Abstract
Socio-cultural studies of sport in society have employed various conceptual categories from a variety of theoretical perspectives, with the latest to gain wide currency being ‘social capital’. While there is much general debate on the concept and its measurement in the study of society, the number of studies using social capital has grown remarkably. Of the research using social capital as a central concept, little of this work focuses on understanding sport's position and role in society. This study adds to this new focus by linking recent empirical work and published papers on sport and social capital in Australian society. Social capital is seen to add many positive features to life in society, to provide positive development for individuals, and for building community capacity.
Notes
5 For additional information see CitationRowland, Is the Club Really a Better Place?
8 For additional information on the history of social capital, see Field, Social Capital; CitationPutnam, Bowling Alone; and CitationSpies-Butcher, ‘Understanding the Concept of Social Capital’.
16
CitationEdwards, in Measuring Social Capital, and Coalter, in ‘Sports Clubs’ have been strong advocates for more work in this area.
17 For additional discussions of these disciplines see CitationSpies-Butcher, ‘Understanding the Concept of Social Capital’; Woolcook, ‘Social Capital’; CitationQuibria, The Puzzle of Social Capital.
23 Lyons and Hocking, ‘Australia's Highly Committed Volunteers’.
37
CitationPooley, Cohen and Pike, ‘Can Sense of Community Inform Social Capital?’ Their findings augment those found by Zakus, ‘The Saskatchewan Roughriders’. In a similar vein CitationZakus and Chalip, ‘Fanship and Identity’, using similar scales to Pooley, Cohen and Pike, found that a professional sport franchise added to the psychological sense of community.
39 Skinner, Zakus and Edwards, ‘Football Communities’.
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