Traditionally, economists have viewed social relations as "friction" or "impediments" to exchange and have excluded social relations from their analyses by assuming autonomous actors. Recently, however, a number of scholars-economists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social...

<DIV><DIV>Tupperware Home Parties, Shaklee Corporation, Amway, Mary Kay Cosmetics—theirs is an approach to business that violates many of the basic tenets of modern American commerce. Yet these direct selling organizations, fashioned by charismatic leaders and built upon devoted armies of door-to-door...</div></div>