The nature of an upscale nature: Bro Hof Slott Golf Club and the political ecology of high-end golf

Introduction

This article is an account of a spectacular upscale golf development and an attempt to combine tourism theory with political ecology as a lens for exploring power-permeated socio-ecological transformations (Escobar, 2010; Robbins, 2012). My starting point is how there, despite depictions of tourism studies as caught in a ‘managerialist straitjacket’ (Ateljevic et al., 2009) or plagued by inattention to power (Hall, 2010), today exists ample evidence of theoretically and politically engaged research enabling a rather exciting discussion on the nature of tourist natures. Herein, tourism has (inter alia) been conceptualised as a discursive ‘worldmaking’ (Hollinshead et al., 2009; see also Urry and Larsen, 2011), as a capitalistically organised activity refashioning spaces to sell experiences (Bianchi, 2009, 2011; Britton, 1982, 1991; Gibson, 2009, 2010) and in Actor–Network Theory (ANT) and posthumanist work as about socio-material orderings intermingling humans and nonhumans (Franklin, 2004, 2014; Gren and Huijbens, 2012; Van der Duim, 2007; Van der Duim et al., 2012a, 2013). Such conceptualisations have opened up new ways for understanding tourism, but might simultaneously risk compartmentalising analysis by over-emphasising their respective focal points. Political ecology, I argue, could productively combine these approaches. But, as Cole (2012) remarks, it remains ‘surprising how little [this perspective] has been used to examine tourisms relationship with environmental and social change’ (p. 1226). For political ecology, this has meant that natures reordered for leisurely encounters all too often remain under-theorized (but see Heyman, 2005). For tourism studies, neglecting political ecology has meant either that tourism risks being conceptualised as a purely social phenomenon (Gren and Huijbens, 2012) or that socio-ecological entanglements are treated as if somehow separable from conflicts.

In exploring political ecology’s potential contributions, the establishment of Bro Hof Slott Golf Club in this article serves as my illustrative example. This development, by the golf press labelled a ‘super-project’ (Golf Digest, 2009), was opened in 2006–2007 in Upplands-Bro 32 km northwest of Sweden’s capital Stockholm. The 300-ha two-course facility transformed a landscape previously shaped through four centuries of nobility ownership (but falling into disrepair during the latter part of the twentieth century) into a central site for Swedish golf – hosting Nordea Masters, Sweden’s only European Tour tournament, 2010–2013 (Jönsson, in press). Visitors are now met by rolling green hills, and pearly white bunkers filled with crushed marble, in a meticulously maintained landscape scattered with Rolex watches on poles. Alongside such material transformations, the development also sparked visions for Upplands-Bro as rural attraction and a lengthy conflict over the boundaries between the golf facility and a co-established 75 ha land and 175 ha water nature reserve compensating for the development’s impact. The production of a landscape deemed ‘beautiful’ was certainly not always uncontroversial.

In the next section, I trace the possibility of utilising political ecology for grasping golf and tourism, before devoting a section to tourism theory insights. I thereafter introduce Bro Hof Slott, while the two final sections depict the politico-ecological complexities of this development. In the ‘Conclusion’ section, I return to what a dialogue between tourism theory and political ecology could yield. The article builds on fieldwork conducted in 2011–2013. I have interviewed 17 people:politicians to trace Bro Hof Slott’s position in municipal strategies, non-government organisation (NGO) representatives and planners to discuss planning-politics and environmental protection and Bro Hof and golf industry representatives concerning intra-industry visions for the development. For formal decisions, I have consulted documents generated throughout the planning process (archaeological reports, development plans, municipal memos, etc.) and court documents. The article also builds on observations, conducted both when courses were open and closed as well as during the 2011 and 2012 Nordea Masters.

While aware of how the ‘contexts in which golf is played are constantly remade through an enacted, placed but mobile golfing experience’ (Perkins, 2010: 328), I have nonetheless bracketed golfers’ experiences to instead focus on the space produced – how ‘[n]ature and golfing landscapes can be regarded as players too’ (Perkins, 2010: 313; see also Edensor on tourism’s ‘stages’, 2001: 63). For golfers to ‘enact’ golf, in its current form, tied to designated playing fields (Ceron-Anaya, 2010), a material landscape must first be ‘appropriated for one use and thus unavailable for others’ (Klein, 1999: 214).

Political ecology, golf and tourism

A recent count of the world’s golf facilities tallied 34,011 courses spread over allinhabitable continents. Ten countries, among these Sweden, however harbour 79 percent of the global total (R&A, 2015). Briassoulis (2007) approximates that at least 100 ha are needed for each golf development (or 50–60 ha for an 18-hole course). With ‘golf’s wider social reception entail[ing] contentious issues related to development, environmentalism, water, land-use, displacement, and labor’ (Perkins et al., 2010: 268), the sport seems particularly pertinent for exploring political ecology in relation to tourism, something further underscored by how, as ‘the most land-hungry sport, golf development poses not only questions about justice, access, and environmental preservation but also the issues of responsibility for long-term transformations in ecological systems and landscaping politics’ (Perkins et al., 2010: 268).

Despite this, golf has, as Perkins et al. (2010) comment in the introduction to their theme issue on the sport’s political and social connotations, ‘received relatively limited scholarly attention on the part of social scientists and those in the humanities’ (p. 267). Golf has, however, certainly not been fully neglected by these (besides the articles in Perkins et al., 2010, see Briassoulis, 2007, 2011; Jönsson, 2014; Jönsson and Baeten, 2014; Millington and Wilson, 2013; Neo and Savage, 2002; Perkins, 2006), while also several popular accounts of course constructions acknowledge the potentially charged environmental transformations these entail (Klein, 2013; Strawn, 1991).

Initially played on Scottish coastal links, golf in its modern form spread inland partly with developing rail networks (Price, 2002) and was initially internationalised by British colonialists. The latter was, for example, the case for the first course off the British Isles, Royal Calcutta, established in 1829 (Janson, 2004; Klein, 1999). Also Swedish golf’s early history shows clear British imprints. The first club, Gothenburg GC, had a majority British members, while the first course, completed in 1888 at the Ryfors estate, was commissioned by two brothers discovering golf in the United Kingdom (Janson, 2004). Following the founding of a national golf association in 1904, Swedish golf grew virtually uninterrupted in terms of registered club members for a century, peaking at just over 550,000 in 2004. Since then, membership has, however, declined. In 2014, 470 clubs shared 475,000 members of which 72 percent were male and 50 percent over 50 years old (SGF, 2014). About 30,000 ha are covered by courses (Bucht, 2008). High precipitation levels throughout the country mean that golf developments’ water use is rarely discussed as a problem, while extensive public access legislation (Allemansrätten) ensures that golf developments remain un-gated.

In presenting a user survey on playing quality conducted among Nordic players, Dahl-Jensen (2013) concludes that experiencing (a specific kind of well-kept) nature and the design of the course has the greatest experiential impact. Similarly emphasising environmental characteristics, Wheeler and Nauright (2006: 430) speak of the ‘Augusta National Syndrome’ ¹ as ‘the desire of participants, managers and superintendents to have the course they utilize most often resemble the magnificence of those captured in all their full-colour, high-definition glory nearly every weekend’. Here, golf provides an apt starting point for underscoring how features sometimes regarded as intangible (sunsets, scenery, mood – see Debbage and Daniels, 1998) often result from environmental transformations. As Sadalla (2002) remarks, routing a golf course entails ‘designing a set of experiences for the golfer’ (p. 278). These are, then, ‘extracted’ from a landscape ordered to incite these.

Golf does, however, not produce one particular landscape (Giulianotti, 2005; Perkins et al., 2010: 268). Beyond some frequent features (greens of shorter grass surrounding holes, bunkers, water hazards, etc.), courses are deliberately particular, with operators working with, and searching for unique natural qualities in, landscapes appropriated. For golf course architects, the challenges these appropriated landscapes pose range from routing ‘a sequence that strings together the most beautiful features of the landscape into an agreeable challenge for the golfer’ in what Sadalla (2002) calls ‘great natural terrain’ to insulating golfers from more unattractive surroundings (p. 294). Course design moreover varies both between places and over time. While the utilisation of tank technologies in bulldozer construction after World War I and the introduction of high explosives after World War II both gave new opportunities for golf courses to reshape landscapes, increasing degrees of environmental and heritage protection together with zoning restrictions conversely added novel barriers (Hurdzan, 2006).

Also, golf developments’ environmental implications are diverse. Where, for example, the Trump Organisation’s high-profile Aberdeenshire golf development destroyed land under environmental protection (Jönsson, 2014), Bro Hof Slott instead contributed to increasing the amount of land protected (even if the developer was subsequently accused of building on this land). Similarly, while Briassoulis (2007) comments that golf-centred developments in coastal Mediterranean Europe ‘seriously strains strategic resources (land, soil, water and energy) whose critical limits may have been permanently exceeded’ (p. 450), Gange et al. (2003, see also Colding and Folke, 2009) instead emphasise higher levels of biodiversity for bumblebees at Haverfordwest in South Wales, for beetles at Frilford Heath, Oxfordshire, and for birds at Buxtehude in Germany and St Andrews, Trinidad than on surrounding cultivated land.

Importantly, however, political ecology’s validity does not depend on whether golf developments degrade environments. The vast environmental transformations golf courses frequently entail, and the inescapably political nature of such transformations, are sufficient. Courses are ‘legitimate object[s] of public policy making’ (Klein, 1999: 214), with environments reshaped to seduce certain kinds of golfers. As Hurdzan (2006) comments, ‘a club with bentgrass fairways and white silica bunker sand silently conveys the feeling that the club represents greater wealth and prestige than a club with bluegrass fairways and brown bunker sand’ (p. 177). Whereas political ecology has traditionally (although not exclusively!) emphasised primary production, hidden sites and environmental degradation (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987; McCarthy, 2005; Watts, 2001), a dialogue with tourism theory and a focus on golfing landscapes could here accentuate the power-permeated production of highly visible, ‘seductive’ (Allen, 2003), spaces. This becomes a political ecology of ‘beautiful’ environments.

While Blaikie and Brookfield (1987, emphasis added) influentially emphasised that political ecology ‘… combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy [that together] encompasses the constantly shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, and also within classes and groups within society itself’ (p. 17), political ecology has now broadened well beyond this initial focus (Escobar, 2010). A ‘generous term’ (Robbins, 2012), political ecology today does not signify a single methodological, topical or theoretical approach.

Since explicating everything currently labelled ‘political ecology’ would be impossible, I limit myself to what could provide a foundation for accentuating where conceptualisations of tourism and political ecology could productively interlock. Here, Prudham (2005:13–16) provides a useful starting point in emphasising how industries confront nature as land, time and form. ‘Land’ signals how production displays spatial patterns only partly transformable. There is a certain spatial logic to a ski or beach resort irreducible to developer’s (or other human actors’) desires. Similarly, such resorts rely on various geological and biophysical rhythms and, in many parts of the world, display obvious seasonality. This is nature as time. While industry often regards natural rhythms as too slow (since producers must wait until fruit ripens or trees grow before they can expect any return on investments), for golf facilities (and other leisure spaces dependent on well-kept surfaces) some natural rhythms are simultaneously too fast. Maintaining grasses at the same (often remarkably exact) length renders golf courses immensely labour-intensive landscapes (cf. Klein, 1999; Robbins, 2007). With ‘form’, finally, Prudham (2005) denotes how firms confront natures as physical properties. Soil quality, topography, etc., matter. Land, space and time are, moreover, dialectically interrelated. Nature as form or land could never exist independent of the processes (nature as time) shaping environments.

Hitherto excluded, but nonetheless crucial, is how industries also confront nature as idea. Lawn-moving regimes, for example, result from both the biophysical fact that grass grows and socially constructed expectations that lawns should look picture-perfect (Robbins, 2007). Although golf is sometimes presented as a seemingly ahistorical admiration of landscapes (Bale, 2003; Sadalla, 2002), the sport’s present standing seems unintelligible outside of those discourses denoting specific natures as desirable. Neither rural landscapes (Aitchison et al., 2000) nor shorelines (Corbin, 1994) have always been regarded as desirable. Rather, such sites could become attractions as the world was reordered to be travelled and experienced (Franklin, 2004).

Instigating a political ecology–tourism theory dialogue

Although I began this article by noting the neglect of political ecology in tourism studies, some texts analysing tourism from this perspective have indeed surfaced (Campbell et al., 2008; Cole, 2012; Douglas, 2014; Gössling, 2003; Stonich, 1998). Ranging from damning critiques of tourist developments (Cole, 2012; Stonich, 1998) to a more appreciative stance (Gössling, 2003), these explicate tourism as simultaneously socio-ecological and power-permeated. But such texts have so far principally analysed tourism in the Global South – and predominantly tropical islands at that. The most thoroughly mapped part of the world, the Global North, thus remains mostly uncharted territory. Although Douglas (2014) has recently striven to provide an overview of political ecology primarily regarding sustainable tourism, his intervention engages in depth with political ecologists, but not with tourist theory. Dialogue is thereby cut before it even begins.

But whereas few tourist scholars self-identify as political ecologists, I want to emphasise how many offer fundamental insights for this perspective, primarily since confronting nature(s) in producing environments capable of attracting wealthy golfers (or other tourists) differ from confronting nature in, say, the forestry industries (which is where Prudham based his research). Selling tables far from where trees were felled could never be the same as selling experiences ‘immediate, embodied and geographical’ (Gibson 2010: 527). In explicating the particularities of such experiences, decades of research on tourism and leisure provide an indispensable foundation for illuminating natures seldom given attention in political ecology.

Here, the traditions flagged above (social-constructivism, political economy and ANT/posthumanism), to me, seem particularly productive. Together, these entail a focus on the social construction of touristic spaces and practices (cf. Hollinshead et al., 2009; Urry and Larsen, 2011) combined with conceptual overviews (Bianchi, 2011; Fletcher, 2011; Mosedale, 2011) and calls for a change of emphasis (cf. Britton, 1991; Williams 2004) towards political economy and works emphasising the entanglements of humans and nonhumans in tourism (Franklin, 2004, 2014; Gren and Huijbens, 2012; Van der Duim, 2007; Van der Duim et al., 2012a, 2013). These traditions, furthermore, map quite well onto what Escobar (2010) outlines as a first generation of political economy–centred political ecology, a constructivist second generation and a third generation of ‘postconstructivist’ political ecology influenced by the ontological turn and flat ontologies.

And how do these traditions construe tourism? Social constructivism, to begin with, focuses on semiosis and ways of seeing, a feature probably most famously emphasised in Urry’s (and now also Larsen’s) account of a socially organised ‘tourist gaze’. ‘Gazing’ is here regarded as learned ability and performative act, constructing reality rather than receiving any pre-existing reality (Urry and Larsen, 2011). Similarly, Hollinshead et al. (2009) elaborate on the ‘worldmaking’ of tourism as ‘those mediating acts by and through which a particular vision of the world is favoured and exercised’ (p. 434). Emphasising how those making the touristic world ‘are already aesthetically conditioned and politically pre-imbued with what is worth seeing and celebrating’ (Hollinshead et al., 2009: 432), such work accentuates a cumulative meaning-making tied to constructed desires for particular environments. Nature as idea is evident. ‘Worldmaking’ is moreover intrinsically power-laden, with tourism ‘re-narrativizing’ the world – giving places, events and peoples new images and (self)identities (Hollinshead et al., 2009: 429). But social-constructivism has simultaneously come under critique for giving limited attention to more apparently material power relations (Bianchi, 2009).

As Williams (2004) emphasises, political economy perspectives, while ‘tentatively and selectively’ engaged with in tourism studies, can ensure that material relations are not lost sight of. Emphasis is now put on the processes enmeshed in a tourism production system that is

simultaneously a mechanism for the accumulation of capital, the private appropriation of wealth, the extraction of surplus value from labour, and the capturing of (often unearned) rents from cultural and physical phenomena (especially public goods) which are deemed to have both a social and scarcity value. Companies, governments, and class and nonclass social groups – each identified with specific territories (destinations) – compete for the rents to be obtained from the construction and selling of experiences and places to would-be tourists. (Britton, 1991:455)

Consequentially, Britton (1991) calls for ‘a theorisation that explicitly recognises, and unveils, tourism as a predominantly capitalistically organised activity driven by the inherent and defining social dynamics of that system, with its attendant production, social, and ideological relations’ (p. 475). This does, then, not mean abandoning social-constructivist concerns. Rents are, in Britton’s (1991) account, for example, captured from cultural and physical phenomena deemed valuable, while Klein (1999) in accounting for golf and political economy calls courses ‘carefully scripted […] products of their culture, technology, and economy’ (p. 214; emphasis added).

Crucially, the ways tourist firms confront nature as land (and form) differ from many other industries, with tourist operations frequently unable to relocate (Church and Ravenscroft, 2007). Destinations are spatially fixed, with consumers travelling to commodities (to experience Paris, or a golf course) rather than vice versa (Fox Gotham, 2002). Tourism is, as Gren and Huijbens (2012) remark, ‘fundamentally an earthly business’ (p. 156; emphasis in original). For golf, this becomes acute if we are to acknowledge nature and landscapes as players (Perkins, 2010). Making a tourist world consequentially often implies re-making environments to attract tourists. And these processes often involve state actors. As Mosedale and Albrecht (2011) comment, ‘sites of governance are not merely reacting to an imposed spatial organization, but instead are actively engaged in framing political decisions within spatial discourses amenable to their particular positions’ (p. 252).

But while a political economy perspective can shed light on the socio-spatial dynamic of the spaces of tourism, it often says little about how more than human actors matter in these. The perspective thus risks succumbing to the ‘audacious arrogance of humanity not to recognise the raw physicality of the earth and its history of dominating rather than being dominated by humanity’ (Franklin, 2014: 265). In counteracting such ‘arrogance’, ANT and ANT-influenced perspectives prove valuable. Possible to interpret ‘as an effect of a perceived need of moving beyond dichotomous understandings of tourism as either a purified economic or equally pure cultural practice’ (Jóhannesson et al., 2012: 4), these arguably goes furthest among the traditions here outlined in accounting for material relations. Conceptualising tourism as made through ‘relational effects’, as ‘composed, constituted, maintained and assembled’ (Jóhannesson et al., 2012: 6), analysis is now forced to acknowledge also nonhuman forces. As Van der Duim (2007) rightly notes, ‘without the non-human, tourism would not last a second’ (p. 972).

Leading figures in this tradition are explicitly more interested in how tourism works than in what it is and with how arrangements are accomplished and stabilised rather than why they exist (Van der Duim et al., 2013). But while this enables an admirably open attitude to the matter analysed, it might sometimes be ‘more analytically interesting and more politically just to begin with the question, cui bono? ² than to begin with a celebration of the fact of human/nonhuman mingling’ (Star 1990: 43; emphasis in original). Notwithstanding notable exceptions (Franklin, 2004), ANT-influenced accounts risk moving away from black-boxed unexplained networks (why without how) to instead black-box power in the (re)production of networks under blanket categories such as ‘ordering’ or ‘enacting’ (how without why). The sometimes simultaneous emphasis on several realities to enact (cf. Mol, 2002; Ren, 2011), furthermore, seems less-than-optimal in light of the sometimes intense conflicts over which reality to ‘choose’ when some tourist-oriented realities are incompatible with other ones (Jönsson, 2014). Political ecology requires asking both how particular orderings function and why they function as they do, thereby transcending what Robbins (2012) provocatively calls ‘the banality of the obviously material’ (p. 241). While acknowledging the way nonhumans matter, this perspective must entwine an account of such agency in an analysis of political and political-economic power relations.

Introducing Bro Hof Slott

Drawing on the discussion above, I will in the remainder of the article now account for the establishment of Bro Hof Slott. From one vantage point, this development’s history reads as a list of achievements built upon the symbolically laden nature of manorial landscapes and estate (Figures 1 and 2), on massive investments and on new orderings entangling humans and nonhumans. Opened in 2007, the Stadium Course lets golfers encircle a series of artificial ponds and Lake Mälaren’s shores on the southern and eastern parts of the property. This course is continuously ranked as Sweden’s best course and has gained international recognition. In 2012, Golf World ranked it as the 54th best course globally (Golf World, 2012). The course was also, as marketing has emphasised, the first in two decades to be allowed to override lakeside protection legislation (see Figure 3).

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Figure 1.

Bro Hof Slott club house (photo: author).

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Figure 2.

Club house interior (photo: author).

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Figure 3.

Bro Hof Slott and Broängarna nature reserve (Map complied by author 2015 Map Data © Lantmäteriet i 2014/00579).

Upplands-Bro’s then master-plan otherwise denoted a 300-m buffer from shorelines where developments were prohibited. The development’s second course, where golfers play more forested land on the property’s north side, opened in 2010. Also this course, the Castle course, is ranked among the best nationally. In a country where 18-hole course’sinitation fees at the time of the development’s opening averaged SEK €657 (SEK 6086) (KPMG, 2007), Bro Hof Slott opened with membership fees more than 50 times as expensive, at SEK340,000 (€36,700). Green-fees stood at almost four times the SEK281 (€30) national average (SGF, 2007). Current SEK350,000 (€37,800) shares, ³ SEK16,400 (€1,769) annual fees for 2015 and SEK950-1650(€103–179) green-fees ensure that Bro Hof Slott remains the site for some of Sweden’s most expensive golf experiences.

This development can productively be read alongside recent work in political ecology and rural geography conceptualising the countryside as remade through urban connections (Heynen, 2014) and globalised as ‘a postproductivist [countryside] with consumption-orientated uses for elites’ (McCarthy, 2008: 129) as major commodities. With Bro Hof Slott, a landscape, topographically removed from the city, came to exist in evident interconnection with urban environments. This became a site for business meetings and expensive countryside outings. For several years the famous high-end restaurant Grodan operated Bro Hof Slott’s restaurant in addition to their city centre locale. A once distinctively urban space of privilege thus extended into the rural landscape. Bro Hof Slott simultaneously ‘globalised’ this site; rendering it visible world-wide. The ambition was, in Club owner Björn Örås words, ‘to become the highest ranked course in Sweden, the highest ranked course in Europe, and to be the best spectator course in the world’.

Consequentially, it was from the developer’s point of view crucial to establish a sufficiently spectacular landscape and to communicate what set Bro Hof Slott apart from other golf developments. As ‘much “an effect of discourse” and an outcome of struggle as they are a reflection of the qualities of the product’ (Harvey, 2002: 100), this saw the developer draw on the history of the manorial estate and on the topography appropriated. The development’s logo is a nobility-inspired crest depicting a lion crossing a bridge, whereas the sheer size of the property stems from how the nobility for centuries dominated the countryside, producing lavish manorial landscapes as testaments to such domination (Jönsson, in press). For Robert Trent Jones Jr, Bro Hof Slott’s course architect, the landscape such dynamic had produced made it feel as if ‘Mother Earth must have created this area for a golf course. It was just to walk around in the beautiful landscape and see where the holes would fit’.

Undoubtedly, already marshalling ‘Mother Earth’ is deeply political, invoking a teleology tied to gendered ideas of nature (Roach, 2003). But this depiction of a landscape predestined for golf, or that golf-marketers frequently praise Robert Trent Jones Jr’s firm’s attention to the environment, should not distract from the material transformations undertaken. Bro Hof Slott rather leans towards ‘extravagantism’ (Hurdzan 2006: 18), a golf-architectural philosophy where landscapes are radically reshaped to produce spectacular golfing topographies. Turning fields and flooded meadows into upscale golfing grounds involved transplanting 3m m³ of soil. Cropland was covered with 140,000 tonnes of sand and fairways with creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera). More than 17,000 m³ of rock was removed to optimise lake-views, and more than 20,000 m² of crushed marble was laid out to scatter the Stadium Course with bunkers remaining white regardless of weather. Ponds were dug, and the brook running through the property was re-routed, now meandering where previously straightened. Such interventions ordered an idealised manorial landscape, ‘pre-modernised’ (Jönsson, in press) to correspond to ideas concerning what golfing natures should be.

Although marketing material frequently depicts courses thereby produced as idly awaiting golfers (Figure 4), these remain immensely labour-intensive (cf. Klein, 1999; Robbins, 2007). In preparing for the 2012 Masters tournament, those maintaining courses for instance worked 12, or in some extreme cases even 16, hour days, among else mowing the Stadium Course’s fairways each day (This is usually done every second day) (Kristensen, 2012). In 2014, Bro Hof Slott had 27 employees during the summer (of which 19 maintain courses) and 10 employed year-round. This is several times the average staff at Swedish facilities (KPMG, 2007). These produce a kind of artificial snapshot, where constant maintenance gives the impression that nature as time came to a halt at exactly the ‘right’ moment (i.e. when lawns were playable).

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Figure 4.

Stadium Course from the air (photo: Lennart Hyse for Bro Hof Slott. Reproduced with permission).

In line with such a focus on what natures confronted require (Prudham, 2005; Robbins, 2007), Bro Hof Slott’s owner emphasises the development as an engineering feat. The grass mixes’ (Penn Trio and Penn A-4) ability to withstand Stockholm’s climate is underscored, together with how these allow cutting greens ‘aggressively’ at 2,3-2,4 mm. Also draining is highlighted, and how the system built up to remove water from lawns means that ‘the condition of the course is world class and we continuously get confirmation [of this]’ (Björn Örås, Founder and Chairman, Bro Hof Slott GC). Contrasting with how ‘Mother Earth’ was invoked above, Örås, in other words, acknowledges how pipes, drains and sprinklers tamed the topography. Although courses undoubtedly need water (10m litres allowed for hot summer weeks, Upplands-Bro, 2004), too much water deteriorates playing quality. Hence, an extensive drainage system was built to allow courses to co-exist with Stockholm’s often rainy summers. Golf experiences were indeed only possible since human and nonhuman actors intermingled to allow these (cf. Van der Duim, 2007: 972).

State action and the co-production of Bro Hof Slott

Merely depicting how humans and nonhumans came together to constitute the golfing landscape, however, provides a rather sanitised snapshot of this ordering. Perceptions of just how green golf courses should be provided a background for expectations (cf. Wheeler and Nauright, 2006), while bentgrass lawns, like Hurdzan (2006: 177) reminded us above, not only provide playing surfaces but also convey a feeling of wealth and prestige.

The shape of the development simultaneously seems unintelligible outside of the shape of capitalism’s current dynamics (cf. Britton, 1991), with new forms of employment producing the preconditions for this leisure space. As Klein (1999, p. 213) comments, ‘the golf course transcends the confines of its immediate geography’ (and, on could add, its immediate history). This is rather remarked for Bro Hof Slott. Based on over SEK400 million (€44m) of Örås private fortune, the development internalises the processes creating this wealth. Thereby, Bro Hof Slott becomes a continuation of the history of Poolia (the staffing agency started, as Ekonompoolen, by Örås in 1989). The leisure landscape is linked to the working lives of Poolia employees during more than two decades and, shifting the vantage point, to Poolia’s position in the Swedish economy. Between 1994 and 2008, political decisions loosening regulations and partial bans on private staffing agencies meant that these went from employing 5000 to employing 60,000 people nation-wide (Johnson, 2010).

Hence, the development is interlinked with national state action. But for any tourist space to be produced, also local-scale state actors had to permit development and accept how Örås included water contact as a non-negotiable vision.

To build a world-class golf course, access to water is a crucial competitive factor. This was flooded cropland, so it had no real value. There were no natural values there, which has falsely been claimed in hindsight (Björn Örås, Founder and Chairman, Bro Hof Slott).

Uttered in the midst of the conflict over the nature reserve’s boundaries, this illustrates not only how Örås strove to create the preconditions he deemed necessary but also a discursive struggle over how pre-existing landscape, and golf facility, should be regarded. Whereas proponents have referred to Bro Hof Slott as Upplands-Bro’s ‘icing on the cake’ (Yvonne Stein, Liberals), critics conversely call it a ‘reserve for rich men’ (Kjell Andersson, Left Party). That, as Mosedale and Albrecht (2011) emphasise, sites of governance are actively involved in determining spatial organisation does not mean that the ‘local’ displays one particular attitude. Rather, local state involvement vis-à-vis Bro Hof Slott simultaneously included support, renunciation and place-marketing utilisation. Even as the conflict concerning environmental protection was ongoing, Upplands-Bro utilised the development to market the municipality (Figure 5).To many politicians, bentgrass lawns became canvases for expressing desirable future visions

Bro Hof establishes an image unique for golf facilities. They utilise the environment in a way that transports you to the most beautiful places abroad. And this eye-opener becomes rather contrasting. It almost becomes too beautiful to be located in Bro [laughs]. I have received that reaction, that the contrast becomes so evident that it becomes a bit disturbing. But I believe that in the long run, this will create an image that will lend immensely positive connotations to the municipality concerning in-migration and new establishments (Jan Stefanson, Christian Democratic Party)

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Figure 5.

Upplands-Bro banner at the Stadium Course during Nordea Scandinavian Masters, 2012 (photo: author).

This hope for Bro Hof Slott as lending Upplands-Bro a new identity runs through several politicians’ accounts (cf. Hollinshead et al., 2009). Blasting rocks, planting turf grass, piping drainage systems and so on – the entire socio-ecological ordering necessary to establish the golfing landscape was, proponents claimed, a favourable re-ordering of the municipality. Rather than producing an entirely new identity, Bro Hof Slott, however, reshaped a partly established one.

Golf was already one of the municipality’s profiles, and that has certainly not diminished. As a side-track, we are now planning for Täby Racecourse to move here. Horses and golf will be our profiles (David Lanthén, Head of planning- and development, Upplands-Bro municipality).

Remarked is how Bro Hof Slott became enmeshed in municipal politics in a municipality where golf was already prominent. The Scandinavian Masters Tournament had, when Bro Hof Slott opened, already been played four times in the municipality, at Kungsängen. The intended future profile of Upplands-Bro was furthermore one engrained in what is regarded as two rather exclusive forms of rural recreation, golf and horses. The thrust towards a countryside producing ‘consumption-oriented uses for elites’ (McCarthy, 2008: 129) is evident.

Evident in Upplands-Bro, as in many municipalities surrounding Stockholm, is simultaneously a will to utilise rural land as resource in order to compete for visitors, in-migrants and attention with other peri-urban municipalities. As Liberal politician Yvonne Stein argues, Upplands-Bro does not own much land, but had much undeveloped land (deemed) suitable for development. The current state of the ‘dialectic between society and land-based resources’ (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987: 17) was thus one where rural land was to become developable.

Noticeable both in proponents’ accounts and in the local plan was moreover an emphasis on the shoreside landscape as in need of continued maintenance and the golf development as ensuring this. The local plan asserted that without continued maintenance the shoreline would regrow, radically reshaping the impression of the landscape (Upplands-Bro, 2004: 6). The same plan outlined 225 bird species (of which 110 nested during the last decades, and among these nesting 30 endangered species – such as Western Marsh Harrier (Circus aeruginosus) and Eurasian Bittern (Botaurus stellaris), on the European Union’s Bird Directive, as well as Blue-headed Wagtail (Motacilla flava flava) and Gadwall (Anas strepera), listed nationally) living on the beach meadows. Like aesthetic impact, birdlife was regarded as hinging on the continued maintenance that Bro Hof Slott should ensure (Upplands-Bro, 2004). Hence, we encounter a form of environmental protection where a high-profile, large-scale, golf development should provide the possibility for maintaining environments. The potential basis for sustainability generated through such strategies should, however, not be overstated (cf. Van der Duim et al., 2012b: 36).

Bro Hof Slott, the surrounding countryside and the complex nature of land

When municipal officials in 2007 assessed the then ongoing construction of the Stadium course, they concluded that it had infringed on 54,000 m² of the newly established nature reserve. Both the Stadium course’s holes (15 and 16) with direct lake contact were together with a road by hole 13 found to be built partly on reserve land, while also trees were felled and reconstruction work undertaken within the reserve (Edgren, 2009). Golf course architecture as a ‘form of free, artistic expression of the area where golf is played’ (Hurdzan, 2006: 24) clashed with the more fixed structure of a local plan outlining 6m of herbs and grasses between courses and Lake Mälaren (Upplands-Bro, 2004: 54). The municipal Building and Environment Committee consequentially issued an 8 million SEK fine (€766,000) if the developer did not restore the reserve. Retrospectively redrawing the development’s boundaries was deemed impossible since shorelines were (in addition to a nature reserve) considered a national interest for tourism and recreation and adjacent to a Natura 2000 area (Edgren, 2009). Bro Hof Slott, on their side, claimed that restoration would cost 460 million SEK (€51m), more than the total costs of building the facility (Stark, 2011). Here, the complexities of confronting nature as ‘land’ not only as a spatial category (Prudham, 2005), but as a political category (cf. Lefebvre, 1991), became evident.

Judging by answers given by former Municipal Chief Executive Folkesson, the developer was, however, given generous leeway, with the municipality recognising the developer’s desire for immediate water contact in light of the money potentially flowing into Upplands-Bro and how only ‘private capitalists’ had the ‘money and muscle’ to restore the previously disused manorial landscape (Folkesson, cited in Edgren, 2009: 91). But whereas the municipality as political entity proved willing to accomodate Bro Hof Slott, the municipality as planning-monitoring entity was less so, although some right-wing (borgerliga) councillors wanted to regard breaches as acceptable lesser departures.

In contrast to an emphasis on multiple co-existing realities (Ren, 2011; Ren et al., 2012), ordering shores for golf precluded enacting any other reality there and then. Golf development and nature reserve could not co-exist on top of each other. Reality, in this sense, was never ‘multiple’. Focus should therefore perhaps be on which reality prevailed. ⁴ Although conflicts over possible breaches of the local plan were resolved out of court in 2013 (with the developer adding almost 150 ha and the municipality another 100 ha to extend the entire reserve to 500 ha) and although the highest court governing planning-political disputes (Mark- och miljööverdomstolen) in 2015 backed the developer’s version, conflicts remain part of Bro Hof Slott. These meant that a 70-room conference/hotel development was stalled, resulting in a development now existing in a rather stunted form compared to what was once outlined in the local plan.

But such hurdles do not mean that dreams of a more grand resort are abandoned. Bro Hof Slott’s vision has been a country club feel built on a community of like-minded.

This means building an identity with the course. It is the central node in your personal life, and you almost have to be member of the Country Club – meet here during the days to play golf, tennis and so on (Johan Hagenfeldt, Managing Director and Club Director, Bro Hof Slott. Hagenfeldt has since left his position at Bro Hof Slott).

Further illustrated by how paths mostly lack benches and rubbish bins (thereby creating a landscape better suited for golfers than, say, hikers), Bro Hof does indeed already establish a certain kind of isolated community.

Such desires to order the countryside primarily for golfers is further reflected in how the vicinity is regarded. Concerning land potentially targeted for residential and business development west of Bro Hof Slott, the developer saw such plans as posing both advantages and drawbacks. Against how 40–50 club members already interested in living in the vicinity could potentially live there, the perceived danger was to have others too close.

This should be its own landscape, and houses [should remain] over there. Say that you can sense that there is something there, that’s ok. But this should be its own landscape. The drawback is if they build apartment buildings or an area where we’ll have people who don’t play golf, and don’t understand, or see golf as something good – going by moped over the courses to the train station. We don’t want that, obviously (Johan Hagenfeldt, Bro Hof Slott’s Managing Director and Club Director).

Here, the developer’s inability to fully order the kind of encounters offered is underscored. As Richardson (2002) remark, also seemingly suitable golf properties ‘may be rendered virtually useless for golf due to influences above or beyond [their] borders’ (p. 51). Bro Hof Slott’s fortunes are hence bound to depend on state bodies’ decisions and those of adjacent property owners. Nature as land, form (Prudham, 2005) and player (Perkins, 2010) extends far beyond the land under the developer’s direct control. For Bro Hof Slott to successfully convey a sense of wealth and prestige, manicured lawns could consequentially not be enough. Crucial among the relations constituting tourism (Jóhannesson et al., 2012: 6) thus become those between developer, planning-political actors and others nearby that together produce the countryside as an ensemble of activities. Perceptions of how an upscale golf landscape should look and feel come together with the orderings constructing such a landscape and the political-economic dynamic of a rural landscape where various property owners have their own visions for what should be created.

While Bro Hof Slott’s history could be read as the cumulative coming together of humans (politicians, golfers, the owner, etc.) and nonhumans (grasses, pipes, piles of crushed white marble) to constitute an upscale golf ordering, this was not a harmonious process. Rather, the development’s perceived economic feasibility clashed with actors defending the rigidity of plans. In scrutinising these conflictual processes, political ecology’s ‘explicit consideration of relations of power’ (Robbins, 2012: 20) proves useful. Political-economic, social-constructivist and ANT conceptualisations provide insightful glimpses into the establishment of Bro Hof Slott. But shifting between, and combining, them can illuminate how ‘nature’ participates therein as simultaneously idea, the basis for profits, and agential. Just as nature as land, form, time and idea cannot be separated from each other, this golf-touristic nature as relational effect, as symbolically loaded and as commodified space seems inseparable.

Conclusion

Perhaps above all, the story of Bro Hof Slott underscores how complex the production of a highly visible ‘beautiful’ environment can be. A site the course architect expressed as predestined for golf could nonetheless only become a golfing landscape through vast transformations. Human and nonhuman actors came to intermingle in novel ways, and this intermingling was in turn inseparable from how the development shaped and was shaped by political, and political-economic, processes. A new constellation of golf enthusiasts, lawns and ponds came to repopulate shores, thereby becoming both canvases for depicting Uppland-Bro’s future and contested spaces. The merit of a political ecology perspective here is how various aspects of the golfing landscape’s production can be kept in creative tension and politicised.

As something of a ‘trickster science’ (Robbins, 2015), political ecology has to date evolved through simultaneously mobilising and criticising other traditions. But while emphasising weaknesses in traditions enrolled is therefore inescapable, my aim is not to let political ecology ‘engulf’ tourism theory. Instead, political ecology could function as a provocation for tourism scholars to continue to explore how various kinds of tourist-oriented socio-ecological relations can be understood and how power operates therein. In doing so, established tourism theory traditions should decidedly not be discarded. Rather, a continued dialogue with tourist theory could enable political ecology to move beyond the rivers, sewage systems, fields, mines, forests, labs hitherto premiered to those beaches, fields, islands and mountains where human and nonhuman elements are today ordered to make possible the production and consumption of experiences.

Tourist theory has for decades emphasised experiences as important commodities, and if these commodities have been largely ignored by political ecology, this means that this perspective has ignored important reasons for why many environments around the world are reshaped (or retained). Political ecology has missed how the world has been materially reordered to be experienced, seen and travelled (Franklin, 2004). Already referred to as ‘largest scale movement of goods, services, and people that humanity has perhaps ever seen’ (Greenwood, 1989: 171), tourism has become a powerful force through which a remarkable range of natures are appropriated and transformed. These natures, and the power-permeated process producing them, deserve attention from all possible perspectives. As spaces produced through appropriating, transforming and maintaining vast, often spectacular, land areas, golfing landscapes certainly do as well. Here, Bro Hof Slott’s courses are ‘merely’ examples among more than 34,000 others with their own particular political and environmental implications.