Privilege at Play

Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico

Hugo Cerón-Anaya

Global and Comparative Ethnography

Examines privilege beyond class analysis and shows that social inequalities are complex and multi-layered
Offers a novel interpretation of how inequalities are organized in Mexico through race, class, gender, and space
Incorporates space and spatial dynamics into an analysis of privilege

Privilege at Play

Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico

Hugo Cerón-Anaya

Global and Comparative Ethnography

Description

While most research on inequality focuses on impoverished communities, it often ignores how powerful communities and elites monopolize resources at the top of the social hierarchy. In Privilege at Play, Hugo Ceron-Anaya offers an intersectional analysis of Mexican elites to examine the ways affluent groups perpetuate dynamics of domination and subordination. Using ethnographic research conducted inside three exclusive golf clubs and in-depth interviews with upper-middle and upper-class golfers, as well as working-class employees, Ceron-Anaya focuses on the class, racial, and gender dynamics that underpin privilege in contemporary Mexico. His detailed analysis of social life and the organization of physical space further considers how the legacy of imperialism continues to determine practices of exclusion and how social hierarchies are subtlety reproduced through distinctions such as fashion and humor, in addition to the traditional indicators of wealth and class. Adding another dimension to the complex nature of social exclusion, Privilege at Play shows how elite social relations and spaces allow for the resource hoarding and monopolization that helps create and maintain poverty.

Privilege at Play

Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico

Hugo Cerón-Anaya

Global and Comparative Ethnography

Privilege at Play

Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico

Hugo Cerón-Anaya

Global and Comparative Ethnography

Author Information

Hugo Cerón-Anaya is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University. His work focuses on social hierarchies, inequalities, and privilege, examining how class, race, and gender inform the behavior and perceptions of affluent people. He is particularly interested in the wide array of ordinary and everyday practices that reproduce privilege.

Privilege at Play

Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico

Hugo Cerón-Anaya

Global and Comparative Ethnography

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sports

"I found Privilege at Play an enjoyable and informative read. ..I closed this book a satisfied and better educated general reader" -- Will Trinkwon, Golfshake

"Opening the gates to the hidden world of golf clubs in Mexico, Hugo Cerón-Anaya expands our understanding of elites and inequality by shedding light on the hidden interrelationship of race, class, and gender in privileged spaces." -Shamus Khan, Chair and Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

"This fascinating, insightful, and compelling book on the Mexican ruling class at play starts with the invisibility of elite golf clubs to the ordinary people who walk by them every day and then proceeds through revealing interviews and astute observations to show the importance of social clubs in creating the shared world view and social cohesion that helps the wealthy golfers to cement their grip on power." -G. William Domhoff, author of The Corporate Rich and the Power Elite in the Twentieth Century: How They Won, Why Labor and Liberals Lost

"Hugo Ceron-Anaya makes an important contribution to studies of upper class sociability and leisure, using his well-informed ethnography to illuminate the reproduction of class, gender, and racial inequalities in the golf clubs of Mexico City. Inspired by Bourdieu and using a rich ethnography, he shows that the golf clubs--built by globalising Mexican economic capital--establish an exclusive spatial locale where those with the requisite social capital can establish informal relations of trust and cultural capital that enhance their ability to reconvert their resources into economic capital. This study breathes new life into studies of class and stratification." -John Scott, Universities of Essex and Exeter, UK