ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the discussion of sport and community by drawing on debates within American academe about the nature of public life.The chapter focuses specifically on literature within American sociology and American cultural criticism and from an engagement with this literature we expound our own preferred position on the relationship between community and sport. We commence by looking at how a distinctive take on community is developed within American intellectualism and how a tension between the themes of intimacy and impersonality is teased out within the literature. We are sympathetic to accounts contending that American society has witnessed a shift away from an understanding of community based on an acceptance of public commitment to an interest in so-called community based on an obsession with intimate knowledge of each other and of public figures. An influential work related to debates about community and public life is Richard Sennett’s The Fall of Public Man (2002 [1977]). We address Sennett throughout the chapter giving particular consideration to the implications of his writing for the way that sport can be regarded as an aspect of public life. We compare Sennett with two key writers, Christopher Lasch and Robert Putnam, both of whom explicitly discuss sport in relation to community. In the discussion of Putnam we look specifically at his interpretation of ‘social capital’ and how it can be used to further the discussion of sport, community and public life. We conclude by reframing social capital through the lens provided by Sennett and argue that sport, unsullied by utilitarian interference, provides an arena of impersonality par excellence. Sport cannot be a model for public life but it might provide a lingering bastion of public life.
