror each other endlessly. Golfers, for instance, invariably asked me questions about my own equipment, “con qué palos juegas [what clubs do you use]?” These queries were clearly aimed at assessing both my economic and cultural capital. These questions made me feel uncomfortable, particularly at the beginning of the research, when I did not know what to answer.
Agustin (a newcomer in his mid-30s) recalls how he fell in love with golf from the first time he hit a ball in a driving range, emphasizing “since I took a club and hit a ball I realized that golf was a game for me.” After extensively talking about the sport, he candidly discussed the problems someone without enough economic capital needs to overcome to play the game, such as visiting faraway courses. He does not play with members of the visited clubs, but with his own friends who also want to join the field of golf but who also do not possess enough economic nor social capital to become members in a club. Agustin’s late socialization into golf has only allowed him to embody the techniques needed to hit a ball, such as the swing, but not the unreflective dispositions that are embodied when someone is a native, or possesses the habitus of a corresponding field (Bourdieu 1985).
This situation shows the way Agustin thinks about the rules of etiquette, mentioning, “it is possible to learn how to play golf in a driving range but it is difficult to learn the rules of etiquette at a range. As far as I know, instructors [in driving ranges] don’t teach the rules of etiquette; maybe in private clubs . . . , but not in driving ranges.” Agustin’s comments speak to the relationship between habitus and field, since they indicate a distinction between those who need-to-know and those who know-without-knowing. This is to say, some players need to learn the rules of the game, such as Agustin, whereas others just enact them without even consciously considering the long learning process involved in learning the rules bodily.
The habitus involves both cognitive drives and corporeal dispositions; the ability to hit the ball is part of the latter. On several occasions, I saw caddies hitting balls in the warming up area of the clubs. Some of them consistently hit the balls straight and for a long distance. I approached these caddies to ask about their learning processes, to which they commonly answered, “Nobody taught me how to play, I learned by watching others.” The corporeal aspect of the habitus, paraphrasing Mauss, is constituted from the action executed in front of oneself or with one’s own body by others (1973, 73). Caddies are able to embody the game by watching golfers act in front of them countless times. In most clubs, caddies are allowed to play on Mondays (which is the day clubs are closed). The act of watching movements and enacting them later allow caddies to corporeally learn the sport over time. This process is no different from what happens in other sports, such as rugby (Pringle 2009), boxing (Paradis 2012), and martial arts (Samudra 2008). The marginalization of caddies, however, illustrates how the corporeal composition of the golfing habitus (the ability to “properly” play) needs to be accompanied with cognitive dispositions (the ability to “properly” behave, dress, and talk) in line with the dominant forms of capital in the field.
One of the caddies who hit the ball very well tried to offer me some technical advice, explaining that the right posture to hit the ball needs to feel “raro [awkward].” The next time I was invited to play I tried to have a corporeal raro feeling before hitting the ball. That is, legs slightly bent, back also forwardly bent, left arm crossed over the chest until one feels the stretch on the upper left side of the back, hands tightly holding the club—being the right hand at the end of the club and the left immediately after, the thumbs positioned almost one over the other pointing toward the head of the club—head down, eyes always on the ball. Then, a fast swing, but not too fast, should hit the small ball at its core. Despite my conscious attempt to control my body, my skills barely improved.
After two difficult holes, another caddy approached me, suggesting that I was holding the club in the baseball manner, which was not the right way to play golf. I finished the game on that day knowing that I was playing golf with the baseball technique (a sport that I had played before), but was still unable to consistently hit the ball straight and at a long distance. Neither on this occasion nor on the other times I played with interviewees was I ever invited to play again. Drawing on Wacquant’s analysis (1995, 66), golf skills are a form of capital that when embodied gives people a set of abilities and tendencies liable to produce value in the field of golf in the form of recognition. Horacio (a native in his mid-50s) unsurprisingly told me that in order to make many friends among golfers, “you need to have something special, either a lot of money, be someone famous, or be a very good player.”
The earlier an agent enters in the world of golf, through their possession of capital, the less likely they are of realizing the great amount of labor needed to embody the physical and psychological drives required to play the game. A native is more likely to misrecognize (perceiving it as “natural ability to play”) the long investment that she/he has made to learn the game bodily. The process of naturalization that emanates from a long exposure to a field seeks to reproduce its own conditions of existence, by presenting itself in “normal” terms. However, the structures that shape the field are none other than the direct result of historical struggles.
The habitus is a product of history that can be transformed by the historical trajectories of individuals. Notwithstanding, the dynamics of the fields and the amount of capital owned, particularly at early stages in life, give the habitus a distinctive mark that requires a great amount of labor to transform (Bourdieu 1990). This is the case of Lourdes (an outsider in her early 40s), who despite her long experience attending tournaments, interviewing golfers, and visiting golf clubs for work, still feels uneasy about this field, “I have been working for a golf magazine for more than 10 years, attending tournaments and interviewing golfers, before I used to work in another magazine covering politics. . . . I still feel more comfortable among politicians than golfers.” The uneasy interaction that Lourdes expresses reflects the divergence between the conditions of origin from which her own habitus emanates, that is, the lower-middle class, and the set of dispositions that structures the habitus of golf players, which reflects both a different material reality and views of the world.
Natives
The powerful interplay that is created by the close relationship between field, capital, and habitus is fully grasped if the experience of those who, most of the time, play in the rough is contrasted with those who, most of the time, play on the fairway. The latter have been exposed to the regularities of the field for so long that its arbitrariness is perceived as “normal.” This condition is illustrated by the answer Rafael (a native in his mid-60s) offered to the question of what constitutes a golfer, explaining,
generally speaking golfers are personable . . . , we always avoid calling people by their last name, this is the first rule of interaction in all clubs. Because golfers always refer to each other by their name; it doesn’t matter the age or social condition of each player, . . . , those who have a golf club in their hands and are standing at the tee [starting point] are individuals with enough class . . . , they are golfers.
Social relations that ignore linguistic forms of respect—such as using formal second person pronouns (i.e., usted) or using courtesy or professional titles before the name or last name (i.e., señor or doctor)—assumes that the “natural” established order reproduced through these categories, which always imply power differentials, does not apply to the field in question. This perception contradicts the stiff hierarchical interaction observed between members and workers at clubs, particularly caddies, gardeners, and waiters/waitresses, who always refer to players in the utmost forms of linguistic respect (i.e., señor or licenciado). On one occasion, I was invited to have breakfast with one of the interviewees at the club’s restaurant. The waiter asked me, “patron [boss], what do you want to order.” I was amazed at hearing this linguistic form of subordination in a restaurant, as it is more commonly used among street vendors.
The egalitarian perception that Rafael portrays is the result, therefore, not of the democratic condition of the field, but of the way in which the interviewee’s own set of unthought dispositions employed to appreciate the world have been internalized from a privileged relationship to capital, which echoes the material reality of golf. This is the reason why Rafael finishes the answer of what constitutes a golf player by saying, “golfers should behave naturally throughout the 18 holes and the usual 19th [the club’s bar]. Obviously, the golden rule is honesty.” After this comment, the interviewee moves the conversation into a different topic; for him, the meaning of “behaving naturally” and “honesty” do not require any explanation: their significance seems to be a matter of common sense. “Honesty” is regarded as the quintessential characteristic of golf (Collinson and Hoskin 1994). Interviewees point out that this sport does not require umpires or referees; instead, each player forthrightly marks his/her own scorecard. This perception, however, turns honesty into a matter of common sense, rather than a differentiated norm that may take slightly different meanings in relationship to different fields. When the habitus and the field correspond to each other, a form of common human understanding, widely regarded as common sense, is produced (Bourdieu 1990, 66). This communal wisdom is the subjective expression of the materiality that governs social interactions in the field. Thus, to have common sense means to possess a deep unreflective knowledge of the field, not only in a subjective form (i.e., attitudes) but also in objective terms (knowing the material regularities expected from individuals). This profound understanding is internalized through the mind (i.e., schemes of perception) and the body (i.e., techniques of the body), forming a single unity of experience and action.
To sum up, economic assets deeply influence the hierarchical organization of this field, defining who plays on the rough and who plays on the fairway. The closer the match between one’s own habitus and the field the more likely one will go unnoticed, ignoring the great labor needed to participate in the field. The objective relations of power that operate in the field and the material conditions that influence the habitus, however, do not eliminate the possibility of practical agency. The latter is based on individual creativity emanating from a vast but finite range of possibilities. The next section analyzes how the idea of field implies social dynamism.
A Battle in the Fairway
The invisible quality of golf from an outsider’s perspective is radically transformed into a battle site when social agents are situated inside the symbolic boundaries of the field. 3 The reason for this profound transformation lies in the fact that what is at stake inside golf clubs is one’s own honor, the most important personal possession, which is at risk of being questioned by others at any time. Inside these clubs, players battle through a game of gazes that aims to determine the place of each player in the hierarchy of the community.
A Game of Gazes
The game of gazes at the golf clubs is a variation of other symbolic battles one can also perceive in less affluent settings, such as the gaze people give to each other just walking down the street. The difference is that the game at the clubs is as individual as it is a collective game. That is to say, it seeks to establish individual positions inside the hierarchy of the club as well as to determine the position of the entire group in relationship to other communities. The game is organized through acts of exhibition, observation, and remarks made about the capital displayed and habitus embodied by those participating in golf. This game is similar to what Elias describes as the central mechanisms of power within the European court societies. The “courtly art of human observation is all the closer to reality because it never attempts to consider the individual person in isolation. . . . Rather, the individual is always observed in court society in his social context, as a person in relation to others” (Bourdieu 1983, 104). Golfers constantly observe, judge, and talk about other members and how they stand in relation to one another in terms of manners, notions of ethics, fashion taste, and equipment owned. Individuals engage in a game of seeing and being seen, because social positions are invariably established in relationship to others.
This relationship is not only based on material principles. It is true that clubs required the economic capital of both natives and newcomers to keep the facilities in pristine conditions, in comparison with what is not part of the community, that is, untidy public parks and dirty streets. However, natives also depend on newcomers symbolically to maintain the prestige associated to their long-term participation in golf. Without newcomers, the native category would evaporate into the air. Newcomers and natives inexorably depend on each other. This dependence also creates camaraderie in many instances (Encandela 1991). This is why several natives put me in contact with newcomers and the other way around; despite their different status, many of them develop friendly interactions.
However, the interdependent dynamic of the game of gazes requires that people embody similar cognitive categories about the practical world. Without these shared mental elements, the game cannot be played. In the early stage of the research, for example, I found myself unable to fully engage in the game. My initial inability to recognize expensive brands of golf equipment caused me to disregard the comments golfers made about each other’s equipment: “look at those new clubs,” “when did you buy them,” “this is a fancy bag. ” These comments are some of the forms in which the game of gazes takes a verbal shape. In many cases, I was also asked questions about my own clubs (“what clubs do you use?”) as a way to integrate me into the game. Social status, therefore, depends on people’s ability to recognize symbolic forms of capital owned by others: from objectified forms of labor, such as costly equipment, to embodied dispositions, such as knowing—without knowing—when to talk, where to stand, what type of conversation to have, what type of jokes to make, how to refer to others, etcetera.
Preservation versus Transformation
The process of observation and exhibition illustrates one aspect of the struggling dynamic that characterizes any field (Bourdieu 1985). This battle is a clash between the principles of preservation and transformation. Some individuals fight to preserve the present structure and, consequently, its current force(s) and position of agents. In opposition, others want to transform the shape of the field and, therefore, restructure its internal force(s), which inevitably reorganizes the position of all actors. This internal struggle is linked to the logic of capital, that is, the volume and nature of the capital owned by each agent define her or his position inside the field (Bourdieu 1983). Agents with large amounts of the most valuable types of capital in the field have more incentive to fight for the preservation of the current set of values assigned to their own possession. This is the case of a native like Rafael, who thinks of golf as a great egalitarian paradise. In opposition, those individuals with limited amounts of the preferred type of capital will more likely fight to change the current value system, as such change may improve their subordinated position in the field. This is the case of Daniel, who thinks of golf as a highly stratified game.
The allegory of the battlefield recuperates the role of agency, since it assumes that social agents do not passively follow structures. Individuals engage (in some cases more successfully than in others) in a myriad of strategies to improve their social position, which is to say, to increase the power that comes with a better location in the battlefield (Bourdieu 1985). The idea of struggle avoids the determinism of classical structuralism, by introducing a dynamic element into the model (Fowler 1996). Golfers strategically use any type of material and nonmaterial resources possessed to engage in symbolic clashes to increase or preserve their own status, either by embracing the current set of forces or by seeking to transform them.
Miguel (a native male in his mid-60s), talks about the transformation of the sport in his lifetime, explaining:
I have noticed that golf has . . . has always been linked to . . . to money, but lately it is also . . . a snobbish activity, the fact that I can tell people that I am a golfer or that I am member of this or that club seems to make me better; this is sad, because during many years memberships were only inherited; for instance, I play with the membership that my father once owned, but now anybody can buy them.
This interviewee regrets the transformation the field has undergone in the last decades, allowing some newcomers to participate in the sport. There is a distinction, in Miguel’s argument, between those who do not need to use golf to demonstrate their social worth, like him, and other individuals who use golf to exchange their surplus of economic capital into other forms of symbolic capital. Miguel emphasizes the idea by adding, “you will realize how, in some clubs, the rough goes all the way into the changing rooms.” His comment suggests that there are members who are able to participate in the sport only because they possess large amounts of economic capital, but those individuals lack the habitus and other forms of capital that once characterized “all members” in the world of golf. This argument was consistently expressed in multiple variations by natives. For example, Patricia (a native in her early 30s) bitterly laments the negative effect that a new wave of players has brought to the game, “many people ignore the rules of golf, the problem lies in the way companies use the sport, giving access to people who don’t have a clue about golf.”
The large number of ignorant players who now populate the golf courses indicates that the internal forces (and consequently the entire field) have been reshaped. Economic capital has outshone other forms of capital in the contemporary form of the field. The recent material expansion of the field has offered access to agents who were not traditionally part of this social world. For instance, Emilio, an old journalist, complains that “before, golf players learned the game through their parents, and they were very good players. . . . Now, they aren’t traditional golfers, they don’t even dress well.” Despite the romantic view of the past implied in the comment, it is true that the world of golf has chenged. In a field where economic capital has become more important it is now easier to exchange economic capital for forms of social or symbolic capital.
Emilio explains that most established clubs require letters of recommendation from current affiliates to consider any prospective member. These letters are mechanisms to demonstrate the possession of social (i.e., trust) and symbolic (i.e., one’s own “moral standing”) capital. However, in some cases, the letters can be obtained through the same person interested in selling a membership. The transformation of the value system assigned to capital has reshaped the field, including the position of agents. This is why Miguel complains that the problem in contemporary golf is that “anybody can buy” a membership.
However, while the possession of economic capital grants direct access to the course, it does not automatically translates into more complex forms of social capital, such as trust. An old native advised me to invest in time playing with people, at least three or four rounds, before asking for anything—even more time if I have economic interests. The importance of the golf course in making relationships lies in the long period of time one has to talk and act while playing. The course is the place where people bodily demonstrate their social belonging, by showing their possession of the “appropriate” amounts of capital through their “fun” conversation, “pleasant” behavior, and “good” game. As Rafael (a native in his mid-60s) suggests, “generally speaking golfers are personable.”
This is not to say that people with a lower-middle- or working-class origins will never be part of a golf club. The possession of large amounts of economic capital can allow anybody to become a member. However, a golfer rich in economic capital will be more interested in transforming, rather than preserving, the value assigned to capital in the field, as this transformation represents an opportunity to improve his/her own status within the community. Carlos (a newcomer in his early 50s), for example, first entered the world of golf in a subordinate position; “if you go out of the city [a two hour commute] there are inexpensive golf clubs, . . . in there, you can choose to play without a caddy, . . . and never drink [alcohol, to save money], . . . this is how I started.” Carlos took golf seriously, becoming a very good player. His outstanding playing skills were instrumental in expanding his social capital, explaining, “If you are a good player, people want to play with you.”
Carlos was able to buy a share in one of the golf clubs in the city, years later. In his new club, he became involved in multiple committees, expanding even more his social networks. He eventually became the organizer of an important amateur tournament, sponsored by luxury brands, open to all golfers (natives and newcomers alike). Carlos recalls, “I met many important people through organizing that tournament, . . . today, I can call top executives at X, Z, and Y [corporations] and they answer the phone to me because they know me, they trust me.”
This case, on the one hand, illustrates how economic capital can be converted into social and symbolic capital, when the habitus of the agent more or less aligns with the shape of the field. The process, however, also requires a long period of time to work. On the other hand, the tournament Carlos organized exemplifies the new shape of the field, one in which economic capital has superseded other forms of capital that once were equally valuable in the field. It is not a coincidence, then, that when I mentioned that I had interviewed Carlos as part of my research, a native “warned” me about him, saying, “be careful, Carlos has a very commercial view of golf.”
To sum up, the allegory that represents the field as a battlefield liberates the concept of group formation from deterministic understandings that treat social groups as given communities embodying “particular class-relations and class-interests” (Marx, 2010 [1894], 7) . Instead, the representation of the field as a battlefield introduces a more fluid understanding in which social groups are composed of individuals and groups armed with dissimilar resources who battle each other in order to conserve or change the shape of the field.
Conclusion
This paper has used the case of the field of golf to analyze the corporeal internalization of status in Mexico. To do so, the concepts of habitus, capital, and field have been used to show how social hierarchies are inscribed on the bodies of individuals, and how the objective reality imposes a set of limitations and possibilities of action to social agents. The analysis starts by showing how the structure of the field and the type of capital bodily owned create a contrasting experience. Despite the physical closeness, for example, those social agents who are situated out of bounds regard golf as an invisible sport. The outsider’s experience, however, is drastically transformed when individuals are situated inside the symbolic boundaries of the field, as the golf course is turned into a stage where individuals engage in a struggle over the meaning of the social world, including their own identity and position within it. This symbolic battle is fought to impose principles of preservation or transformation of the field, which, in the former, maintains the distribution of agents and power dynamics as they are currently organized and, in the latter, modifies the internal forces necessarily reorganizing the position of all individuals within the field.
The struggle inside the field is articulated through a myriad of mundane and taken for granted activities that aim to determine the position of individuals within the internal hierarchy of the field. The body plays a key role in this process, as it is through the ability to play “fuckin’ great”, make and laught about the “right” type of jokes, dress in the “proper” way, maintain a “fun” conversation, and perceive as “normal” the ownership of scarce objects how people bodily demonstrate their position in the field. Individuals voluntarily submit themselves to the demands of this game because its rewards are of great worth: the possibility to increase one’s own status in front of others. These symbolic battles are not mere illusory skirmishes, but processes as real as individuals themselves, because material outcomes emanate from the social recognition that is inevitably associated with status or the lack of it.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is indebted to Sandra Aguilar, John Scott, Ziad Munson, Bruce Whitehouse, and Peter Hills for their insights and suggestions on author’s work. Author also wants to thank the members of his writing group at Lehigh University (Brooke Rollins and Lucy Napper), and to the editor and anonymous reviewers, who all provided helpful feedback on earlier drafts. The author is also grateful to the people who shared their stories with him.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was made possible by a CONACyT-Mexico scholarship.