ABSTRACT

This chapter adopts an institutional approach to describe the changing secondary market for life insurance in the United States. It examines debates about the trade in life insurance policies in order to account for this changing moral landscape. The chapter discusses some insights from institutional theory that are especially relevant to a discussion of morals and markets. Fields cohere around a single logic or goal, which is why innovations in markets can both reflect and contribute to broader social and cultural transformations and, therefore, why sociologists can use market innovations as diagnostics of exogenous trends and contexts. The investor is then named the beneficiary of the policy and proceeds to pay the premiums to the insurance company. The research uses an in-depth case study of a controversial industry to gain purchase on changing understandings of morality in markets. Given the newness and small size of the industry, there is a paucity of other archival data about it.