Pragmatics and Politics: the case of industrial branch assurance in the UK.

Using the case of industrial branch assurance, this paper argues that a focused concern with the pragmatics of market devices can offer a particularist politics of analysis by uncovering the material, social, technical and corporeal conditions through which market design is constituted. Industrial branch (IB) assurance grew exponentially in the UK after 1880 to become, through a series of political and economic twists and turns, by the 1920s the key commercial institution offering to 'foster and protect' the savings of the poor. Deploying a business model - based on door-to-door agents' collection of small weekly premiums - unchanged in its key particulars for more than a century, industrial branch assurance was extraordinarily successful until the 1980s when it became the unintended victim of the re-regulation of the financial services industries. Industrial branch however is only one of a number of insurance models and is characterised by design features including a notoriously high expense ratio which made it controversial and might well have made it uncompetitive in a differently designed market. The paper argues that considering industrial branch assurance as a market device or more particularly as an agencement helps unravel how IB succeeded despite the obstacles. IB offers a peculiar insight into how forms of economic and political action emerge from the compound character of agencement thus, for instance, the prudent working-class saver is equipped or agenced through means ranging from the mundane device of weekly collection to the precise conditions imposed by the 1911 National Insurance Act. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]