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All in the Family
Adam Bellow
05/03/2004
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Is nepotism motivated by selfishness? Sometimes, yes. But
nepotism is best understood as the means by which people pass on knowledge,
skills and values from one generation to the next. The sum of these transactions
is the way in which society at large perpetuates its material and cultural
legacy.
The bottom line is this: Nepotism is not going away anytime soon. It
is a natural impulse, deeply ingrained in both biology and culture. Nor, given
its importance in the creation of social bonds, is it something we want to get
rid of. The solution is not to keep banging it with a hammer, like a glob of
mercury, but to bring it out into the open and treat it as an art that may be
practiced well or badly.  | Adam Bellow is executive editor at large for Doubleday and author of In
Praise of Nepotism: A History of Family Enterprise from King David to George
W. Bush. |
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