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Bad deaths, good funerals: The values of life insurance in New Orleans

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  • Nikki Mulder

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the value of money and the value of human life as it plays out in the financing of funeral ceremonies. It examines how these values are articulated through life insurance policies concerning violent deaths of working‐class black Americans in New Orleans. The article draws on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork (2017–18) in New Orleans, which included participant observation at a black‐owned funeral home and interviews with funeral directors, policyholders, and beneficiaries. By examining the role of life insurance policies in arranging good funerals after bad deaths, the ethnographic analysis demonstrates how life insurance policies are consumed and can produce value at a moment of loss. It explores the paradox that an insurance policy can at once become a resource for the affirmation of human value and a financial risk in itself.

Suggested Citation

  • Nikki Mulder, 2020. "Bad deaths, good funerals: The values of life insurance in New Orleans," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 241-252, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:7:y:2020:i:2:p:241-252
    DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12172
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Stow, Simon, 2010. "Agonistic Homegoing: Frederick Douglass, Joseph Lowery, and the Democratic Value of African American Public Mourning," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 681-697, November.
    2. Bouk, Dan, 2015. "How Our Days Became Numbered," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226259178.
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael G. Callaghan, 2020. "“Paint it black”: Wealth‐in‐people and Early Classic Maya blackware pottery," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 228-240, June.
    2. Dru McGill & John K. Millhauser & Alicia McGill & Vincent Melomo & Del Bohnenstiehl & John Wall, 2020. "Wealth in people and the value of historic Oberlin Cemetery, Raleigh, North Carolina," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 176-189, June.
    3. Kar, Sohini, 2023. "Domestic values: gendered labor and the uncanniness of critique in marketing life insurance for women," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120591, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Sibel Kusimba, 2020. "Embodied value: Wealth‐in‐people," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 166-175, June.
    5. Denis Charles & Magali Dumontet & Meglena Jeleva & Johanna Etner, 2024. "Behavioral drivers of individuals’ Term Life Insurance Demand: evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment," EconomiX Working Papers 2024-23, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.

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