Law in the Development of Dynastic Families Among American Business Elites: The Domestication of Capital and the Capitalization of Family
研究了美国王朝商业家族如何利用法律作为组织资源，将集体财富作为商业资本延续，并在后代中分配个人权益，基于德克萨斯州加尔维斯顿两个家族的比较分析。
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.