56 Water
decision-making. In this, the capacities and qualities of water are reduced
through flood calculations and modelling, rendering water and insurance
concrete and constant.
This enacts types of spatiality that appear at odds with the dynamic
nature(s) of water. Instead, Law and Mol (2001) describe a fluid spatiality
in which things that may appear at first glance static and stable, change
shape. As shape-changers, things in their mobile forms can take their place
at different sites and in different ways. While still retaining their status as
particular things or objects, ‘there is a process of gradual adaptation. Shape
invariance is secured in a fluid topology in a process of more or less gentle
flow’ (Law & Mol 2001, p. 614).
The tentative roll-out of micro-insurance to subsistence farmers in the
developing world appears malleable or mutable in its framing of insurance (Booth 2021). In encountering local knowledge, this insurance can
adapt and change its form and function. Insurance enters as actuarial and
morphs in response to traditional knowledge systems. For example, goat
entrails used in weather divining form part of the rationale in insurantial
decision-making in some parts of Africa (Johnson 2013). Micro-insurance
may retain its status as insurance, yet it also flows between farms, villages,
and regions because of its capacity to change and adapt.
Empirically, this fluidity can be a source of the success of an object or
thing. Theoretically, fluid spatiality ‘suggests that varying configurations,
rather than representing breakdown and failure, may also help to strengthen
objects’ (Law & Mol 2001, p. 615). There appears significant scope for considering the on-going evolution and success of insurance in this light: how,
for example, insurance responds to the transmogrifying and malleable
properties of water – as sustenance or catastrophe, and how the insurance
sector may enact marketised experimentation using fluid configurations of
insurance products.
In this section, our authors approach insurance in the face of unwanted
large quantities of water that surge through towns and cities, and cascade into
home and offices. Rebecca Elliot begins the section considering flood insurance and the ‘flow’ or fluidity of cross-subsidisation between low and high
risk households in the United States and the United Kingdom. This sharing of risk costs adapts and changes with technological and normative shifts
and, as Elliot observes, is it an essential part of insurance despite free-market
expectations of full risk pricing. In relation to insurance of flooding, Chloe
Lucas and Travis Young compare household experiences in Australia and
the United States, and identify similarities and differences in resilience and
vulnerability manifest through two different insurances – one private and one
public. In the third chapter of the section, Mark Kammerbauer and Christine
Wamsler also draw attention to issues of insurance-related vulnerability, this
time in flood-prone Germany. There may be fluidity in cross-subsidisation
and household experience, yet insurance mechanisms can appear inadequate
in supporting adaptive changes in the face of intensifying flood risk.
decision-making. In this, the capacities and qualities of water are reduced
through flood calculations and modelling, rendering water and insurance
concrete and constant.
This enacts types of spatiality that appear at odds with the dynamic
nature(s) of water. Instead, Law and Mol (2001) describe a fluid spatiality
in which things that may appear at first glance static and stable, change
shape. As shape-changers, things in their mobile forms can take their place
at different sites and in different ways. While still retaining their status as
particular things or objects, ‘there is a process of gradual adaptation. Shape
invariance is secured in a fluid topology in a process of more or less gentle
flow’ (Law & Mol 2001, p. 614).
The tentative roll-out of micro-insurance to subsistence farmers in the
developing world appears malleable or mutable in its framing of insurance (Booth 2021). In encountering local knowledge, this insurance can
adapt and change its form and function. Insurance enters as actuarial and
morphs in response to traditional knowledge systems. For example, goat
entrails used in weather divining form part of the rationale in insurantial
decision-making in some parts of Africa (Johnson 2013). Micro-insurance
may retain its status as insurance, yet it also flows between farms, villages,
and regions because of its capacity to change and adapt.
Empirically, this fluidity can be a source of the success of an object or
thing. Theoretically, fluid spatiality ‘suggests that varying configurations,
rather than representing breakdown and failure, may also help to strengthen
objects’ (Law & Mol 2001, p. 615). There appears significant scope for considering the on-going evolution and success of insurance in this light: how,
for example, insurance responds to the transmogrifying and malleable
properties of water – as sustenance or catastrophe, and how the insurance
sector may enact marketised experimentation using fluid configurations of
insurance products.
In this section, our authors approach insurance in the face of unwanted
large quantities of water that surge through towns and cities, and cascade into
home and offices. Rebecca Elliot begins the section considering flood insurance and the ‘flow’ or fluidity of cross-subsidisation between low and high
risk households in the United States and the United Kingdom. This sharing of risk costs adapts and changes with technological and normative shifts
and, as Elliot observes, is it an essential part of insurance despite free-market
expectations of full risk pricing. In relation to insurance of flooding, Chloe
Lucas and Travis Young compare household experiences in Australia and
the United States, and identify similarities and differences in resilience and
vulnerability manifest through two different insurances – one private and one
public. In the third chapter of the section, Mark Kammerbauer and Christine
Wamsler also draw attention to issues of insurance-related vulnerability, this
time in flood-prone Germany. There may be fluidity in cross-subsidisation
and household experience, yet insurance mechanisms can appear inadequate
in supporting adaptive changes in the face of intensifying flood risk.