ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the relationship between commodification and insurance. The central premise is that while insurance is not itself a commodity, it has played a significant role in other commodification processes. Drawing on examples from Britain between 1500–1800, this chapter argues that insurance is best understood as a group of technologies, practices, and institutions that have offered individuals and groups security and support in the face of an unknown future, albeit one sure to contain at least some contingent events that could do harm. As insurance developed in different forms, it contributed to commodification in at least two related ways. First, insurance practitioners simultaneously conceived of the future as a place of risk, and then commodified risk by making it the object of the insurance settlement. As insurers became keen to hedge against risk, they also devised ways of making human beings more insurable. Second, insurance—especially life insurance—blurred the line between property and people, making human beings subject to commodification and speculation in ways that violated their freedom and moral status as persons. Viewed through the lens of commodification, insurance has an ambiguous legacy that continues to warrant our critical attention. It has made people more secure against catastrophe and ruin, while also producing new harms of its own.
