Privilege at Play
Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico
Hugo Cerón-Anaya
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