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.

"The central paradox of the book is the contrast between the invisibility of privilege to most city dwellers and the hypervisibility of privilege to those engaged in numerous struggles over who gets to play when and with whom inside. Drawing on 58 interviews and ethnographic observations of golf clubs, tournaments, shooting ranges, nd upper-class homes, this book makes a unique contribution to the study of the upper class by providing a nuanced example of the inequalities structuring the spaces and practices through which the privileged monopolize resources at the top of the social structure." - Ana Villarreal, Boston University, American Journal of Sociology

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

"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 capitalestablish 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