The Crafty Merchant and Bourgeois Vanity

Pascale Trompette (1)

1 PACTE - Pacte, Laboratoire de sciences sociales

Taking into account the specific properties of the funeral purchase, this paper analyses how the moral critique of the funeral business came into being and was perpetuated throughout history, despite of the various and multiple policies set up to frame the market. It suggests that the illegitimacy of a market can very largely be produced and aggravated by deficient institutions, in cases where either the professional institutions themselves initiate harmful practices, or the moral obligations inherent in the non-contractual conditions of market exchange are weakened or in the process of being de-institutionalized.

Mots clés: Economic Sociology; funeral; market; moral; undertaker

Domaines: Sociologie

Pascale Trompette. The Crafty Merchant and Bourgeois Vanity: On Subversive Institutions in the Funeral Market. Embeddedness and Beyond: Do Sociological Theories Meet Economic Realities?, Oct 2012, Moscou, Russia. ⟨halshs-00818467⟩