Vorsorge, Versicherung, Finanzialisierung

Abstract

This article deals with recent insurance products aimed at people who wish to make provisions for themselves or others in the event of death or, more generally, to ensure the prosperity of future generations. These products are interpreted as a particular form of the financialization of households and intimate relationships. However, while the bulk of research into this phenomenon has emphasized the aspect of the penetration of such relationships by financial logics, the article approaches these products as examples of the constitution of financial products based on moral considerations in the field of intimate (especially: intergenerational) provision and care. Thus, morality and moral communication in intimate relationships appear as a condition for the constitution of financial rationalities, logic, and flows. Conversely, the purchase of financialized insurance products can be reconstructed as reinforcing moralized forms of communication, because the sheer possibility of making financial provision by means of a definitive conclusion of a contract makes scenarios of social finality - from unresponsiveness to death - the subject of negotiations between related parties. Thus it is the constitution of financial logics in terms of morality that gives financial capitalism, by way of providing security, a significant impulse of legitimacy.