Abstract
In this chapter, I analyse diverse forms of relatedness and family-related aspirations of growing businesses in the Bolivian Andes. These started as modest trading businesses but evolved into benefit-seeking enterprises. What marks the business families as a collectivity is not the ‘family firm’ (which does not exist as such), but the ‘urban estate’, at once residence and commercial building. Ritual kinship of family members with non-kin is of prior importance as it tends to offer more trustful relationships than those within the extended family. Likewise, reciprocity with providers and clients creates relatedness in commerce and an enduring marketplace sociality. In sum, the chapter offers an ethnographic analysis of business growth and upward economic mobility as a historical and sociocultural process.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Note the assumption of development in this argument. Whereas Weber considered the family firm to be a relic of traditional capitalism that inevitably belongs to the past, Geertz, De Soto and others postulate a prior evolutionary step: the establishment of formal family firms wherever legal and institutional arrangements are conducive to it.
- 2.
Legal incentives to remain a small and relatively invisible business do exist in Bolivia, but these are not sufficient to understand the proliferation of unipersonal businesses among these growing business families.
- 3.
Aymara is the second largest indigenous nation in pluri-national Bolivia. These traders were mainly rural migrants, with a background in livestock herding and small-scale cross-border trade.
- 4.
In contrast to the most widespread corporate form in Latin America, the family holding company, i.e., diversified enterprises with subsidiaries in different markets and sectors under majority ownership by family members (Schneider, 2009).
- 5.
Less affluent traders also strive for university education for their children, yet with the aspiration of becoming a public employee or a ‘profesional’ (professional) rather than for a future in trading, which is seen by these parents as hard and unstable.
- 6.
Apart from the immediate exchange of a commodity for money, a small extra is offered with every purchase to secure a long-lasting relationship.
- 7.
‘Eso no, eso es cada uno individual (…) Es problemático eso, otros piden grande, otros traen pequeño, mejor evitar conflictos, sobre todo económicos, entre familiares sobre todo’.
- 8.
The first haircut (murucha in Aymara, rutucha in Quechua) is of vital importance in the Andes. It represents the rite of passage of the boy or girl into adulthood; it is the occasion where he or she receives the first work tools.
References
Alexander, J. (1998). Women traders in Javanese marketplaces: Ethnicity, gender, and the entrepreneurial Spirit. In R. Hefner (Ed.), Market cultures: Society and morality in the new Asian capitalisms (pp. 203–223). Westview Press.
Antonyan, Y. (2023). Power, family and business: Practices of oligarchic economy in late soviet and post-soviet Armenia (before 2018). In T. Koellner (Ed.), Family firms and business families in cross-cultural perspective. Palgrave Macmillan.
Blumtritt, A. (2009). Die Pluralisierung der Wege des Paares: Geschlechtsspezifische Dimensionen von Modernisierungsprozessen im translokalen Raum der Anden. Walter Frey.
Buechler, H. C., & Buechler, J.-M. (1992). Manufacturing against the odds: Small-scale producers in an Andean City. Westview Press.
Canessa, A. (2012). Intimate Indigeneities: Race, sex, and history in the small spaces of the Andean life. Duke University Press.
Carrier, J. G. (2018). Moral economy: What’s in a name. Anthropological Theory, 18(1), 18–35.
Carsten, J. (2000). Introduction: Cultures of relatedness. In J. Carsten (Ed.), Cultures of relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship (pp. 1–36). Cambridge University Press.
Colloredo-Mansfeld, R. (2019). Culture, competition, and urban identities in Ecuadorian popular economies. In E. Dürr & J. Müller (Eds.), The popular economy in urban Latin America: Informality, materiality, and gender in commerce (pp. 21–41). Lexington Books.
Costa, N. F. (2019). Latin American family businesses and their new role as global competitor. In C. G. Müller (Ed.), Family firms in Latin America (pp. 8–13). Routledge.
De Soto, H. (1989). The other path: The invisible revolution in the third world. HarperCollins.
Fanselow, F. (1990). The bazaar economy or how bizarre is the bazaar really? Man, 25(2), 250–265.
Fourcade, M., & Healy, K. (2007). Moral views of market society. Annual Review of Sociology, 33, 285–311.
GAMLP. (2007). Census of economic activities of 2007. Gobierno Autónomo municipal de La Paz.
Geertz, C. (1963). Peddlers and princes: Social development and economic change in two Indonesian towns. Chicago University Press.
Geertz, C. (1978). The bazaar economy: Information and search in peasant marketing. The American Economic Review, 68(2), 28–32.
Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 481–510.
Hefner, R. W. (1998). Introduction. In R. W. Hefner (Ed.), Market cultures: Society and morality in the new Asian capitalisms. Westview Press.
Hillenkamp, I., Lapeyre, F., & Lemaître, A. (Eds.). (2013). Securing livelihoods. Informal economy practices and institutions. Oxford University Press.
Koellner, T. (2022). Family firms and business families: A field for anthropological research. Anthropology Today 38(6): 8-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12768
Koellner, T., Haver-Rassfeld, H., & Kleve, H. (2022). Das Doing-Family-Konzept: Eine neue Perspektive zum Verständnis der Herstellung und des Zusammenhalts von Unternehmerfamilien. Familienunternehmen und Strategie, 01(2022), 11–17.
Koellner, T. & Roth, S. (2023). (Under Review) Cultural variations in family firms and business families: A literature review and agenda for future research. Cross Cultural & Strategic Management.
Leinaweaver, J. (2009). Raising the roof in the transnational Andes: Building houses, forging kinship. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15(4), 777–796.
Maclean, K. (2017). Ninguna ciudad común: Lo que la teoría urbana crítica puede aprender de La Paz. Bolivia. Journal de Comunicación Social, 5(5), 15–48.
Maclean, K. (2018). Envisioning gender, indigeneity and urban change: The case of La Paz, Bolivia. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 25(5), 711–726.
Martin, J. (2023). How ‘enduring family bonds’ are made: Insights from Fulɓe Kinship enterprises in northern Benin. In T. Koellner (Ed.), Family firms and business families in cross-cultural perspective. Palgrave Macmillan.
Mayer, E. (2002). The articulated peasant: Household economies in the Andes. Routledge.
Müller, J. (2018). Andean-Pacific commerce and credit: Bolivian traders, Asian migrant businesses, and international manufacturers in the regional economy. Journal for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 23(1), 18–36.
Müller, J. (2020). Webs of fiesta-related trade. Chinese imports, investment and reciprocity in La Paz, Bolivia. Critique of Anthropology, 40(2), 238–263.
Müller, J. (2021). The limits of corporate chains and Brand Management: “Loyalty” and the efficacy of vernacular Markets in the Andes. Cultural Anthropology, 36(2), 252–281.
Murray Li, T. (1998). Constituting capitalist culture: The Singapore Malay problem and entrepreneurship reconsidered. In R. W. Hefner (Ed.), Market cultures: Society and morality in the new Asian capitalisms (pp. 147–172). Westview Press.
Schnegg, M. (2006). Compadres familiares: Das Verhältnis von compadrazgo und Verwandtschaft in Tlaxcala, Mexiko. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 131, 91–109.
Schneider, B. R. (2009). Hierarchical market economies and Varietes of capitalism in Latin America. Journal of Latin American Studies, 41(3), 553–575.
Schweitzer, P. P. (2000). Introduction. In P. P. Schweitzer (Ed.), Dividends of kinship: Meanings and uses of social relatedness (pp. 1–32). Routledge.
Seligmann, L. (2004). Peruvian street lives. Culture, power, and economy among market women of Cuzco. University of Illinois Press.
Spedding, A. (1997). Investigaciones sobre género en Bolivia: un comentario crítico. In D. Y. Arnold (Ed.), Más allá del silencio. Las fronteras de género en los Andes (pp. 53–74). Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara.
Spedding, A. (2014). Contra-afinidad. Algunos comentarios sobre el compadrazgo andino. In D. Y. Arnold (Ed.), Gente de carne y hueso. Las tramas de parentesco en los Andes (pp. 115–137). Fundación Xavier Albó and Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara.
Tassi, N. (2016). The native world system: An ethnography of Bolivian Aymara traders in the global economy. Oxford University Press.
Tassi, N., Medeiros, C., Rodrígues-Carmona, A., & Ferrufino, G. (2013). ‘Hacer plata sin plata’: El desborde de los comerciantes populares en Bolivia. Fundación PIEB.
Thelen, T., Coe, C., & Alber, E. (2013). Introduction. In E. Alber, C. Coe, & T. Thelen (Eds.), The anthropology of sibling relations: Explorations in shared parentage, experience, and exchange (pp. 1–28). Palgrave.
Van Vleet, K. E. (2008). Performing kinship: Narrative, gender and the intimacies of power in the Andes. University of Texas Press.
Yanagisako, S. (2002). Producing culture and capital: Family firms in Italy. Princeton University Press.
Yanagisako, S. (2019). Family firms as kinship enterprises. Economics Discussion Papers, No. 2019-12. Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Müller, J. (2023). Kinship, Godparenthood and Urban Estates in the Bolivian Andes: The Cultural Production of Business Families. In: Koellner, T. (eds) Family Firms and Business Families in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20525-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20525-5_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-20524-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-20525-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)