Super Intentions: Golf Course Management and the Evolution of Environmental Responsibility

Abstract

This article examines the golf industry's evolving responses to environment-related problems since the mid-1960s. Drawing from an analysis of golf superintendent trade publications, the article shows how golf industry members initially denied that their work could have negative impacts, but eventually acknowledged potential golf-related environmental problems-and ultimately positioned themselves as environmental leaders through various forms of professionalization. The analysis also reveals contradictions in superintendents' messaging about their environmental expertise and about the safety of turfgrass chemicals. The article concludes with reflections on why these contradictions should inspire concerns about golf's nascent environmental leadership, and on corporate environmentalism generally.Since the late 1980s, it has become commonplace for organizations-especially those accused of threatening the environment with their products or practices-to promote themselves as participants in a "corporate environmentalist" movement. Although researchers have, in turn, debated the merits and limitations of corporate environmentalism (e.g., Lyon and Maxwell 2004), the body of literature on this topic is still far from complete. Most notably, and considering the critique that corporate environmentalism is merely a means to escape government-imposed regulation, there is limited research that considers how members of different industries have attempted to maintain freedom from restrictive external oversight, or that examines the meanings industry members give to their pro-environment (and potentially anti-regulation) work. Certainly there are methodological challenges to obtaining such information. Yet it is important to seek data that provides insight into how and why industry insiders make the decisions they do around the environment if the integrity of such decisions is to be assessed. There is also a strong case to be made that such research is especially needed on sport and leisure industries, given the relatively newfound tendency among sporting organizations like Olympic organizing committees to profess their leadership on environment-related issues (cf., Wilson and Millington in press). The Sociological Quarterly ISSN 0038-0253 bs_bs_banner The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2013) 450-475

Is Nature-Oriented Tourism a Pro-Environmental Practice?: Examining Tourism–Environmentalism Alignments Through Discourse Networks and Intersectoral Relationships

“…As such, our analysis contributes to furthering our understanding of the sociological dimensions of human-environment interaction, building upon other work published in this journal (i.e., Shriver, Chasteen Miller, and Cable 2003;Dunlap and York 2008;McCright and Dunlap 2011;Nagel 2011;Capek 2012;Jerolmack 2012;Wachsmuth 2012;Millington and Wilson 2013;Ellis 2014). Around the world, coastal environments are increasingly subject to competing pressures of resource extraction, tourism development, and ecological change.…”

“…By examining how these discourse networks and organizational networks are articulated, we gain a more complex understanding of the political engagements with environmentalism that are produced through nature‐oriented tourism. As such, our analysis contributes to furthering our understanding of the sociological dimensions of human‐environment interaction, building upon other work published in this journal (i.e., Shriver, Chasteen Miller, and Cable ; Dunlap and York ; McCright and Dunlap ; Nagel ; Capek ; Jerolmack ; Wachsmuth ; Millington and Wilson ; Ellis ). Around the world, coastal environments are increasingly subject to competing pressures of resource extraction, tourism development, and ecological change.…”

“…By contrast, others argue that recreational and tourist experiences produce only limited changes in environmental awareness specific to the environments where those experiences take place (Haluza-DeLay 2001;Waitt and Cook 2007), or that recreation industries may embrace a narrow version of "strategic environmentalism" as a way to improve their public image (Millington and Wilson 2013). Unlike either of these positions, our results are consistent with an intermediate approach, which asserts that nature-oriented tourism exists along a continuum of more or less socially and ecologically sustainable practices (Gould 1999;Bulbeck 2005;Neves 2010).…”

“…Wheaton's work on Surfers Against Sewage, for example, shows how environmental action around water pollution can be grounded in the collective identities and sport practices of surfers (Wheaton 2007; also see Laviolette 2006). Millington and Wilson's (2013) research on corporate responses to environmentalism within the U.S. golf industry, by contrast, focuses less on connections between environmental organizations and industry organizations. Instead, they highlight how the golf industry embarked on an ecological modernization project of technological improvement, which may be read as a form of "strategic environmentalism" designed to improve the environmental reputation of the industry in response to environmental critiques.…”

Cloning colonialism: Residential development, transnational aspiration, and the complexities of postcolonial India

“…Following Altheide et al (2008, p. 128), we utilized QDA as a tool for "locating, identifying, retrieving and analyzing documents for their relevance, significance and meaning". This allowed us, with Millington & Wilson (2013), to identify major themes in these documents and examine the processes through which particular meanings and representations came to be privileged and taken-for-granted. As an emergent methodology, QDA allowed (and expected) for unanticipated themes to emerge; through an emphasis on 'discovery' in these documents we searched for contexts, meanings, and patterns within, while allowing for and embracing nuances, surprises, and contradictions that emerged in the research process (Altheide et al, 2008).…”