ABSTRACT
This paper draws on the work of two writers currently influential in the social science field, Elias and Foucault, to develop a framework for the critical analysis of the dynamics of modern golf. We examine the “civilising” (Elias) and “disciplinary” (Foucault) processes that have shaped the game's emergence. While a civilised image is a distinctive feature of routine golfing practice, golf has also become a “disciplinary” field, where (i) technical and social discipline of body, mind and behaviour are seen as essential to success, and (ii) deep golfing knowledge is achievable only via the intervention of experts from technological and scientific disciplines. Yet, looking at its history, the emergence of golf as a civilising and disciplinary project was in no sense inevitable before the late nineteenth century. We therefore propose that a properly critical science of golf must confront the way that the game since then has become a field for civilising disciplinary and scientific interventions. Disciplinarity, in its various aspects, structures the way in which the game is organised, played and analysed. Even the meta-scientific framework of golf science is, we suggest, one of disciplinarity.
