Paupers,burial clubs and funeral insurance: Calculating moral panics |
| |
Authors: | Lee Moerman Sandra van der Laan |
| |
Institution: | 1. University of Wollongong, Australia;2. University of Sydney, Australia |
| |
Abstract: | Funeral insurance is an example of a practice that has evolved from the grass-roots burial clubs that developed from the 18th century as a response to the social anxiety wrought by the threat of a pauper's funeral. Largely accessed by the poor and working classes to avoid this social stigma, burial clubs commodified a social risk into a manageable and controllable financial arrangement. We explore this phenomenon through the lens of moral panic to trace the calculative practices that recast the social anxiety of a pauper's funeral into the novel metric of a ‘funeral benefit’. |
| |
Keywords: | Burial clubs Friendly societies Funeral insurance Moral panic Novel metrics |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |