Introduction 3
…points towards modes of knowing that are open and sensitive to
movement and mutability within insurance, and what this means for
insurance praxis – the enactment or realisation of these theoretical
insights through practice and politics.
By making these ontological and epistemological connections between the
sections and chapters of this book, we reveal key themes in contemporary
research that signal the capacities and limitations of insurance. This includes
how dualisms associated with insurance – rational/emotional, technical/
political, individual/collective – are unsettled and disrupted, providing new
avenues for understanding and research. We synthesise and elucidate these
insights in the book’s concluding chapter.
Between now and then, however, we begin our elemental exploration of
insurance in Section 1 with ‘Earth’. Lauren Rickards begins by delving into
insurance and geo-engineering ‘fixes’ to climate change, such as soil carbon
sequestration. She observes that insurance and geo-engineering both posit
culturally embedded narratives of ‘If this continues, then…’ and ‘What if…?’
Insurance provides an imagining (Ewald 1991) that addresses disasters and
risks associated with climate change with the hopeful, ‘What if I had insurance?’ Yet, despite limits to insurability, insurance remains unambitious
when it comes to claiming or pursuing a transformed future. This imagining of business-as-usual is interlinked with the possibility of a climate
stabilised through geo-engineering, and acts to ‘dampen’ other narratives
that forewarn of the implications of unmitigated climate change. Rickards
concludes with a call to consider a different kind of ‘If only…’ – if only we
could escape Modernist narratives and instead look to how we could relate
with reciprocity and solidarity to a changing Earth.
In the next two ‘Earth’ chapters, Olli Hasu, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, and
Kevin Grove turn their attention to forms of parametric or index insurance
in the developing world. Hasu and Lehtonen critically explore the Global
Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) project – a project led by the World Bank
and aimed at providing financial services for smallholder farmers. Adding
to Rickards’ observations about insurance logics, they describe the process by which soil is turned into an index, how this index is then applied,
and ultimately how this integrates soil into global financial markets. What
emerges is a technology that claims innovative significance yet appears to be
a traditional form of insurance premised in large part on archival-statistical
knowledge. The index remains dependent on fixed and unchanging environmental indicators and does not or cannot accommodate dynamic variables.
Despite climate change being at the heart of the GIIF project, this form of
insurance appears unresponsive to this phenomenon.
From the plantation state of Dominica in the Caribbean, Kevin Grove
also tackles index insurance within the context of ex-ante risk management
(EARM). He observes how new technologies like catastrophe models and
parametric insurance appear to disrupt the idea that there are ‘earthly’
…points towards modes of knowing that are open and sensitive to
movement and mutability within insurance, and what this means for
insurance praxis – the enactment or realisation of these theoretical
insights through practice and politics.
By making these ontological and epistemological connections between the
sections and chapters of this book, we reveal key themes in contemporary
research that signal the capacities and limitations of insurance. This includes
how dualisms associated with insurance – rational/emotional, technical/
political, individual/collective – are unsettled and disrupted, providing new
avenues for understanding and research. We synthesise and elucidate these
insights in the book’s concluding chapter.
Between now and then, however, we begin our elemental exploration of
insurance in Section 1 with ‘Earth’. Lauren Rickards begins by delving into
insurance and geo-engineering ‘fixes’ to climate change, such as soil carbon
sequestration. She observes that insurance and geo-engineering both posit
culturally embedded narratives of ‘If this continues, then…’ and ‘What if…?’
Insurance provides an imagining (Ewald 1991) that addresses disasters and
risks associated with climate change with the hopeful, ‘What if I had insurance?’ Yet, despite limits to insurability, insurance remains unambitious
when it comes to claiming or pursuing a transformed future. This imagining of business-as-usual is interlinked with the possibility of a climate
stabilised through geo-engineering, and acts to ‘dampen’ other narratives
that forewarn of the implications of unmitigated climate change. Rickards
concludes with a call to consider a different kind of ‘If only…’ – if only we
could escape Modernist narratives and instead look to how we could relate
with reciprocity and solidarity to a changing Earth.
In the next two ‘Earth’ chapters, Olli Hasu, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, and
Kevin Grove turn their attention to forms of parametric or index insurance
in the developing world. Hasu and Lehtonen critically explore the Global
Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) project – a project led by the World Bank
and aimed at providing financial services for smallholder farmers. Adding
to Rickards’ observations about insurance logics, they describe the process by which soil is turned into an index, how this index is then applied,
and ultimately how this integrates soil into global financial markets. What
emerges is a technology that claims innovative significance yet appears to be
a traditional form of insurance premised in large part on archival-statistical
knowledge. The index remains dependent on fixed and unchanging environmental indicators and does not or cannot accommodate dynamic variables.
Despite climate change being at the heart of the GIIF project, this form of
insurance appears unresponsive to this phenomenon.
From the plantation state of Dominica in the Caribbean, Kevin Grove
also tackles index insurance within the context of ex-ante risk management
(EARM). He observes how new technologies like catastrophe models and
parametric insurance appear to disrupt the idea that there are ‘earthly’