Mormonism and Multilevel Marketing Companies

Yup, from the abstract: "Successful MLMs require a social capital structure where members can access and mobilize both strong and weak social ties. ... The LDS Church's institutions foster a social capital structure where (almost all) members have access to and can leverage social capital in all its forms. LDS institutions encourage members to make meaningful social connections characterized by trust and reciprocity with other church members in local neighborhoods and across the world." This is the point of this article; not so much MLM itself, but how even something "weird" like MLM can be a relevant indicator wrt. the strength of social ties.

Social capital is a very good thing indeed; it is the foundation of a truly inclusive society where people are not going to be marginalized and neglected in their most pressing needs, regardless of outside factors like income, class or socio-economic status. And we know of very few ways of sustainably fostering this kind of grassroots social capital, other than community-based groups, often based on some sort of established tradition or religion.

It seems that social capital provides a fertile field for MLMs, but there are other cultural factors that contribute. For example, the tradition of missions trains a charismatic workforce used to selling and being rejected. And traditional family roles lead to a large group of women outside of the labor force looking for a way to help support their families.

Eh, I’m not sure about separating class from social capital. In Bourdieu’s framework (which tbf is dated), there are definitely haves and have-nots. The way different forms of social capital are valued in different contexts is one of the major ways that social hierarchies gatekeep and maintain themselves.

Even in Bourdieu's framework economic, cultural and symbolic capital might well be more relevant to class distinction. That would seem to be the gist of his work on distinction and the judgment of taste, at least. Social capital plays a role in that it can be downstream of the distinction created by other dynamics, but not necessarily in "more" social capital throughout a community leading to "more" distinction. If anything, one would expect the opposite.

That’s fair. In retrospect I was thinking more of cultural capital (which I’ll chalk up to how contemporary critiques of Bourdieu tend to conflate them).