Abstract
The paper focuses on social capital-related attitudes of members of local civic organisations, particularly of sports club members. In line with Robert Putnam’s social capital argument, three questions are addressed: (1) Do social capital-related attitudes differ between sports club members and those among the German population who do not belong to a voluntary association? (2) Following a typology of associations, the question arises to what extent social capital-related attitudes vary between members of sports clubs and members of other voluntary associations? (3) And finally, are there differences in social capital-related attitudes of sports club members between 2001 and 2017/2018? Based on representative survey data from Germany collected in 2001 and 2017/2018, the analyses buttress some, but not all of the initial assumptions: in 2001 sports club members expressed more sociable orientations and lower levels of individualism compared to non-members. In 2017/2018, however, these effects had weakened or vanished. Hardly any clues can be found in support of the notion that sports club members are ‘better democrats’ than non-members. These results are discussed against the backdrop of alleged tendencies of professionalisation and consumer-orientation in sports clubs and raise the question if the social capital-producing capacity of sports clubs has eventually attenuated.
Acknowledgements
The authors express their appreciation and gratitude to TU Dortmund University for supporting this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.