168 C Eriksen and J Turnbull
In the afflictions [high-tech risks] produce they are no longer tied to their
place of origin – the industrial plant. By their nature they endanger all
forms of life on this planet. The normative bases of their calculation –
the concept of accident and insurance, medical precautions, and so on –
do not fit the basic dimensions of these modern threats. Atomic plants
are accident no more (in the limited sense of the word ‘accident’). They
outlast generations… This means that the calculations of risk as it
has been established so far by science and legal institutions collapses.
Dealing with these consequences of modern productive and destructive
forces in the normal terms of risk is a false but nevertheless very effective way of legitimizing them.
(Beck 1992, p. 22)
The insurance industry plays an intrinsic role in the modern-day risk society
described in Beck’s seminal work, which was originally published the same
year as the Chornobyl disaster. Here, ‘insurance operates a security technology that, while ascribing value to life, capitalises livelihoods, and promotes
[certain] lifestyles’ (Lobo-Guerrero 2011, p. xi). Yet, due to the difficulty of
calculating the likelihood and magnitude of environmental hazards, especially those with effects at a global scale, certain events escape the logic of
insurance and are rendered ‘catastrophic’ anomalies. Since the 1990s, innovative insurance technologies have changed this through two manoeuvres:
parametric insurance and the securitisation of catastrophic risks in global
markets by means of financial derivatives (Lobo-Guerrero 2011; Grove 2012;
Collier 2013). Insurance products, such as ‘catastrophe bonds’ still rely on the
design of predictable variables that are difficult, if not impossible, to meet in
the context of radioisotopes rereleased by wildfires: ‘observable and easily
measurable, objective, transparent, independently verifiable, reportable in a
timely manner and stable and sustainable over time’ (Lobo-Guerrero 2011,
pp. 83–84). Politically and economically, no one wants to insure the leaky
and ungovernable radioactive particles in the CEZ.
As Lobo-Guerrero (2011, p. 78) highlights, the ‘crossbreeding of insurance
and capital markets … [is] related to a wider process of governing through
assemblages of risk.’ This resonates with Beck’s (1992, p. 21) understanding of risk as the ‘systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities
induced and introduced by modernisation itself.’ Our case study, however,
highlights the importance of a different set of assemblages in managing risk,
namely sensing assemblages. The diverse and sometime overlapping forms
of sensing used for detecting radiation, such as the technologies used in Kyiv
and the bodies of firefighters, highlight the importance of thinking with
volume to understand affective atmospheres. These affective atmospheres,
together with the Anthropocene’s proliferating techno-natural ecosystems,
fundamentally challenge some of the legal terms traditionally used to define
liability, such as labelling a natural hazard outside of human control, for
which no person can be held responsible, an ‘Act of God.’
In the afflictions [high-tech risks] produce they are no longer tied to their
place of origin – the industrial plant. By their nature they endanger all
forms of life on this planet. The normative bases of their calculation –
the concept of accident and insurance, medical precautions, and so on –
do not fit the basic dimensions of these modern threats. Atomic plants
are accident no more (in the limited sense of the word ‘accident’). They
outlast generations… This means that the calculations of risk as it
has been established so far by science and legal institutions collapses.
Dealing with these consequences of modern productive and destructive
forces in the normal terms of risk is a false but nevertheless very effective way of legitimizing them.
(Beck 1992, p. 22)
The insurance industry plays an intrinsic role in the modern-day risk society
described in Beck’s seminal work, which was originally published the same
year as the Chornobyl disaster. Here, ‘insurance operates a security technology that, while ascribing value to life, capitalises livelihoods, and promotes
[certain] lifestyles’ (Lobo-Guerrero 2011, p. xi). Yet, due to the difficulty of
calculating the likelihood and magnitude of environmental hazards, especially those with effects at a global scale, certain events escape the logic of
insurance and are rendered ‘catastrophic’ anomalies. Since the 1990s, innovative insurance technologies have changed this through two manoeuvres:
parametric insurance and the securitisation of catastrophic risks in global
markets by means of financial derivatives (Lobo-Guerrero 2011; Grove 2012;
Collier 2013). Insurance products, such as ‘catastrophe bonds’ still rely on the
design of predictable variables that are difficult, if not impossible, to meet in
the context of radioisotopes rereleased by wildfires: ‘observable and easily
measurable, objective, transparent, independently verifiable, reportable in a
timely manner and stable and sustainable over time’ (Lobo-Guerrero 2011,
pp. 83–84). Politically and economically, no one wants to insure the leaky
and ungovernable radioactive particles in the CEZ.
As Lobo-Guerrero (2011, p. 78) highlights, the ‘crossbreeding of insurance
and capital markets … [is] related to a wider process of governing through
assemblages of risk.’ This resonates with Beck’s (1992, p. 21) understanding of risk as the ‘systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities
induced and introduced by modernisation itself.’ Our case study, however,
highlights the importance of a different set of assemblages in managing risk,
namely sensing assemblages. The diverse and sometime overlapping forms
of sensing used for detecting radiation, such as the technologies used in Kyiv
and the bodies of firefighters, highlight the importance of thinking with
volume to understand affective atmospheres. These affective atmospheres,
together with the Anthropocene’s proliferating techno-natural ecosystems,
fundamentally challenge some of the legal terms traditionally used to define
liability, such as labelling a natural hazard outside of human control, for
which no person can be held responsible, an ‘Act of God.’