Uncertain Business: Risk, Insurance, and the Limits of Knowledge - Couverture rigide

Doyle, Aaron; Ericson, Richard V.

 
9780802087591: Uncertain Business: Risk, Insurance, and the Limits of Knowledge
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 0802087590 ISBN 13 : 9780802087591
Editeur : University of Toronto Press, 2004

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.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l?auteur

Aaron Doyle is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carlton University.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
University of Toronto Press
Date d'édition
2004
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0802087590
ISBN 13 
9780802087591
Reliure
Relié
Nombre de pages
335
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780802085627: Uncertain Business: Risk, Insurance, and the Limits of Knowledge

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0802085628 ISBN 13 :  9780802085627
Editeur : University of Toronto Press, 2004
Couverture souple