Uncertain Business: Risk, Insurance, and the Limits of Knowledge

Doyle, Aaron

ISBN 10: 0802087590 / ISBN 13: 9780802087591

Published by University of Toronto Press, 2004

About this Item

Insurers' perceptions and decisions about uncertainty - with potential for windfall profits as well as catastrophic losses - create crises in insurance availability and provoke new forms of inequality and exclusion. Hence, while the insurance industry is a central bulwark against uncertainty, insurers also play a key role in fostering it. Num Pages: 335 pages, Illustrations. BIC Classification: KFFN. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 235 x 156 x 28. Weight in Grams: 635. . 2004. 2nd ed. hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780802087591

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Uncertain Business: Risk, Insurance, and the Limits of Knowledge
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802087590
• ISBN 13: 9780802087591
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

We live in an age of increasing doubt about whether our institutions and technologies can provide security against risks, many of which they themselves have created. Uncertain Business is an unprecedented inquiry into insurance industry practices and what they tell us about risks and uncertainties in contemporary society.

The core of the book is ethnographic studies in distinct fields of insurance: premature death, disability, earthquake, and terrorism. These studies reveal that uncertainty pervades different fields of insurance, the very industry that is charged with transforming uncertainty into manageable risk. Scientific data on risk are variously absent, inadequate, controversial, contradictory, and ignored. Insurers impose meaning on uncertainty through non-scientific forms of knowledge that are intuitive, emotional, aesthetic, moral, and speculative. Nevertheless, the nature of uncertainty and the response to it varies substantially across the fields studied, showing how contemporary society is characterized by competing risk logics.

Insurers' perceptions and decisions about uncertainty - with potential for windfall profits as well as catastrophic losses - create crises in insurance availability and provoke new forms of inequality and exclusion. Hence, while the insurance industry is a central bulwark against uncertainty, insurers also play a key role in fostering it.

About the Author

Aaron Doyle is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carlton University. The late Richard V. Ericson was Principal of Green College, University of British Columbia, a centre for interdisciplinary scholarship and graduate education.