Insurance and Social Theory: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Today, the tools through which insurance operates are being imagined in new ways and shaped by broad societal processes including digitalisation, datafication, financialisation, and the growing prominence of socio-ecological risks. The ongoing transformations do not simply extend established insurantial practices; they potentially reconfigure the ways in which they work. The boundaries between public and private responsibility, collective pooling and individualisation, prevention and compensation are being renegotiated. In this introduction to the special issue, we discuss the role of social theory in recent sociological research dealing with these challenges. What makes insurance a particularly interesting research topic for sociologists is that while it is a core infrastructure of modern society, it is also intrinsically ripe with social theorisation. Insurance institutions' practical operations depend on particular ways of thinking about individuals and social collectives, organising them into pools, assessing their risks and future potential, and profiting from this activity. Importantly, theories of action and society are built into the insurance tool itself that operationalises notions such as trust, responsibility, fairness and solidarity.