Second Family - The Anthropology Of Family Business Research

With the revival of the notion of family business in the mainland of China from 1980s, the producing function of family has been increasingly regained. The building and development of business family is now a bright economic and cultural phenomenon, which attracted attention of the world and is regarded as a very influential and important conception by which the cultural convention of China, especially the function of family in the social and economical change in China, are to be cognized.The dissertation tries to explain the following points through an anthropological inquiry on the economic, social, political and cultural elements that influenced the rise and development of family business on the basis of my fieldwork.(1) The academic world generally makes studies on business family from the point of view of the positive and negative function of China' s cultural convention on the economic development. In fact it is a sort of cognition of modernization-theory paradigm. The major limitation of the paradigm is that it takes culture as an exterior and independent variable free from economy. Therefore it will not help in understanding the nature of business family. Culture is not a kind of power. As a matter of fact the process of business family is a process of strategic choice culturally oriented.(2) The convention of family culture has direct influence on the behavior of business family. As a basic criterion appropriate to the analysis of the dimension of individual behavior such as their civilized morality; the dimension of kinship and family such as the cooperation of families and relatives; the dimension of organization such as lineage; the dimension of society such as vertical structure. The outstanding function of family culture is connection of different dimensions. But we cannot be limited so far. It must be known that different cultural behaviors cannot be included in one convention, especially in the field of folk culture.Although family culture is profoundly influenced by the convention, it is not covered by the (Confucianism) convention. For example thefamily' s identification of nation is a classic hypothesis in China' s culture, which screened the religious basis for potential conflicts between family and nation. Just because folk culture is the basis of family, so business family is presented in multiple modes, rather than one mode, which demonstrate the diversity of culture. To interpret different business families of various kinds with a mode or a group of modes of theories is not adequate.(3) The change of time and space is the process of conflict between formal and informal systems. The economic behaviors of business families are mainly restricted by the informal system. The conformity of human relations and social capitals, especially the particular function of woman, form the dynamics of stable development of business families.(4) Business family is significant in the change of community with its multiple functions, which is beneficial to the conformity of relationships between villages and towns.The dissertation is divided into 10 chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, makes inquiry in business family in anthropological perspective with a representation of the purpose and significance of the study.The second chapter gives a description of the history and humanities of west town with a brief summary of the business families in west town.The third chapter records primary modes of the business families梩he individual operations and the organizations with a brief comment on the contradictions in the operation of national institutes. The forth chapter is a discussion on family. It presents a comprehensive statement on the convention and spirit of family culture of China and the nature and function of business family.The fifth chapter is about the relation and structure of consanguinity and affinity of business families accounting for the route and presentation of family relations, which is extended to business families.The sixth chapter is a discussion...