Paper short abstract:

In this paper I seek to explain how the notion of ‘family business’ can extend beyond family-owned companies and into the recollective and economic repertoires that people use to trace between their own employment contexts and aspirations and those of kin.

Paper long abstract:

The relationships between business and kinship are usually unpacked through exegeses of outfits passed through generations. As is exemplified by Sylvia Junko Yanagisako's work on family firms in Italy, such outfits present ethnographic opportunities to unpack life under capitalism through lens of gender and generation. Particularly conspicuous in Yanagisako's research is that establishing oneself in a family business can involve a delicate mixture of perpetuating familial-corporate 'origin stories' and making oneself indispensible as an individual.

Through analysis of fieldwork carried out in Poland between 2009 and 2011, in this paper I seek to explain how the notion of 'family business' can extend beyond family-owned companies and into the recollective and economic repertoires that people use to trace between their own employment contexts and aspirations and those of kin.

Focusing upon the opinions and situations of young people, the paper explores how those seeking work, or hoping to change career, frequently link both the opportunities and injustices perceived to constitute life under capitalism - and their personal responses to them- to the working lives of kin. Even when working in quite different industries or professions, and in different times, the skills, desire, and materials that give that unify working lives give the impression of families as de facto family businesses.