DOI: 10.4324/9781003157571-1
1 Introduction
Kate Booth
Our climate is being privatised, and with it, our democratic capacity to act
in the face of unprecedented risks is being curtailed. Insurance and insurers
are central to these changes. The insurance sector, for example, is a major
player in global financial markets and is continuously expanding its reach
into new places and through novel products. This sector is emerging as the
leader in climate risk – the assessor of climate risk, the holder of risk data,
and the actor in face of government inaction (Lehtonen 2017). These shifts
in governance are refracted in neoliberal reforms pertaining to the withdrawal of the state, the individualisation of risk, and self-responsibilisation
(Harvey 2007). This is hardening existing structures of inequality and contributing to new patterns of inequity (e.g. Booth & Kendal 2020). The gravitas of this nexus of power, crisis, and injustice is contributing to a growing
body of critical insurance research within the social sciences.
Climate change is fundamentally changing the ways we insure, and the
ways we think about insurance, and there is an urgent need to build knowledge on the capacities and limitations of insurance in this regard. Thus,
our aim in this book is, for the first time, to bring together original, worldleading social research on insurance. In garnering the thoughts and insights
of contributing human geographers, sociologists, built environment experts,
and others, our impetus is to contribute to growing this body of research
and charting the terrain for future inquiry.
The origins of insurance in actuarialism and finance influence how it is
approached in research and practice. Most texts on insurance are located
within the fields of economics and finance, focusing on key concepts and
principles, legal frameworks, and explanations of the insurance industry. Quantitative methods dominate with an assumption of individual
rational decision-making, and this has shaped insurance as a scientific
object – a tool to be applied and a thing to be measured in its effectiveness
(or lack thereof). In the social sciences, however, such perspectives have
been critiqued, unsettled, and complicated. As well as being actuarial and
financial, insurance is affective, emotional and normative, and constituted
within everyday life as well as the more abstract spheres of global finance
(Pike & Pollard 2010).
1 Introduction
Kate Booth
Our climate is being privatised, and with it, our democratic capacity to act
in the face of unprecedented risks is being curtailed. Insurance and insurers
are central to these changes. The insurance sector, for example, is a major
player in global financial markets and is continuously expanding its reach
into new places and through novel products. This sector is emerging as the
leader in climate risk – the assessor of climate risk, the holder of risk data,
and the actor in face of government inaction (Lehtonen 2017). These shifts
in governance are refracted in neoliberal reforms pertaining to the withdrawal of the state, the individualisation of risk, and self-responsibilisation
(Harvey 2007). This is hardening existing structures of inequality and contributing to new patterns of inequity (e.g. Booth & Kendal 2020). The gravitas of this nexus of power, crisis, and injustice is contributing to a growing
body of critical insurance research within the social sciences.
Climate change is fundamentally changing the ways we insure, and the
ways we think about insurance, and there is an urgent need to build knowledge on the capacities and limitations of insurance in this regard. Thus,
our aim in this book is, for the first time, to bring together original, worldleading social research on insurance. In garnering the thoughts and insights
of contributing human geographers, sociologists, built environment experts,
and others, our impetus is to contribute to growing this body of research
and charting the terrain for future inquiry.
The origins of insurance in actuarialism and finance influence how it is
approached in research and practice. Most texts on insurance are located
within the fields of economics and finance, focusing on key concepts and
principles, legal frameworks, and explanations of the insurance industry. Quantitative methods dominate with an assumption of individual
rational decision-making, and this has shaped insurance as a scientific
object – a tool to be applied and a thing to be measured in its effectiveness
(or lack thereof). In the social sciences, however, such perspectives have
been critiqued, unsettled, and complicated. As well as being actuarial and
financial, insurance is affective, emotional and normative, and constituted
within everyday life as well as the more abstract spheres of global finance
(Pike & Pollard 2010).