1 bowling apart sport clubs as bridges or as walls between social groups in the netherlands wout...

BOWLING APART

SPORT CLUBS AS BRIDGES OR AS WALLS

BETWEEN SOCIAL GROUPS

IN THE NETHERLANDS

Wout Ultee

Tel Aviv University

Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies

March 24, 2005

This lecture consists of three parts:

* How I got to the question of BOWLING APART as a supplement to

the question of BOWLING ALONE

* Findings for the Netherlands from administrative and existing survey data

* Findings for the Netherlands from a recently conducted survey

The findings I present are to become part of the ph.d. by

Ruud van der Meulen,

currently employed in the sociology department in

Nijmegen.

Three Sackler lectures:

sociology of education sociology of sport

sociology of religion

What kind of sociologist deals with all these

specializations?

There is something like general sociology and theoretical sociology,

And I am one of those persons doing two things.

For the first part of this lecture theories are not that important.

What is pertinent is that sociology, given its history and traditions, has

three general or main questions.

Each of these main questions cannot simply be traced back to one of sociology’s founders,

If they are to be traced back and sociology’s founders are involved,

Each of these main questions cannot simply be traced back to one of sociology’s founders.

Sociology’s founders did something to the questions raised by social philosophers,

Each of these main questions cannot simply be traced back to one of sociology’s founders,

Sociology’s founders did something to the questions raised by social philosophers,

And later sociologists not only reframed, but restated and recast the questions of sociology’s

founders.

Sociology’s three main questions:

Rationalization

Inequality

Cohesion

Mortimer and Raymond

Sackler lectures:

Religion

Education

Take the question of societal rationalization.

Max Weber raised it and it looks like an umbrella.

It was an overarching question comprising as one of its sub-

questions the question of a more efficient economy as posed by the social philosopher Adam Smith.

Thinking about questions in terms of an umbrella is

useful for finding interesting questions, for

finding theories answering them and for finding research techniques.

What does Weber’s umbrella of rationalization

questions look like?

rationalization

wealth of nations

rationalization

efficient economy

rise ofscience

rationalization

efficient economy

rise ofscience

inventionin art

rationalization

efficient economy

rise ofscience

inventionin art

formalstate

rationalization

efficient economy

rise ofscience

inventionin art

formalstate

bureau-cratization

rationalization

efficient economy

rise ofscience

inventionin art

formalstate

codificationof laws

bureau-cratization

Weber implicitly assumed that if more inhabitants of a society have a practical-rational mentality,

rationalization processes at the societal level will have gone further.

Since the theory of collective goods and external effects, it is known that

this assumption is false.

In the Netherlands there now is sociologist Abram de Swaan with

the following umbrella of questions about the formal state.

A micro-macro level paradox:

Individual rationality does not always make for societal rationality.

rationalization

optimal productionprivate goodsby markets

rationalization

optimal productioncollective goods

by states

rationalization

by states

municipalpiped water

and sewerage

rationalization

by states

compulsoryschooling

municipal piped water

and sewerage

rationalization

by states

state moneyfor the poor

compulsoryschooling

municipalpiped water

and sewerage

How about that other main question of sociology,

societal inequality?

Marx did not begin it, if he did, he did it with Engels,

Engels and Marx improved upon social philosophers Ferguson and Millar,

and Sombart and Weber improved upon Engels and Marx.

The umbrella of inequality questions:

from Ferguson and Millar

to Engels and Marx.

inequalities

actual differences in standard

of living

inequalities

actual differencesin standard

of living

formal subordination

inequalities

of living

ruler andruled

inequalities

of living

ruler andruled

men andwomen

inequalities

of living

ruler andruled

men andwomen

fathers andchildren

inequalities

actual differences in standard

of living

ruler andruled

men andwomen

fathers andchildren

masters andservants

inequalities

of living

less servantsubordination,

smallerdifferences?

ruler andruled

men andwomen

fathers andchildren

masters andservants

Once more the umbrella of inequality questions:

from Engels & Marx

to Sombart, then on

to Goldthorpe,

and to Mayer.

inequalities

less servant subordination,smaller differences?

one momentdisparities

inequalities

two momentmobility

inequalities

two momentmobility

structuralmobility

circulationmobility

inequalities

two momentmobility

structuralmobility

circulationmobility

inequalities

two momentmobility

totalmobility

relativemobility chances

inequalities

two momentmobility

occupationalhistories

totalmobility

relativemobility chances

Yet again the umbrella of inequality questions:

from Sombart to Weber:

inequalities

two momentmobility

inequalities

openness

two momentmobility

inequalities

openness

two momentmobility

who marrieswhom?

inequalities

openness

two momentmobility

who marrieswhom?

who befriendswhom?

Does the inequality question have a levels paradox too?

Firebaugh:

Incomes disparities right now increase in most countries, but

world income disparities decrease.

That third main question of sociology: societal cohesion.

Hobbes started it with the question of violence/order,

Durkheim completed it with the question of order but no ties/order and ties.

Putnam’s BOWLING ALONE is a recent question about specific ties: ties

through sport clubs.

The umbrella of inequality questions

from Hobbes to Durkheim:

cohesion

living togetherPEACEFULLY

cohesion

living peacefullyTOGETHER

cohesion

suicide

cohesion

suicide gods and

cohesion

division of labour

suicide gods and

cohesion

marriage and birth

division of labour

suicide gods and

cohesion

marriage and birth

(family ties)

division of labour

(economic ties)

suicide (no ties at all)

gods andrites

(religiousties)

Now I am going to change the metaphor:

from an umbrella of questions to

question trees with various branches.

Can the branches of two different question trees come together?

Yes, and these questions allow for progress on two fronts.

In recent years I have been hunting for ‘double questions’,

and perhaps moving away from inequality to cohesion.

income inequality

openness

who marries whom with

respect to income?

poor-richcohesion

It is obvious that to the extent that rich and poor intermarry, income inequality at

the household level decreases.

If people marry within their own income category, the rich and poor form strongly integrated groups, weakening cohesion of

society as a whole since there are no marriage ties between categories.

There also are interesting variations

economic ties

who has a job?

who workswith whom?

cohesioninequality

There also are nice complementarities

family ties

who marries when?

who marries whom?

cohesion

The scheme allows for finding incomplete series of questions:

gift relationship

whoreceives?

who gives towhom?

cohesion

who gives?

Is there a levels paradox for cohesion, just like there is one for

rationalization and inequality?

Yes, people may be highly integrated, but if they have ties with their own

group only, the society they belong to is segmented and prone to intergroup

violence.

The Netherlands from the 1920s to the 1960s was a segmented society,

given the fact that protestants, catholics and non-churched persons

not only had their own political parties, and own labor unions,

but also their own sport clubs, and own radio- and television broadcasting companies.

The Netherlands may turn into a segmented society again and perhaps

already did so in two senses:

Did the larger inequalities in the wake of the retrenchment of the welfare state lead to fewer ties

between rich and poor?

Do immigrants and particularly moslims form parallel societies?

How to tackle these issues? More questions on ties.

sport ties

who sportsin teams?

who sportswith whom?

cohesion

whosports?

inequality

Why study sport ties across stratification categories?

Putnam’s BOWLING ALONE painted a rosy picture of 1950s USA:

‘communists’ lost academic jobs, blacks had separate places in buses,

golf clubs refused Jews.

Next to BOWLING ALONE,

there is BOWLING APART.

Why questions about ties through sports between stratification categories?

People do not only work, they have more leisure.

Welfare states funded high culture and sport, and welfare state retrenchment

means less support of sport.

Governments will not target marriage or friendship patterns, they may target sport.

Who sports with whom regarding income?

Who sports with whom regarding descent?

Two competing hypotheses: Bourdieu versus Putnam.

Bourdieu is the man of walls, Putnam the man of bridges.

Bourdieu’s hypotheses:

economic inequalities

are reproduced across generations,

they are expressed in high culture, and reflected in separate sports.

Putnam-like hypotheses:

In sportclubs people meet,

leading to friendships across borders,

and to more trust between groups, and to less intergroup violence.

It is easy to show inequalities in sports,

But Bourdieu takes

extremes for averages,

and sophisticated techniques

such as odds ratios

may not tell much about ties.

A string of four Bourdieu questions:

* popularity of sports compared

* representativity of sports compared

* sports compared with high culture

* interconnectivity of sports compared

The popularity question.

Two trend ‘hypotheses’:

‘democratization’ but recently ‘aristocratization’.

Status devaluation: the growth of a high status sport, makes for later growth of

another high status sport.

Administrative data, members of sport clubs as percent of the population

195019601970198019902000

91116272830

Democratization has stopped, but no aristocratization yet

Most popular and one but most popular sport

195019601970198019902000

3.03.84.87.56.66.5

0.50.40.83.34.64.5

soccer tennis

Popular sports decline, aristocratic sports grow the most.

Highest growers

50-60 volleyballOR 6.7 60-70tennis OR 2.0 70-80tennis OR 4.3 80-90golf OR 4.3 90-00golf OR 2.9

Status devaluation confirmed

Largest decline or slowest growth

50-60 tennis OR 0.860-70 walking OR 0.570-80 cricket OR 0.780-90 soccer OR 0.990-00 volleyballOR 0.8

Aristocratization for last decades confirmed

The question about inequality in sport is answered with a representativity index.

Hypothesis: inequalities lately became larger through the

retrenchment of the welfare state.

In the sociology of sport it is taken as evident

that as a club sport becomes more popular, its members became more representative

of the whole population.

There is no logical necessity for that, and empirically it is not true for the Netherlands.

Existing survey data for the Netherlands for 1979-1983 and for 1995-1999; each year an N

of more than 20,000.

Taking 2000 administrative-data

popularity and 1995-1999 survey-data

popularity for 20 sports,

the correlation is 0.93.

Representativity of a sport is usually calculated as the Lueschenindex.

However, the Lueschenindex has two drawbacks:

* It assigns ordinal classes an arbitrary interval score.

* The index changes if the number of persons in a class changes.

If the Lueschen index is not right, how then to

determine representativity?

We determine the representativity of a sport by dividing household

income into 25% categories,

and then computing the odds for membership in a club for some

sport or not for the highest 25%

divided by the odds for membership in a club for that

sport or not for the lowest 25%.

The three most exclusive sports in 1979-1983:

hockey OR 16.2 tennis OR 12.1 rowing OR 7.2

no data for golf

The three most plebeian sports in 1979-1983:

cycling OR 0.7 motor cross OR 0.9 soccer OR 1.0

Of the three sports with the lowest ORs in 1995-1999, two are above 1:

walking OR 0.9 gymnastics OR 1.1 swimming OR 1.3

soccer OR 2.0

The three most exclusive sports in

1995-1999:

golf OR 12.8 tennis OR 7.2 hockey OR 6.7

Most sports became more exclusive. More exclusivity because of a large

increase in sport for the highest 25% and a small decrease for the lowest 25%.

any sport 79-83 95-99

highest 25% 41.8% 45.6% lowest 25% 20.7% 20.1%

Does all this show that Bourdieu is right and Putnam wrong?

How exclusive is high culture?

Representativity does not measure ties, it is not the same as interconnectivity!

Hypothesis:

Doing sports is less exclusive and more representative than

attending classical concerts etc.

1995-1999

any sport OR 3.3

cabaret OR 3.2 plays OR 2.9 ballet OR 2.3 opera OR 2.0 classical music OR 1.9

Hypothesis that high culture is more exclusive

and sport more representative

is rejected.

Are ties and interconnectivity, as should be done since

Putnam, measured by odds ratios?

Not really.

From mobility research we know that relative

chances plus marginal

differences result in total

mobility.

From mobility research we know that relative

chances plus marginal

differences result in total

mobility.

In a similar way popularity plus representativity

result in ties through sport clubs between

income categories.

In examples:

Gymnastics is almost representative, but since few people do it, all practitioners taken together yield few ties between

the highest and the lowest 25%.

Tennis is quite exclusive, but a lot of people do it, still yielding a lot of

highest-lowest ties.

The available survey data do not ascertain the income composition

of a person’s sport club.

We therefore performed a thought experiment with two assumptions

and two empirical findings.

First empirical finding:The total numbers doing a sport

(popularity).

Second empirical finding:

Although the composition of a particular sport club is not known, we know the income of all persons doing

a sport (something like representativity), and therefore the

average composition of a club.

First assumption: any person doing a sport does it with ten other persons.

Second assumption: sport teams do not differ in composition, that is they

all have the composition of all persons involved in a sport after

income.

The first assumption is a bit arbitrary, but the ranking of sports after

interconnectivity does not depend upon the exact number.

Of course, the number of persons in a training group is important. It may

differ from sport to sport. We did not find strong evidence for that.

The second assumption is obviously false.

But we defend the thought experiment by arguing that improvements will not strongly

affect the ranking of sports.

It would be too skeptical to maintain that every sport has only high income clubs and

low income clubs, and that differences between sports in representativity are to be

explained as ‘composition effects’.

We now may calculate the number of ties in a team.

We know how many persons are highest 25% and lowest 25%,

So we can compute the number of highest-lowest ties.

We can compute the number of teams,

So we can compute the number of highest-lowest ties for every sport.

If the number of highest-lowest ties for tennis is put at 100, we obtain the following interconnectivity indices for 1995-1999:

tennis 100 soccer 92 swimming 81 gymnastics 68 judo etc 36 badminton 27 volleyball 23

The two most popular sports are on top,

one quite egalitarian, the other quite inegalitarian!

The correlation between the scores for 25 sports between

their popularity and their interconnectivity is 0.93.

The correlation between their representativity and their interconnectivity is -0.21.

The correlation between popularity and

representativity is -0.09.

Putnam seems more right than Bourdieu.

Sport clubs build bridges, they do not erect walls –

between income categories.

We should not confound popularity with representativity.

The Netherlands may turn into a segmented society and perhaps

already has done so in two senses:

Did the larger inequalities in the wake of the retrenchment of the welfare state lead to fewer ties

between rich and poor?

Do immigrants and particularly moslims form parallel societies?

Descent in the Netherlands is measured in official statistics as foreign born (first

generation) and as at least one parent foreign born (second generation), with a

subdivision after region of the world.

Some now argue that official statistics should measure at least one grand

parent foreign born (third generation).

Of course it is possible to ask in surveys of people who sport, how

their team is composed.

We did so in a 2003 survey and we know the composition with respect to

descent, education and class.

I will only report on descent now.

The survey I will be using, only interviews persons who master the Dutch language, upon judgment of

the interviewer.

This means that of al persons of foreign descent, a bit more than

50% drops out.

I only report on Dutch natives now.

N = 2086.

We address a string of questions inspired by Putnam’s BOWLING

ALONE hypotheses,

expanded into

BOWLING APART hypotheses.

These hypotheses strongly resemble those of Allport from

1954 about the nature of prejudice.

* What do Dutch people think about foreigners in their sport club?

* How many are there in their own training group?

* Do they find foreign acquaintances this way?

* Does having foreigners in school, neighborhood, sport club, occupation make for a more favorable attitude towards foreigners in

general?

In our survey we asked people who stated they do a

club sport, after the composition of their

training group in terms of the percentage foreigners.

In our survey we also asked persons how many foreigners

there are among their acquaintances and in which setting they met them first,

plus a couple of other things to test Putnam-like hypotheses.

‘Black or white, everybody is welcome in my sport club’

1 = totally wrong

2 = a bit wrong

3 = neutral

4 = about right

5 = totally right

Is there a lot of social desirability in such data?

Apparently not, given the following results for, among

others, highly exclusive tennis.

Results pertain to persons of Dutch descent only.

all clubs 1 2 23 37 37 solo sports 1 2 26 35 36 team sports 1 2 15 43 40

swimming 0 0 14 21 64 badminton 0 0 12 36 52 soccer 2 0 10 46 43 tennis 0 0 29 48 24 aerobics 2 2 31 40 24 volleyball0 8 28 40 24

1 2 3 4 5

How many acquaintances of foreign descent you have now, have you made in the following settings?

1 = zero

2 = 1 to 3

3 = 4 or five

4 = five or more

study/work 81 12 3 4 neighborhood 82 14 2 2 sport 95 3 1 1 church 97 2 0 1

1 2 3 4

Sport clubs are not important settings for getting acquainted with people of

foreign descent.

Does sporting with foreigners make for

more foreign acquaintances?

The following linear regression suggests so.

Linear regression of the total number of foreign acquaintances on foreigners in own sport group

constant 4.79 5.14 no sport ref. ref. no foreigners -0.30 s -0.26 s 0%<x<5% -0.00 ns -0.00 ns 5%<x<10% -0.10 ns -0.15 ns x>10% 0.25 s 0.17 ?s? education outside 0.03 s age outside -0.01 s urbanization outside -0.09 s

We also asked Dutch descent persons about their opinion (favorable –

unfavorable on a five point scale) on the presence of foreigners in the Netherlands.

We are now struggling with the shift from linear regression to ordinal regression and

the best parameterization of ordinal models.

We are also struggling with recoding nominal four digit occupational codes into the percentage of foreigners with

this occupation.

We do this so as to compare the effects of various settings.

If I summarize in words the results so far of the ordinal regression:

Sporting in a club with more foreigners goes together with a more favorable attitude, compared with sporting in a

club with less foreigners.

Of course here selection issues crop up.

Yet I do not like to raise the issue of correlation versus causation.

Causation never can be proved, and I do not want to prove anything.

I am after falsification, and I might already have been dealt a blow.

We find that a more favorable attitude right now goes together with a higher proportion

of foreigners in school around age 12.

A higher proportion foreigners in the neighborhood also makes for a more

favorable attitude.

Church going does not affect the attitude.

All effects are independent of education and age.

The difference in attitude between people who sport and people who only do so with Dutch natives, is significant: non-sporters have a

more positive attitude.

For the near future:

We asked people to state retrospectively their attitude towards

foreigners.

We have not analyzed these data yet.

People who sport right now, could answer for two sports. They indicated how long

they have been doing this sport.

People who do not sport right now, could mention two previous sports. People who

sport now, were asked so too. Persons then were asked about the composition of the training group and from when until when

they did this sport.

We have not analyzed these data yet either.

PUTNAM

FARES BETTER THAN

BOURDIEU

SPORT CLUBS BUILD BRIDGES, THEY DO

NOT ERECT WALLS - BETWEEN NATIVES AND FOREIGNERS

Next to the question of bowling apart or who sports with whom,

should stand the question of

who goes to school with whom,

who works with whom,

and who lives close to whom.

We are back at Borgadus’ old scale of social distance,

but then in Laumann’s version of actual ties, rather than Bogardus’

opinion version,

plus additions about specific and general attitudes and perhaps about

intergroup violence.

The findings on sport are work in progress.

Some are coming out in Dutch right now.

Others will be featured in the ph.d. of Ruud van der Meulen, with separate chapters hopefully coming out in international

journals.

This presentation may be viewed in full on my website

under the heading foreign presentations:

socsci.ru.nl/maw.sociologie/ultee/

Or just type in google: wout ultee

It is the first hit.

1 bowling apart sport clubs as bridges or as walls between social groups in the netherlands wout...

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