Uncertain Business

Uncertain Business

EnglishEbook
Doyle, Aaron
University of Toronto Press
EAN: 9781442682849
Available online
CZK 2,001
Common price CZK 2,223
Discount 10%
pc

Detailed information

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.

EAN 9781442682849
ISBN 1442682841
Binding Ebook
Publisher University of Toronto Press
Publication date May 3, 2004
Pages 335
Language English
Country Canada
Authors Doyle, Aaron; Ericson, Richard V.
Manufacturer information
The manufacturer's contact information is currently not available online, we are working intensively on the axle. If you need information, write us on helpdesk@megabooks.sk, we will be happy to provide it.