Studies in social capital, as well as many NGO initiatives and related policy-driven government programs in the area of community development, often appeal to the causal power of participation in sport to generate the kinds of generalized trust, ties, and networks that make for more cohesive and prosperous communities and, indeed, more democratic societies. In fact, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2001) takes as the centerpiece of its argument the notion that participation in bowling clubs in the United States contributed, in no small way, to the diversifying and strengthening of community and ‘making democracy work’ in America. In this way sport is often construed as a mechanism for the production of generalized trust and, more specifically, ‘bridging social capital’, among various ethnoracial and socioeconomic groups.

With a focus on bowling and boxing, this webinar scrutinizes the ostensible ‘bridging’ functions of sport in an effort to make explicit the limits of what participation in sport can be expected to contribute to the development of cohesive but diverse communities and a democratic way of life. As an alternative account, it is argued that sport is best understood as a complex site of horizontal and vertical sociability. The extent to which the forms of sociability emergent in bowling alleys and boxing clubs are capitalized in ways that foster diverse communities and shared habits of democracy remains an open question. For participation in sport characteristically does not produce generalized trust and social capital but rather reproduces and reinforces the presence (or impoverishment) of such resources along ethnoracial and socioeconomic lines.