ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the importance of studying the cultural dimension of wealth in contexts of high concentration of power and wealth, thus making links with political economy. To this end, the notion of privilege is revisited, demonstrating its analytical potential for linking these two dimensions, which are usually kept separate in academic studies. However, a critical reading of this category is necessary, since in recent years it has been used ambiguously and even indiscriminately to study very different cultural expressions of inequality, thus losing its explanatory capacity. Based on an exercise in dialogue with studies that have addressed privilege in Latin America, and on a review of empirical evidence, the chapter proposes that privilege should be conceived as a distributive issue with wealth and power at its core, and not simply as a question of access or exclusion to some advantages for some groups. Thus, we can observe the importance of the extreme accumulation of wealth in the way social groups are organized hierarchically and, in the way, political and social relations are ordered in the region.
