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I have some friends who are spending a few months in town, and during this time they've rented a condo overlooking the golf course at a local country club. More than once, they've described their agitation regarding the constant mowing, as well as the use of untold toxic chemicals on the grass.
It seems an odd contradiction: the ostensible beauty and ease of club life, the manicured green lawns, and the well-maintained grounds are dependent upon the poison in the workers' sprayers and the ceaseless emission of fumes from the small engines of lawn mowers, weed eaters, and hedge trimmers.
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This brings me to my second observation: the strange social dynamic between the people who live at the clubs and the legion of workers necessary to keep them running. This ranges from the hourly workers mentioned above to less obvious examples like personal trainers and nutritionists. Employees – even independent contractors – are expected to call the members by "Mr. _____" and "Mrs. _______" rather than addressing them by their first names. Even if a member asks to be called by his or her first name, an employee should still address the member by last name; otherwise another member might hear and run the risk of being offended.
This type of dehumanization is not the intent of the people who live there, however. In fact, in my (limited) experience, they seem exceedingly warm and friendly. Rather, it appears inherent in the country club schema because it is modeled after a certain model of economic relations. One group of individuals make and maintain an excess of money, while another caste of individuals provide the labor necessary for the first group to "maintain their lifestyle." I've hear this euphemism ringing in my ears a lot recently, but stripped down to essential nature it means simple one things: I want to accumulate more capital. (See Marx and surplus labor value for details.)
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Through a seemingly random series of coincidences, I ended up going to one of these clubs earlier in the week. Besides myself, their was a second individual tagging along, and as we walked up the steps towards the clubhouse she commented on what a positive thing these places were because they provided people with "community." I had two reactions to this.
On the one hand, this idea is completely accurate, and there is no doubt that the social activities and parties and whatever else goes on inside of country clubs provides their members with a feeling of belonging. On the other hand, though, these clubs depend upon the cannibalization of more organic communities, which were called "neighborhoods" in the 20th century. It's one of those eerie demonstrations of the internal contradictions of capitalism: the pursuit and stockpiling of wealth causes people to value it over actual relationships; but, once gone, the system then has to produce and manufacture "community" as another commodity to be bought and sold on the market place.
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Finally, there is the phenomenon of the guard gate. The word community (at least for me) connotes ideas like inclusion, acceptance and fellowship; and I suppose this, more than anything else, it what made the comment regarding community seem so strange to me. One must buy his or her way into a country club, and the guard gate is the material embodiment of this principle of exclusion. This attitude seems incompatible with the idea of a truly local community with all its variety of culture, religion, ethnicity, and money.
Furthermore, the signifying capacity of the guard house goes much further in keeping out "undesirables" than the pistols on the guards hips could ever do. We've come to take these tiny air conditioned shacks for granted, but if we pause for a moment, the idea of having armed guards posted outside our homes speaks to just how much community we've lost. The notion that we could get it back through sidearms and controlled displays of potential violence seems patently absurd to me:
Did I miss the cup?
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