Ironies of Solidarity: Insurance and Financialization of Kinship in South Africa

Description

Set in one of the world's most unequal and violent places, this ethnographic study reveals how insurance companies discovered a vast market of predominantly poor African clients. After apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa became a 'testing ground' for new insurance products, new marketing techniques and pioneering administrative models with a potentially global market. Drawing on Rorty's notion of irony for understanding how the contradictions inherent to solidarity affect inequality and conflict as well as drawing on a vast array of case studies, Ironies of Solidarity examines how both Africans enjoy the freedoms that they have gained in financial terms and how the onset of democracy effected the risks faced in everyday life. Bähre examines the ways in which policies are sold and claims are handled, offering a detailed analysis of South Africa's insurance sector. Front Cover Half Title About the author Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents List of illustrations Figures Tables Acknowledgements 1: Introduction Financialization in Africa Caught in the counter-discourse Cape Town: city of hope? Outline and arguments 2: An ironic analysis Conflicts in the gift Solidarity in the market Irony in rationality and solidarity Irony in method 3: Hope and redistribution Introduction: from labor to redistribution Service delivery and community conflict Black Economic Empowerment and racial tensions Social grants and generational strain Praying for redistribution Tense redistribution 4: Penetrating a new market Introduction: classifying risks and clients Negotiating LSM and FSM markets Precarious relations between market and state Defining risk and price Symbols as violence, symbols of protection 5: The Janus face of inclusion Introduction: ambiguous inclusion Wretched brokers “Outsourcing” to the community Bureaucracies of exclusion Joyce’s insurance claims Reproducing inequality 6: The enchantment of abstract finance Introduction: a caring bureaucracy What actuaries think their clients think Escaping burial societies Aggressive neighbors Alleviating the shackles of sociality 7: Transforming mutualities in business Introduction: breaking associations? In and out of control: meeting taxi owners A history of violent solidarity Financialization through the “Recap” Making new inequalities 8: Death as moral hazard Introduction: care and conflict Making sure someone dies It’s nothing personal Immoral kin, especially parents Moralities of solidarities 9: Conclusion: ironies of solidarity From neoliberalism to irony Solidarity and redistribution Solidarity in care and conflict Solidarity and abstraction Notes Bibliography Index