Morals and Markets (eBook)

The Development of Life Insurance in the United States

Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-54542-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Life insurance-the promise of an insurer to pay a sum upon a person's death in exchange for a regular premium-is a bizarre enterprise. How can we monetize human life? Should we? What statistics do we use, what assumptions do we make, and what behavioral factors do we consider? First published in 1979, Morals and Markets Is a pathbreaking study exploring the development of life insurance in the United States. Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer combines economic history and a sociological perspective to advance a novel interpretation of the life insurance industry. The book pioneered a cultural approach to the analysis of morally controversial markets.Zelizer begins in the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of the life insurance industry, a contentious chapter in the history of American business. Life insurance was stigmatized at first, denounced in newspapers and condemned by religious leaders as an immoral and sacrilegious gamble on human life. Over time, the business became a widely praised arrangement to secure a family's future. How did life insurance overcome cultural barriers? As Zelizer shows, the evolution of the industry in the United States matched evolving attitudes toward death, money, family relations, property, and personal legacy.

Autor

Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer is the Lloyd Cotsen ’50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. She is the author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy (2010), The Purchase of Intimacy (2005), The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies (1994), and Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (1985). She is also coeditor of the series Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology.

Inhalt

ForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Historical and Economic Background2. The Persistent Puzzle3. A Comparative Perspective4. The Impact of Values and Ideologies on the Adoption of Social Innovations: Life Insurance and Death5. Life, Chance, and Destiny6. Marketing Life: Moral Persuasion and Business Enterprise7. The Life Insurance Agent: Problems in Occupational Prestige and ProfessionalizationConclusionsNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.8.2017
• Reihe/Serie: Legacy Editions
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Wirtschaftsrecht
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Themenwelt: Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Spezielle Betriebswirtschaftslehre ► Versicherungsbetriebslehre
• ISBN-10: 0-231-54542-8 / 0231545428
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-54542-6 / 9780231545426