Kinship, capital, and the unsettling of assumptions: Contemporary anthropology and the study of family enterprise and entrepreneurship

Abstract

What does anthropology have to contribute to the study of family enterprise and entrepreneurship? The answer to this question seems obvious: lots. As an anthropologist who has written on kinship and money, I applaud any effort to disseminate the insights my discipline offers on these topics (see Rutherford, 1998, 2001). We anthropologists certainly have poached shamelessly from other fields of inquiry, and we should be willing to give back. But my enthusiasm for this exchange comes with a proviso: anthropology is often not the enterprise that others imagine it to be. Anthropologists these days have a tendency to roam widely, off leash, exploring all sorts of unlikely nooks and crannies. As a result, anthropology's role in this emerging field, based mostly in business schools to date, may prove unpredictable. Anthropologists would be as interested in the value accorded to entrepreneurship as they are in its role in family enterprise. They would be as interested in the fact that scholars at business schools are seeking to unsettle assumptions about the relationship between kinship and capital as they are in this relationship per se. But one thing is for certain: if we are going to further this conversation, we have to include the right interlocutors. In this brief essay, I would like to offer some reflections on recent work by anthropologists who speaks to the study of family enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Citation

Rutherford, D. (2010), "Kinship, capital, and the unsettling of assumptions: Contemporary anthropology and the study of family enterprise and entrepreneurship", Stewart, A., Lumpkin, G.T. and Katz, J.A. (Ed.) Entrepreneurship and Family Business (Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 277-283. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1074-7540(2010)0000012012