Marquee University
e-Publications@Marquee
&!%&,-$,1+*"&-$#,#'&+ -+#&++%#&#+,*,#'&'$$!'
Help One Another, Use One Another: Toward An
Anthropology of Family Business
Alex Stewart
Marquee University$0+,/*,%*)-4-
'+,(*#&, Entrepreneurship eory and Practice'$-%'-%%* +/#,"
(*%#++#'&23&#,#..*+#'&#+.#$$, ///#&,*+#&/#$1'%
1
Help One Another, Use One Another:
Toward An Anthropology of Family Business
Forthcoming in Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice
Revised from version presented at “Theories of the Family Enterprise:
Establishing a Paradigm for the Field”, Universities of Alberta and Calgary
Edmonton, Alta. September 27-28, 2001
Alex Stewart
Coleman Foundation Chair
College of Business Administration
Marquette University
Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881
Ph (414) 288-7188
Fax (414) 288-1965
Email
Alex.Stewart@Marquette.edu
Please do not quote without author’s permission
The author thanks the reviewers for JBV
, the commentator A. M. Peredo, and
anthropologists D. P. Lumsden (York University) and H. W. Scheffler (Yale University)
for helpful comments.
1
Abstract
Anthropological kinship theory is explored for potential contributions to a theory
of family business. This paper considers the costs and benefits of a role for kinship in
business. Both derive from the discrepancy between the normative orders of kinship and
markets; respectively, long-term generalized reciprocity and short-term balanced
reciprocity. Because the former reflects the morality of society as a whole, kinship
integrates social fields more readily than more specialized orders like markets.
INTRODUCTION
The greatest unutilized resource for advancing the field of family business studies
is the large anthropological literature on kinship and marriage. The purpose of this paper
is to substantiate that claim. It attempts to do this by seeking out and summarizing the
findings and themes from that literature of likely interest to business school scholars,
much as Stewart (1990, 1991) did for the anthropology of entrepreneurship. It borrows
the organizing schema of Mattessich and Hill (1976): the disadvantages and advantages
of kinship in business.
One of the anomalies of the patchy fish-scale world of academe (Campbell, 1969)
is that few if any family business scholars are familiar with the “kinship” studies field.
Nor is there much sign of progress. For example, Rosenblatt and colleagues (1985) cited
few works by anthropologists, but at seven they cited more than the three in Gersick and
colleagues (1997). Similarly, a search of ProQuest for both “kinship” and “business” in
any search field turned up seven peer reviewed articles, of which only one (Alexander &
Alexander, 2000) uses the word kinship in this sense. Despite this absence of cross-
2
fertilization, family business writings frequently address topics compatible with
anthropological treatment.
Judging from articles in Family Business Review
, family business scholars share
many interests with anthropologists. For example, the attention by Perricone, Earle and
Taplin (2001) to “cultural systems” does not appear unusual (see also García-Álvarez &
López-Sintas, 2001; Hall, Melin, & Nordqvist, 2001; Moores & Mula, 2000). A related
topic that is also shared in anthropology is social capital and social networks (Steier,
2001; Veliyath & Ramaswany, 2000). Family business scholars seem, in fact, to be
proto-anthropologists, writing extensively about many cultures, such as Portugal
(Howorth & Ali, 2001), the Persian Gulf (Davis, Pitts, & Cormier, 2000), East and West
Germany (Klein, 2000; Pistrui, Welsch, Wintermantel, Liao, & Pohl, 2000), India
(Manikutty, 2000; Sharma & Rao, 2000; Ward, 2000), and China and the diaspora
Chinese (Gatfield & Youseff, 2001; Lee & Tan, 2001; Pistrui, Huang, Oksoy, Jing, &
Welsch, 2001; Tan & Fock, 2001). By my count, the seventeen articles just noted cite
669 works. Of these, less than 1% (five, I believe) is anthropological.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Kinship theory can be a technical undertaking that
glazes the eyes of even the anthropology major. Still, substantial portions of these
writings are relatively non-specialized and, I believe, compelling for the general reader. I
shall gravitate to these works and pay less attention to more technical matters. Before I
can do that, however, there is no escaping the need for something dull: a definition.
What Is Kinship?
As one introductory book colorfully said, “Kinship is to anthropology what logic
is to philosophy and the nude is to art; it is the basic discipline of the subject” (Fox, 1983:
3
10). Clearly I cannot introduce the whole field; moreover, I could not improve on Fox’s
book which, despite some limitations (Scheffler, 2001, p. 104, n. 5), is clear, thorough
and well organized. Other introductions include Keesing’s (1975) little textbook and, for
those more inclined to postmodernist self-doubt, Holy (1996) and Stone (1997, 2001; see
Peletz, 1995). Harrell’s (1997) Human Families
is a systematically evolutionary
approach which, despite a title suggestive of family studies, is a work of anthropology.
Definition. Even if anthropologists were uniform in their theoretical and
methodological views - far from the reality - the sheer variation in kinship across cultures
and over time (Fortes, 1969, pp, 229-230; Harrell, 1997; Johnson, 2000; Schweitzer,
2000b) would generate controversy over definitions. My reading of the ethnographic
record and the kinship debates leads me to follow Holy (1996, p. 40, also pp. 166-167)
and “most anthropologists [in taking] kinship to be the network of genealogical
relationships and social ties modeled on the relations of genealogical parenthood.” Good
(1996, p. 312) notes that most anthropologists add the qualification “biological kinship,
as culturally defined by the society concerned.” As Scheffler (2001, p. ix) adds, kinship
in this sense is a “universal and often-extensive [factor]… in the constitution of human
societies.” A loose usage of the term “kinship” also includes marriage and affinity
(relationships derived from marriage) - as does this article - but most kinship theorists
make the distinction apparent in Fox’s (1983) title Kinship and Marriage
.
THE COSTS OF KINSHIP
The moral character of kinship. Kinship in modern complex societies is no
longer the infrastructure for other functions, such as politics, law and religion. Harrell
(1997, pp. 458-490) even argues that only one of eight roles played by families across