Fischer's Response to Putnam

I'm currently reading Claude S. Fischer's (from the University of California-Berkeley) response to Putnam's Bowling Alone essay. What I enjoy about her response is that many of her points align with the points brought up in class on Friday. One of those points was brought up by Jack when we discussed whether or not watching sports is a form of "social capital". Certainly in the U.S., sports are a huge part of our culture, but does that make them social capital or not? Some of us argued that they are not social capital because they are typically watched at home, with people that you've probably met before. Others argued that it does generate social capital because of places such as sports bars, where fans who've never met each other come together and watch a game (an example of "bridging"). Personally, I consider the latter to definitely be a form of social capital. The question is whether or not that act has increased within the past 60 years or not. As Fischer points out and our class forgot to mention, the act of attending athletic events has increased significantly within the past 60 years. This is a definite form of social capital. Fischer sites the increase in social capital through sports as one of the faults of Putnam's essay. Putnam does not recognize this increase in his essay, but I'm glad that we as a class made the effort to debunk some of Putnam's "statistics" through common knowledge of our own American culture.