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Starting from the overwhelming welcome that Putnam's (2000) treatise on social capital has received in government circles we consider its relative merits for examining and understanding the role for leisure in policy strategies. To perform this critique we identify some of the key points from Putnam's work and also illustrate how it has been incorporated into a body of leisure studies literature. This is then extended to a discussion of the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of his approach and its link to civic communitarianism. We suggest that the seduction of the 'niceness' of Putnam's formulation of social capital not only misses the point of the grimness of some people's lives but it also pays little attention to Bourdieu's point that poorer community groups tend to be at the mercy of forces over which they have little control.We argue that if the poor have become a silent emblem of the ways in which the state has more and more individualised its relationship with its citizens, it is they who also tend to be blamed for their own poverty because it is presumed they lack social capital. This in turn encourages 'us' to determine what is appropriate for 'them'. As a critical response to this situation we propose that Bourdieu's take on different forms of 'capital' offers more productive lines for analysis. From there we go on to suggest that it might be profitable to combine Bourdieu's sociology with Sennett's recent interpretation of 'respect' to formulate a central interpretive role for community leisure practitioners -recast as cultural intermediaries -if poorer community groups are to be better included.

These are barriers that are widely acknowledged and understood by day and residential staff and participants in the study, but are arguably poorly understood by policy makers, health promotion agencies, commissioners and providers of learning disability services. The current lack of resources and inadequately specified responsibilities associated with community care deny many people with learning disabilities real choices to live a physically active healthy lifestyle.

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The aim of the study was to evaluate the cardiorespiratory fitness, levels of obesity, daily levels of physical activity and barriers to a physically active lifestyle in a group of 24 adults with mild and moderate learning disabilities (aged 2 3 4 7 years, mean age 34). The efficacy of two community-based exercise intervention programmes for the group was also evaluated. The results showed that overall 50% of the men and 70% of the women were overweight, of whom 57% of the men and 100% of the women were obese. Mean cardiorespiratory fitness levels were 20% to 28% lower for the men and 42% lower for the women compared with average values for the general population. Physical activity profiles indicated that 22 of the participants were below recognised minimum levels of physical activity. Barriers to physical activity specific to the learning disability population included transport needs, staffing ratios, financial resources and unclear policy guidelines for day and residential service provision.