222 C Lucas
Such manipulations are inherently political, shaping people’s lives to conform with individuated insurantial imaginaries. However, insurance has
always been political as much as it is actuarial. Pat O’Malley (Chapter 10)
describes a long-term ‘fire politics’ of building construction. In a recent
iteration of this politics, the concept of sustainability has become technically defined in different ways for different political ends. The outcome of
sustainable building, as defined by developers, is reduced building cost.
This equates to less passive fire resistance, as ‘embodied carbon’ is stripped
out. Insurers, in this instance, are on the side of long-term fire prevention,
and would prefer to include more passive resistance, as they bear the financial burden of risk across the lifespan of the building.
Several chapters in this book explore how catastrophes that have historically be seen as uninsurable are rendered insurable through new forms
of technocracy. As Kevin Grove (Chapter 4, p. 40) puts it, ‘techniques
such as risk pooling, catastrophe modelling, parametric insurance, and
weather derivatives, to name but a few, have created new mechanisms for
pricing and transferring risk that are based on speculative and enacted
forms of knowledge, rather than actuarial and predictive knowledge.’ Olli
Hasu and Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen (Chapter 3, p. 25) describe how one
such technique, index insurance, not only abstracts the elements it represents but transforms them into ‘governable environments.’ In this way,
new forms of insurance technology render the previously political issue
of disaster policy a technical issue, and in doing so diminish both political autonomy and democratic power. However, as Turnbull and Eriksen
illustrate using the case of Chernobyl (Chapter 13), both the complex web
of anthropogenic agency involved in ‘natural’ hazards, and the ‘leaky
materiality’ of elements, undermine the capacity of insurance to master
all forms of disaster.
Individual and collective
Throughout this chapter, I have referred to the individualising nature
of modern insurance, seeing it as both a symptom and a force of neoliberal governmentalities that responsibilise individuals for collective risks.
Mismatched understandings of responsibility, such as those described in
Mark Kammerbauer and Christine Wamsler’s example of Deggendorf
(Chapter 7), mean that citizens’ expectation of government protection from
collective threats is undermined by individualised approaches to disaster
management. Insurance seems on a trajectory to granularize and personalise policies, as described in McFall’s (Chapter 15) example of an insurtech
company calling itself ‘Lemonade’ using machine learning and predictive
data to ‘socially align’ policies to individuals.
However, some chapters in this book describe ‘flows’ of risk and (social
and financial) capital that undermine the idea of insurance as individual,
and point towards collective forms of climate response. How well insurance
Such manipulations are inherently political, shaping people’s lives to conform with individuated insurantial imaginaries. However, insurance has
always been political as much as it is actuarial. Pat O’Malley (Chapter 10)
describes a long-term ‘fire politics’ of building construction. In a recent
iteration of this politics, the concept of sustainability has become technically defined in different ways for different political ends. The outcome of
sustainable building, as defined by developers, is reduced building cost.
This equates to less passive fire resistance, as ‘embodied carbon’ is stripped
out. Insurers, in this instance, are on the side of long-term fire prevention,
and would prefer to include more passive resistance, as they bear the financial burden of risk across the lifespan of the building.
Several chapters in this book explore how catastrophes that have historically be seen as uninsurable are rendered insurable through new forms
of technocracy. As Kevin Grove (Chapter 4, p. 40) puts it, ‘techniques
such as risk pooling, catastrophe modelling, parametric insurance, and
weather derivatives, to name but a few, have created new mechanisms for
pricing and transferring risk that are based on speculative and enacted
forms of knowledge, rather than actuarial and predictive knowledge.’ Olli
Hasu and Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen (Chapter 3, p. 25) describe how one
such technique, index insurance, not only abstracts the elements it represents but transforms them into ‘governable environments.’ In this way,
new forms of insurance technology render the previously political issue
of disaster policy a technical issue, and in doing so diminish both political autonomy and democratic power. However, as Turnbull and Eriksen
illustrate using the case of Chernobyl (Chapter 13), both the complex web
of anthropogenic agency involved in ‘natural’ hazards, and the ‘leaky
materiality’ of elements, undermine the capacity of insurance to master
all forms of disaster.
Individual and collective
Throughout this chapter, I have referred to the individualising nature
of modern insurance, seeing it as both a symptom and a force of neoliberal governmentalities that responsibilise individuals for collective risks.
Mismatched understandings of responsibility, such as those described in
Mark Kammerbauer and Christine Wamsler’s example of Deggendorf
(Chapter 7), mean that citizens’ expectation of government protection from
collective threats is undermined by individualised approaches to disaster
management. Insurance seems on a trajectory to granularize and personalise policies, as described in McFall’s (Chapter 15) example of an insurtech
company calling itself ‘Lemonade’ using machine learning and predictive
data to ‘socially align’ policies to individuals.
However, some chapters in this book describe ‘flows’ of risk and (social
and financial) capital that undermine the idea of insurance as individual,
and point towards collective forms of climate response. How well insurance