In this book, world-leading social scientists come together to provide original insights on the capacities and limitations of insurance in a changing world. Climate change is fundamentally changing ...the ways we insure, and the ways we think about insurance. This book moves beyond traditional economics and financial understandings of insurance to address the social and geopolitical dimensions of this powerful and pervasive part of contemporary life. Insurance shapes material and social realities, and is shaped by them in turn. The contributing authors of this book show how insurance constitutes and is constituted through the traditional elements of earth, water, air, fire, and the novel element of big data. The applied and theoretical insights presented through this novel elemental approach reveal that insurance is more dynamic, multifaceted, and spatially variegated than commonly imagined. This book is an authoritative source on the capacities and limitations of insurance. It is a go-to reference for researchers and students in the social sciences – particularly those with an interest in economics and finance, and how these intersect with geography, politics, and society. It is also relevant for those in the disaster, environmental, health, natural, and social sciences who are interested in the role of insurance in addressing risk, resilience, and adaptation.
As losses from extreme weather events grow, many governments are looking to privatize the financing and incentivization of climate adaptation through insurance markets. In a pure market approach to ...insurance for extreme weather events, individuals become responsible for ensuring they are adequately covered for risks to their own properties, and governments no longer contribute funds to post‐disaster recovery. Theoretically, insurance premiums signal the level of risk faced by each household, and incentivize homeowners to invest in adaptive action, such as retrofitting, or drainage work, to reduce premiums. Where risk is considered too high by insurance markets, housing is devalued, in theory leading to retreat from risky areas. In this review article, we evaluate the suitability of private insurance as a mechanism for climate adaptation at a household and community level. We find a mismatch between social understandings of responsibility for climate risks, and the technocratic, market‐based home insurance products offered by private insurance markets. We suggest that by constructing increasingly individualized, technical, and calculative evaluations of risk, market‐based models of insurance for extreme weather events erode the solidaristic and collective discourses and practices that support adaptive behavior.
This article is categorized under:
Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation
Home insurance premiums based on individual risk are meant to incentivize adaptation, but can undermine collective efforts to adapt to climate change.
Home insurance for extreme weather events is a significant security mechanism not only for individual households but for global finance. As extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, ...home insurance has been identified by governments as a critical tool for climate adaptation and disaster resilience. However, the growing research literature on the interactions between household insurance and extreme climatic events has not previously been systematically reviewed. In this paper, we analyse 175 original peer-reviewed empirical research papers on this subject, published between 2009 and 2018. We identify areas of research focus, themes, spatial and temporal patterns, and knowledge gaps, and examine policy implications of these findings. We find that an overall focus on flood insurance leaves unanswered questions about the different insurantial challenges posed by storms and wildfire. We suggest existing technocratic and calculative insurance narratives obscure the political and moral assumptions embedded within them, and that these assumptions warrant further investigation in the context of socially legitimate insurance against the impact of extreme weather events.
What a Difference Place Makes Booth, Kate Isabel
Qualitative inquiry,
01/2015, Letnik:
21, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Place is a recurrent yet contested theme in the social sciences, and an emerging theme within qualitative inquiry. How one understands place has significant bearing upon the difference that place ...makes to methodology. Accounts that rely on fixed, bordered, and exclusionist notions of place-based authenticity are problematic. A conceptualization of place as dynamic, open, and more-than-human offers other methodological possibilities regarding the representation of the self in relation to place. It also offers a rationale for research that engages with the more intangible elements that constitute sense of place such as emotions, dreams, and imaginings, and research that engages with how people construct meaning in relation to place-based phenomena.
Critical insurance studies recognises insurance as not purely actuarial and calculative. From this recognition, this theoretically informed research pays attention to the reproduction of power in ...insurantial discourse and practice, and possibilities for equitable change. To extend geographical contributions in this regard, I review critical insurance research and describe three intersecting foci – governmentality, materiality and spatiality. I also contribute new insights in considering insurance as co-constituting fluid and fire space – as flowing and adapting within everyday complexities, and as fiery and constituted through multiple flickering realities. These contestable multiplicities and mobilities may contribute to more equitable configurations beyond the hegemonic.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Successfully managing current threats to marine resources and ecosystems is largely dependent on our ability to understand and manage human behavior. In recent times we have seen increased growth in ...research to understand the human dimension of marine resource use, and the associated implications for management. However, despite progress to date, marine research and management have until recently largely neglected the critically important role of “sense of place,” and its role in influencing the success and efficacy of management interventions. To help address this gap we review the existing literature from various disciplines, e.g., environmental psychology, and sectors, both marine and nonmarine sectors, to understand the ways is which sense of place has been conceptualized and measured. Doing so we draw on three key aspects of sense of place, person, place, and process, to establish a framework to help construct a more organized and consistent approach for considering and representing sense of place in marine environmental studies. Based on this we present indicators to guide how sense of place is monitored and evaluated in relation to marine resource management, and identify practical ways in which this framework can be incorporated into existing decision-support tools. This manuscript is a first step toward increasing the extent to which sense of place is incorporated into modeling, monitoring, and management decisions in the marine realm.
•Climate scepticism is highest in Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the USA.•Higher levels of CO2 emissions per capita are positively associated with scepticism.•Country vulnerability to climate ...change is correlated positively with climate scepticism.•Political conservatism, gender and low environmental concern are key predictors of scepticism.
Despite the findings of climate scientists, the proportions of climate sceptics appear to be increasing in many countries. We model social and political background, value orientations and the influence of CO2 emissions per capita and vulnerability to climate change upon climate scepticism, drawing upon data from the International Social Survey Programme. Substantial differences in the levels of climate scepticism are apparent between nations. Yet cross national data show that climate sceptics are not merely the mirror image of environmentalists. Typical predictors of environmental issue concern, such as education level, postmaterial value orientations and age are poor predictors of climate scepticism. Affiliation with conservative political parties, gender, being unconcerned about ‘the environment’ or having little trust in government are consistent predictors of scepticism. Climate change scepticism is also correlated positively with CO2 emissions and vulnerability to climate change. While high levels of scepticism have been documented among citizens of the United States, scepticism is as high or higher in countries such as Australia, Norway and New Zealand.
Australian households are increasingly vulnerable to natural hazard-related disasters. To manage disaster risk, government commissioned inquiries have called for greater investment in mitigation. ...This article critically examines the call for a shift in funding priority towards pre-disaster mitigation measures, in the context of growing concerns around the ability of households to access and afford insurance. It examines mitigation measures in the context of three prominent Australian disasters: the Black Saturday bushfires (Victoria, 2009), the Queensland floods (2010–2011), and Cyclone Yasi (Queensland, 2011). We argue that as a mode of disaster security, mitigation operates as a complex assemblage of logics and practices of protection, preparedness, and resilience, which problematizes simplistic protection/resilience binaries. On the one hand, mitigation serves as a mode of protection, which underscores the dominant maladaptive rationality of insurance. It promises a collective solution to uninsurability that is limited by government fiscal constraints and growing employment of risk-reflective insurance pricing. On the other hand, there is evidence of an emergent rationality of household insurance as a path to resilience and preparedness—for example, in the development of insurance systems that price household retrofitting technologies and in the development of policyholder education campaigns. This resilience rationality holds the promise of securing individuals previously excluded from insurance. However, for householders lacking the necessary physical, cognitive, and financial capacities to make themselves and their properties resilient, the transition to a pre-disaster mitigation mode of security will likely do little to alleviate disadvantage and marginalization.
The premise of environmental management pivots on managing the people-environment relationship. Yet this field remains dominated by the idea of managing the environment not the relationship, and as ...such continues to enact dualistic and reductionist traditions. Deep ecology's
relational ontology offers a means of moving beneath and beyond such traditions. Specifically, the theory of internal relations as manifest within Arne Naess's gestalt ontology - if developed with regard to relational work emerging within cultural geography - is an aspect of deep ecology that
has relevance and implications for environmental management's theory and practice. Such a stance provides qualified support for Warwick Fox's identification of the significance of Self-realisation within deep ecological philosophy, and counters attempts by some deep ecology proponents to write
Fox and his work out of the history and future prospects of deep ecology.
When disaster strikes Booth, Kate; Tranter, Bruce
Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland),
11/2018, Letnik:
55, Številka:
14
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In undertaking what we believe is the first national-scale study of its kind, we provide methodologically transparent, statistically robust insights into associations and potential unfolding effects ...of house and contents under-insurance. We identify new dimensions in the complex relationship between householders and insurance, including the salience of interpersonal – and likely institutional – trust. Under-insurance is (re)produced along socio-economic and geographical lines, with those of lower socio-economic status or living in cities more likely to be under-insured. Should a disaster strike, such communities are likely to suffer further disadvantage, especially if governments continue to shift the responsibility for risk onto households. Our findings support the observation that insurance can contribute to increasing socio-economic urban polarisation in light of natural disasters. We conclude by considering how under-insurance may contribute to growing urban social stratification, as well as how it may produce situated ethical and political responses that exceed neoliberal aspirations.
我们针对房屋与财物不足额保险的关联和潜在展开效应开展了全国首项研究，提供了方法上透 明、统计上有力的见解。我们确定了业主与保险之间复杂关系的新维度，包括人际信任和可能 的机构信任的显著性。不足额保险在特定社会经济和地理条件下产生（再生），社会经济地位 较低或生活在城市中的人更可能发生保险不足的情况。如果发生灾难，这些人群可能会遭受进 一步的不利影响，特别是如果政府继续将风险责任转移到家庭时。我们的研宄结果支持如下观 察：在自然灾害中，保险会加速城市的社会经济两极分化。我们最后思考了不足额保险如何作 用于城市的社会分层，以及如何产生超出新自由主义期望的伦理和政治反应。
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