'Bowling apart?' Vier vragen over Nederlandse sportclubs en omgang tussen arm en rijk ['Bowling apart?' Four questions on poor-rich contact in Dutch sports clubs]

Abstract

This article tests Bourdieu’s and Putnam’s competing views on sports clubs as class mixers, using cross-sectional Dutch survey data for the early 1980s and late 1990s. We calculate popularity and representativity indices. Next, we develop a connectivity index, combining both measures to a frequency count variable for the number of contacts between the quartiles most distant on the income ladder. As far as prevalence of cross-class contact is concerned, our findings are most supportive of Putnam. In spite of overrepresentation of the rich, cross-class contact is common. General involvement in organized sports is widespread, while in the typical sports club the poor are far from absent, despite the fact that in some club sports they are strongly underrepresented. However, we also find that over time cross-class contact via sports clubs became less common and is about equally likely to occur via cultural clubs and cultural performances.