British Journal of Sociology最新文献_第8页

Insurance and the “Irrationalization” of Disaster Policy: A Political Crisis Theory for an Age of Climate Risk 保险与灾害政策的“非理性”：气候风险时代的政治危机理论。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2025-07-29 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.70017

Stephen J. Collier

{"title":"Insurance and the “Irrationalization” of Disaster Policy: A Political Crisis Theory for an Age of Climate Risk","authors":"Stephen J. Collier","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.70017","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1468-4446.70017","url":null,"abstract":"In the last several years, disaster insurance programs around the world have experienced disruptions that many observers interpret to be a primary symptom of “climate crisis” (Bittle 2024). Governments have responded to these disruptions through disjointed and at times contradictory measures: they treat disasters, alternately, as “Acts of God” that should be a collective responsibility, or as the result of decisions that can be attributed to individual agency. This article argues that such shifts between mutualism and individualization in disaster insurance are symptoms of an “irrationalization” of disaster policy. The concept of irrationalization, derived from the Marxist state theory of Claus Offe (1973), describes the process of goal identification and policy formulation of contemporary states as they navigate simultaneously valid but ultimately contradictory principles of political morality and governmental rationality. Through case studies of two disaster insurance programs in the US—the National Flood Insurance Program and property insurance in California, which covers wildfires—the article shows that irrationalization processes are becoming more marked as disasters grow ever larger and costlier, fueled by climate change and other anthropogenic causes. It also suggests that the concept of irrationalization offers insight into the emerging forms of “climate crisis” that are unfolding in disaster policy and other domains. The concept of climate crisis is frequently invoked to designate the ruptural change that will follow from global warming, and to both summon and justify radical action to address problems that are attributed to a particular causal or moral agent. But in the context of the irrationalization of disaster policy, technical and moral attributions are uncertain and disputed. Disasters generate political conflict and crisis-driven reorganization rather than decisive courses of action.","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":"77 3","pages":"482-495"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1468-4446.70017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144735221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Old Regime (of Mutualisation) and the Revolution (of Big Data) 旧体制（共同化）和革命（大数据）。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2025-03-15 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.13205

Pierre Francois

{"title":"The Old Regime (of Mutualisation) and the Revolution (of Big Data)","authors":"Pierre Francois","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.13205","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1468-4446.13205","url":null,"abstract":"In his classic work L'ancien régime et la révolution, Alexis de Tocqueville proposes a reinterpretation of the French Revolution: behind the spectacular ruptures associated with the event, profound continuities are at play. Beyond the specific case of the French Revolution, Tocqueville calls for vigilance in mobilizing the notion of revolution to account for historical dynamics. In this contribution, I propose to apply this vigilance to account for the supposed “Big Data revolution” in the field of European insurance. Most observers of the sector—whether professionals or academic—agree that the arrival of Big Data represents a major rupture. This break would call into question the business model of insurance companies, stabilized for 250 years around the principle of risk pooling, since it would now be possible to individualize risk management. This individualization of risk management would then reconfigure the nature of solidarity and the social bond at work within Western societies, which, since the end of the 19th century, have been constituted as “insurance societies” (Ewald 1986). On the contrary, I defend the idea that these ruptures are only apparent, incomplete or unfinished, and that the “Big Data Revolution” masks profound continuities, by mobilizing two arguments: attempts to individualize risk management long predate the advent of big data; and attempts to individualize risk management based on big data are, to date, inconclusive.","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":"77 3","pages":"431-438"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1468-4446.13205","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143634736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Description, Articulation and Limitations in the Social Theory of Insurance 保险社会理论的描述、表述与局限。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2026-03-18 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.70110

Liz McFall

{"title":"Description, Articulation and Limitations in the Social Theory of Insurance","authors":"Liz McFall","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.70110","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1468-4446.70110","url":null,"abstract":"There have been surprisingly few sustained efforts to explain or theorise the role insurance plays in society. Even the most theoretically inflected insurance scholarship, emanating from governmentality and Actor Network Theory scholarship, tends to be grounded in empirical cases, set in particular periods and places, and it is often ambivalent toward the label of theory. It is surprising both because of the foundationally social character of insurance and because of its sheer heft – economically and politically insurance is everywhere and involved, somehow, in everything. As many working in the field have complained, insurance has not been deemed a central object of either empirical or theoretical enquiry anywhere. In its endlessly variable private, commercial forms especially, insurance is understudied, the overlooked, dull sibling of finance. There is today a still small, but accumulating body of work spread across disciplines but the size of the field measured against the character and scale of the topic itself makes thinking, explaining or theorising insurance generally peculiarly hard. This article uses the concept of articulation, as a descriptive and structurally relational category, to argue that there is a need for more scholarship than reaches across insurance lines, industry sectors and academic disciplines. To do this I recount how two relations - individual/social’, and insurance/finance - have featured in insurance research.","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":"77 3","pages":"496-506"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1468-4446.70110","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147482327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Understanding Catastrophe Insurance as a Commons? 理解巨灾保险是公地吗？

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2025-05-26 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.13229

Laurence Barry

引用次数: 0

Does Proactivity Affect Insurance Solidarity and Individual Responsibility? 主动性是否影响保险团结和个人责任？

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2025-05-20 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.13230

Alberto Cevolini, Elena Esposito

引用次数: 0

Insurance and Social Theory: An Introduction to the Special Issue 保险与社会理论：特刊导论。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2026-05-18 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.70126

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Alberto Cevolini, Elena Esposito

{"title":"Insurance and Social Theory: An Introduction to the Special Issue","authors":"Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Alberto Cevolini, Elena Esposito","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.70126","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1468-4446.70126","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 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.\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":"77 3","pages":"415-420"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147977022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Bigger Pictures of L’État Providence: On François Ewald’s Theorisation of the Insurantial Society État普罗维登斯的大图景：论弗朗索瓦·埃瓦尔德的保险社会理论。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2025-04-05 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.13204

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen

{"title":"The Bigger Pictures of L’État Providence: On François Ewald’s Theorisation of the Insurantial Society","authors":"Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.13204","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1468-4446.13204","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 The research published in François Ewald's magisterial L’État providence (1986) has been a major source of inspiration for sociological work on insurance for nearly 40 decades. This is impressive given that only a tiny part of that research was known in the Anglophone world until recently, through a few separately translated articles. In this paper, I study how Ewald paints a bigger picture of the insurantial society in the book. First, I examine how L’État providence weaves together histories of responsibility, risk, solidarity and insurance that together made possible the emergence of the French welfare state at the dawn of the twentieth century; simultaneously, the book describes how the concept of the ‘social’ could become an effective element in the practices of law and government. Second, I enquire into how Ewald combines a philosophical interest with empirical work on the insurantial society. I look at four aspects of Ewald's approach: its site specificity, its reliance on empirical description, the way it does conceptual work and its manner of addressing ontological questions. The point is to explicate the theoretical sensibility that is immanent in Ewald's own scholarly ascesis and that has enabled him to paint the bigger picture provided by L’État providence.\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":"77 3","pages":"421-430"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143788869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

(Dis)trust in Digital Insurance: How Datafied Practices Shift Uncertainties and Reconfigure Trust Relations 数字保险中的信任：数据化实践如何转移不确定性并重新配置信任关系。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2025-05-19 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.13223

Maiju Tanninen, Gert Meyers

{"title":"(Dis)trust in Digital Insurance: How Datafied Practices Shift Uncertainties and Reconfigure Trust Relations","authors":"Maiju Tanninen, Gert Meyers","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.13223","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1468-4446.13223","url":null,"abstract":"Trust is both a prerequisite and a product of insurance, as insurance contracts are built on and create trust relations that enable a risk-averse perspective towards the future. At the same time, insurer-policyholder relationships are characterised by a persistent distrust, rooted in insurance economics and industry reputation. In this article, we discuss these dynamics through a Luhmannian understanding of (dis)trust as a complexity-reducing functional fiction resulting from social action. Beyond traditional insurance, we examine how trust relations are reconfigured by the introduction of digital technologies and data, developments that could enable new ways to calculate, price and manage risks. We critically assess the claim that these techniques make the future knowable and mitigate—or even eliminate—‘the unreliable human factor’, ultimately replacing trust relations with a principle of transparency. Drawing on sociology of insurance, critical data studies, and our own case-based research on digital insurance products marketed to individuals, we argue that these technologies do not eliminate uncertainties and vulnerabilities as expected in insurance discourse. Instead, they introduce new insecurities and complexities by increasing the trust relations required for insurance arrangements. Consequently, the principle of transparency offers a narrow, techno-solutionist substitute for trust, ignoring the affective aspects of insurer-policyholder relationships and potentially undermining the social contract and solidarity associated with insurance.","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":"77 3","pages":"449-459"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1468-4446.13223","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144095571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

That's Not Fair! Navigating the Duality of Fairness in Insurance 这不公平！导航保险公平的双重性。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 Epub Date: 2025-03-15 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.13206

Konstantinos Chalkias, Paula Jarzabkowski, Mustafa Kavas, Elisabeth Krull

{"title":"That's Not Fair! Navigating the Duality of Fairness in Insurance","authors":"Konstantinos Chalkias, Paula Jarzabkowski, Mustafa Kavas, Elisabeth Krull","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.13206","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1468-4446.13206","url":null,"abstract":"Insurance serves as a social good, providing financial protection against disasters whilst operating within a profit-driven market. This dual role highlights the complex intersection of social and commercial interests, raising a fairness puzzle often portrayed as a trade-off between solidarity and actuarial fairness. Insurance organisations adhere to actuarial fairness by setting insurance premiums proportional to each individual's risk. As extreme weather drives greater losses in high-risk areas, actuarial fairness often results in unaffordable premiums for many. To address this, societies may adopt principles of solidarity fairness to subsidise their premiums. However, this approach threats diminishing personal responsibility to contain risk, as individuals may rely on subsidised protection rather than taking proactive measures. This study draws on a longitudinal qualitative study of a government-legislated insurance organisation to develop a process framework that reconceptualises fairness in insurance as a duality of solidarity and actuarial fairness. It offers insights into designing insurance systems that are socially equitable and financially sustainable.","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":"77 3","pages":"460-471"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1468-4446.13206","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143634733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Class Ruptures and Openings: The Role of Social and Family History in Narratives on Class Mobility and Reproduction. 阶级断裂与开放：社会与家族历史在阶级流动与再生产叙事中的作用。

IF 3.3 2区社会学

British Journal of Sociology Pub Date : 2026-06-02 DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.70135

Justyna Kajta, Stefan Bieńkowski

{"title":"Class Ruptures and Openings: The Role of Social and Family History in Narratives on Class Mobility and Reproduction.","authors":"Justyna Kajta, Stefan Bieńkowski","doi":"10.1111/1468-4446.70135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.70135","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, sociological interest in the study of social class-particularly its subjective dimensions-has intensified. This article contributes to this growing body of literature by focusing on Poland as a case within the Central and Eastern European region. It emphasizes the role of historical context and family histories in shaping processes of class mobility and class reproduction, and examines these processes from a biographical perspective. Drawing on a comparative analysis of biographical pathways of upward mobility and reproduction, we introduce two analytical concepts naming the historical moments/processes potentially reshaping individuals' class histories: openings, referring to moments that facilitate upward mobility, and ruptures, referring to interruptions in reproduction or obstacles to upward mobility. We also identify three pivotal historical moments that emerge in the collected narratives as shaping class histories and class identities in Poland: the Second World War, the 1989 political and educational transformation, and the integration into EU institutions from 2004 onwards. The analysis is based on 42 biographical interviews with academics. It demonstrates the value of qualitative, biographical methods for examining class identities, which often diverge from patterns captured by purely objective criteria. This approach further allows us to reveal the role of social history and multigenerational family history in making the individuals' class histories and identities complex and ambiguous.","PeriodicalId":51368,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148152116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0