Competitive Junior Golf in America

This book is a must-read for students, scholars, and parents who want to understand how the increasingly corporatized and commodified world of junior golf is situated within the sweeping economic, political, and cultural orthodoxies of neoliberalism. The authors capture the richness and complexities of competitive junior golf while problematizing the inequalities and consequences embedded within it. Crucially, they offer a sophisticated, historic, contextualization of junior golf blended with embodied (auto-)ethnographic insights and deeply moving personal reflection to create a fascinating, authoritative, and compelling window into contemporary debates about the reproduction of societal privilege, inequity, and power. These insights challenge the reader to grapple with the profound social consequences of a junior golf system that, at one and the same time, promises meaningful social development whilst reinforcing persistent exclusionary barriers within the broader systems and power structures that shape contemporary America. In this sense, the book is so much more than a book about golf; it provides a window through which to view broader struggles over the classed, gendered, and raced consequences of neoliberalism, provides insight into how young golfers need to invest in themselves to become valorized and productive neoliberal citizens, and imagines alternative systems that prioritize equity and inclusion. -- Michael Silk, Bournemouth University, UK
Utilizing an array of qualitative methods, the authors offer an empirically rich and oftentimes chilling reading of competitive junior golf as a faithful expression of broader economic, social, political, and technological forces and relations. Vividly explicating how the unapologetically rationalized sphere of youth sport reproduces broader social inequities and divisions in the United States, Competitive Junior Golf offers a work of physical cultural studies at its critical and contextual best. -- David L. Andrews, University of Maryland, USA
An accessible and engaging analysis of the rise of competitive junior golf. The nuanced critique will be of interest to anyone curious about the social organization of contemporary sport. No fandom or prior experience with the game required. -- Samantha King, Queen's University, CAN
Competitive Junior Golf in America: A Physical Cultural Study casts a critical light on the booming, billion-dollar world of competitive junior golf in the United States. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork, rich historical analysis, and incisive self-reflection about their own location to the sport, authors King-White, Hawzen, and Clark examine how the increasingly commercialized aspects of junior golf (i.e., rising equipment costs, personal branding, social media) collide with the cultural politics of class, race, and gender to reveal how the everyday rhythms of youth sport normalize late-capitalist consumer culture and reorient middle-class views about childhood sporting participation. This will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the growing role competitive youth sport plays in American family life, and the possibilities and pitfalls it holds. -- Michael Giardina, Florida State University, USA