Omnivorousness in sport: The importance of social capital and networks

There has been for some time a significant and growing body of research around the relationship between sport and social capital. Similarly, within sociology there has been a corpus of work that has acknowledged the emergence of the omnivore–univore relationship. Surprisingly, relatively few studies examining sport and social capital have taken the omnivore–univore framework as a basis for understanding the relationship between sport and social capital. This gap in the sociology of sport literature and knowledge is rectified by this study that takes not Putnam, Coleman or Bourdieu, but Lin’s social network approach to social capital. The implications of this article are that researchers investigating sport and social capital need to understand more about how social networks and places for sport work to create social capital and, in particular, influence participating in sporting activities. The results indicate that social networks both facilitate and constrain sports participation; whilst family and friendship networks are central in active lifestyles, those who are less active have limited networks

On the (In)Consistency of Citizen and Municipal Level Indicators of Social Capital and Local Government Performance

Social capital, Consistency, Ecological inference problem,

Job search methods and immigrant earnings: A longitudinal analysis of the role of bridging social capital

This paper analyses how finding a new job affects the earnings of immigrants. I hypothesize that job changes are more successful for individuals who have access to bridging social capital. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel (1996–2011), fixed-effects models show that finding a new job results in higher earnings only when immigrants have both native German friends and high levels of human capital. The effect is, however, not dependent on the search method: both formal (advertisement, employment agency), and informal search methods (referrals via friends) result in higher earnings. The presented evidence shows that bridging social capital can be activated and converted into a better position on the labour market. However, the effect of contact with natives is limited to those who are higher educated, or who have good German language proficiency, suggesting that only those individuals who are better off already profit from bridging social capital