ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to consider the dividends of kinship relations in the context of large Portuguese family firms. I will centre the debate on the research I have been carrying out on highstatus Portuguese families1 who own large familial enterprises that have been in existence for at least three generations and which are on the list of the 100 most important Portuguese enterprises. As in every family business,2 in these large companies the familial and professional relations of the people involved are continuously interchanged. In fact, social relations engaged in this context are constructed on several different levels, occur in diverse contexts of action and are based on various kinds of interests. In the context of large familial companies we find that, both in the area of family relations and in the context of the enterprise, there is an underlying conflict between the universe of those who constitute the family and those who are partners. I believe that it is this permanent combination, of two very distinct forms of operating in these different domains, that makes this social context a particularly interesting one for anthropological reflection on kinship and family relations in Western societies. This is because the analysis of large family firms forces us to ‘read across the boundaries’ (Yanagisako and Delaney 1995:12), as it clearly reveals that familial relations cannot be analysed as if they were mere kinship relations and, simultaneously, demonstrates that business decisions are not based exclusively on strict economic rationality. In fact, in this social context, family relations are built around a web of economic interests that bind people together whose interests in the enterprise are often opposed. In the course of my research I have found that the formal organisation of these big family companies, which are vast and complex institutions, is built according to the best organisational models and with the most competent professionals, but it is also built around a web of affective familial relations that unite shareholders. In fact, familial values-the ways of being and living in a family-are crucial elements in
defining the ways in which the economic group works and continues through time.
