Corporations in the Flow of Culture

As an anthropologist, coming out of three decades of research among indigenous Brazilian populations, I naturally saw modern for-profit business corporations as tribes—the collective bearers of adaptive cultural know-how. They appeared to me to be the entities housing the culture needed to produce commodities, to trade commodities on the open market, or both. I was also, of course, aware of the legal concept of the corporation as fictive person capable of owning property and having standing in court cases, which I thought of as akin to the anthropological corporation insofar as both recognized the group as social actor. However, it came as something of a surprise that the existence of corporations—or, more properly, “firms”—posed an intellectual challenge for economists. I knew that Adam Smith was critical of the old joint stock companies, like the East India Company, for a variety of reasons. But I hadn’t understood that economists, who viewed the world in terms of individual rational actors engaged in market transactions, might regard corporations as a violation of market efficiency principles, which they evidently are—or at least were until Ronald Coase’s classic 1937 paper The Nature of the Firm. It is his paper that brought together my anthropological understanding of corporations as social groups carrying cultural know-how with the economic model of the firm

Corporations in the Flow of Culture

As an anthropologist, coming out of three decades of research among indigenous Brazilian populations, I naturally saw modern for-profit business corporations as tribes—the collective bearers of adaptive cultural know-how. They appeared to me to be the entities housing the culture needed to produce commodities, to trade commodities on the open market, or both. I was also, of course, aware of the legal concept of the corporation as fictive person capable of owning property and having standing in court cases, which I thought of as akin to the anthropological corporation insofar as both recognized the group as social actor. However, it came as something of a surprise that the existence of corporations—or, more properly, “firms”—posed an intellectual challenge for economists. I knew that Adam Smith was critical of the old joint stock companies, like the East India Company, for a variety of reasons. But I hadn’t understood that economists, who viewed the world in terms of individual rational actors engaged in market transactions, might regard corporations as a violation of market efficiency principles, which they evidently are—or at least were until Ronald Coase’s classic 1937 paper The Nature of the Firm. It is his paper that brought together my anthropological understanding of corporations as social groups carrying cultural know-how with the economic model of the firm

Volunteer Programs - Leaders / Partners

Mary E. Arnold: Turning Learning into Action: The Evaluation of a Statewide Education Program. Rod Buchele: Leaders in the Know Help Your Program Grow. Greg Yost: Urban Volunteers - Expectations, Reality, and Tools for Success

Cities and economic growth

Yesterday's depressing economic growth figures, Tuesday's announcement by Greg Clark on city mayors and Monday's City Outlook from Centre for Cities have got me thinking again about urban economic policy and the role of cities in UK economic growth

The Editor’s Two Cents

The Editor’s Two Cent

The Editor's Two Cents

The Editor's Two Cent

Effects of Neighborhood Characteristics on the Mortality of Black Male Youth: Evidence From Gautreaux

The Gautreaux data for this paper were created with the assistance of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities under special agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Center for Health Statistics. Generous support for data construction and analysis was provided by Daniel Rose and the MIT Center for Real Estate, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the National Science Foundation (SBE-9876337), the Princeton Center for Economic Policy Studies, and the Princeton Industrial Relations Section. Technical support was provided by the Princeton Office of Population Research (NICHD 5P30-HD32030) and the Princeton Center for Health and Wellbeing. Mortality count data for male youth residing in Chicago community areas were graciously provided by the Illinois Center for Health Statistics. We thank Greg Duncan and members of the Princeton Industrial Relations Section for helpful comments.Neighborhood effects; Mortality