Abstract
Although more Americans bowl than ever before, they nowadays prefer the occasional pick-up game with family-members, friends or collegaues, to the commitments of being a club member. Why is membership so important? According to Putnam, bowling clubs with their atmosphere of 'bowling, beer and pizza' foster a comraderie from which not only friendships and diverse sets of acquaintances develop, but ultimately a broader belief in the benevolence of unknown others - generalized trust - as well. The decline in bowling club membership, then, is a yardstick of the decline in the social connectedness of the U.S. and its stock of 'social capital'. In response to 'Bowling alone' of Putnam (1995) much research has been done on the creation of social capital. Few studies, however, have examined the impact of sports club membership on social connectedness, despite the fact that sports clubs serve as Putnam's favorite example of a social uniter. To fill this research gap, this dissertion studies the connective capacity of sports club membership in present-day The Netherlands. Part 1 takes a look at sports club membership and the likelihood of social contact. Extending the work of Putnam, not simply meeting chances via sports club membership between people in general ('bowling alone'), but also meeting chances between people from different social segments ('bowling apart') are analyzed. Part 2 deals with the consequences of social contact as a sports club member: how are friendships, acquaintanceships and generalized trust affected? Again, an effort is made to build on the work of Putnam. Shifting from macro-level to micro-level analyes, sports club careers become the unit of analysis, dissecting membership into the three building blocks of 'with whom' (co-members), 'what' (contents of sports and social activities) and 'when' (intensity and timing of membership over the life-span).
