Wealth, Whiteness, and the Matrix of Privilege

Wealth, Whiteness, and the Matrix of Privilege reports on interviews with members of exclusive country clubs in the Northeast. The club members explain their exclusive and sometimes sexist practices. Their talk both relies on and reproduces popular discourse. The author shows how club members end up justifying and maintaining their class, race, and gender privileges.

Exclusive social clubs are traditionally an important site for the consolidation of upper-class power. Wealth, Whiteness, and the Matrix of Privilege shows that while the particulars of admission have changed, these clubs remain socially significant incubators. Having interviewed typically inaccessible members of exclusive clubs in the Northeast, Jessica Holden Sherwood reports and analyzes what they have to say about who is in, who is out, and why. The members talk frankly about their exclusiveness based on money and style, but they are quick to point out that ethnically-based exclusion is a thing of the past. Club members also address the status of their women members, which is at times distinctly second-class. The talk of country club members is shown to draw on elements in popular discourse. And even if it's not their intention, as club members exclude and account for their exclusion, they contribute to reproducing class, race, and gender inequalities.

Chapter 1
Chapter 1. Business and Pleasure: The Social Context of Exclusive Clubs
Chapter 2
Chapter 2. Denials and Justifications: Club Members Account for Exclusivity
Chapter 3
Chapter 3. Similar But Diverse: Explaining Race and Ethnicity in the Clubs
Chapter 4
Chapter 4. Gender Accounts, Or Why the Golf Course is the Dads' Domain
Chapter 5
Chapter 5. Conclusion
Chapter 6 Methodological Appendix