Law in the Development of Dynastic Families Among American Business Elites: The Domestication of Capital and the Capitalization of Family

Abstract

American dynastic business families as descent groups constitute a category of social organization with which anthropologists have been traditionally familiar, but in the unlikely setting of a complex, bureaucratized society. This paper examines aspects of such groups and argues that law has been a critical organizational resource in their development. Law does not merely impinge at times on family concerns, but becomes an integral dimension of extended family relations in the arrangements for perpetuating collective wealth as business capital, and in distributing individual entitlements to that wealth among descendants. A general model of family/ business formations is presented, supported by a comparative discussion of two dynastic families of Galveston, Texas.