Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance

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.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Kate Booth is a human geographer, specializing in the field of critical insurance studies. She is particularly interested in the economic and social geographies of insurance in a changing climate, and implications for inequality and inequity. Kate has also worked on projects looking at sense of place, and the role of arts and culture in urban regeneration. Her work is published in journals such as Progress in Human Geography, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Urban Studies, and Qualitative Inquiry.

Chloe Lucas is a human geographer at the University of Tasmania. A communications specialist, she began her career making documentaries about science and landscape history for the BBC. Chloe’s research explores the values and experiences underlying different social responses to climate change, and identifies pathways to more empathetic and inclusive climate conversations. Her recent work focusses on how communication and cultural context drives social adaptation to extreme weather events, and can be found in journals including Climatic Change, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Geographical Research, and WIRES Climate Change.

Shaun French is an Associate Professor in Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham. He focuses on the geographies of economic practice and knowledge, specifically financial services and money, socially responsible investment, and financial centres. As part of the University’s Rights Lab, he is developing new work on debt, vulnerability and anti-money laundering.