In their personal lives, people consider it essential to separate economics and intimacy. Challenging this view, this book shows how we use economic activity to create, maintain, and renegotiate important ties, especially intimate ties, to others, thus opening a window on the inner workings of the economic processes that pervade our private lives.
Viviana Zelizer has written an interesting and informative book showing that there is much more to the meaning of money than . . . economic theory and its formidable equations ever imply. Money is a medium of exchange. But that is only the beginning.--John Kenneth Galbraith, The New York Times Book Review
First published in 1979, Morals and Markets Is a pathbreaking study exploring the development of life insurance in the United States. Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer combines economic history and a sociological perspective to advance a novel interpretation of the life insurance industry.