In this book, world-leading social scientists come together to provide original insights on the capacities and limitations of insurance in a changing world. Climate change is fundamentally changing the ways we insure, and the ways we think about insurance. This book moves beyond traditional economics and financial understandings of insurance to address the social and geopolitical dimensions of this powerful and pervasive part of contemporary life. Insurance shapes material and social realities, and is shaped by them in turn. The contributing authors of this book show how insurance constitutes and is constituted through the traditional elements of earth, water, air, fire, and the novel element of big data. The applied and theoretical insights presented through this novel elemental approach reveal that insurance is more dynamic, multifaceted, and spatially variegated than commonly imagined. This book is an authoritative source on the capacities and limitations of insurance. It is a go-to reference for researchers and students in the social sciences – particularly those with an interest in economics and finance, and how these intersect with geography, politics, and society. It is also relevant for those in the disaster, environmental, health, natural, and social sciences who are interested in the role of insurance in addressing risk, resilience, and adaptation. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This dynamic Research Handbook explores key perspectives, topics and methodologies used to understand housing, the home and society. Pairing social theory with a broad range of case studies from the Global North and South, it offers a unique insight into the field.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book examines the growing role and importance of 'Protection Gap Entities' (PGEs), not-for-profit entities providing insurance protection that would otherwise be unavailable within a purely private sector context. Around the world, PGEs and the insurance instruments they use are becoming increasingly crucial in making sure that funds are available to rebuild after disasters. These PGEs, typically developed as collaborations between governments and the insurance industry, enable insurance to continue at a time when climate change, urbanization, global interdependence, and geo-political instability are making disaster insurance increasingly expensive or unavailable. Given their growing importance, understanding the role of PGEs in both insurance protection and their potential to create a more resilient society is critical. Disaster Insurance Reimagined uses practical examples from different countries to explain how PGEs step in to maintain disaster insurance and how their work can, but does not always, improve financial and physical resilience to disaster. Drawing on 5 years of research into 17 entities that provide insurance cover in 49 countries, the authors examine the strengths, limitations, and evolution of PGEs in providing disaster protection in the face of a growing insurance crisis. They provide an accessible discussion of disaster insurance, its complexities, and the transformation it needs to undergo in order to remain relevant and to contribute to meaningful disaster protection. PGEs and their work offer a path to re-imagining disaster insurance as a key tool in an ecosystem that has societal protection from disaster at its heart.

Using a range of calculative devices, (Mis)managing Macroprudential Expectations explores the methods used by central banks to predict and govern the tail risks that could impact financial stability. Through an in-depth case study, the book utilises empirically-informed theoretical analysis to capture these low-probability and high-impact events, and offers a novel conceptualisation of the role of risk modelling within the macroprudential policy agenda.

This Handbook is a collection of contributions of more than 300 researchers who have worked to grasp the Anthropocene, this new geological epoch characterised by a modification of the conditions of habitability of the Earth for all living things, in its biogeophysical and socio-political reality. These researchers also sought to define a historical and prospective anthropology that integrates social, economic, cultural and political issues as well as, of course, environmental ones. What are the anthropological changes needed to ensure that our human adventure will be able to continue in the Anthropocene? And what are the educational and political issues involved? Anthropocene is fast becoming a widely-used term, but thus far, there been no reference work explaining the thoughts of the greatest experts of the present day on this subject (at the intersection of biogeophysical and socio-political knowledge). A scientific and political concept (but which is also the conceptual vehicle for conveying the scientific community's sense of concern), this complex term is explained by international experts as they reflect on scientific arguments taking place in earth system science, the social sciences and the humanities. What these researchers from different disciplines have in common is a healthy concern for the future and how to prepare for it in the Anthropocene and also the identification of possible anthropological changes. This Handbook encourages readers to immerse themselves in reflections on the human adventure through descriptions of our differing heritages and the future that is in the process of being written.

Communities around the United States face the threat of being underwater. This is not only a matter of rising waters reaching the doorstep. It is also the threat of being financially underwater, owning assets worth less than the money borrowed to obtain them. Many areas around the country may become economically uninhabitable before they become physically unlivable. In Underwater, Rebecca Elliott explores how families, communities, and governments confront problems of loss as the climate changes. She offers the first in-depth account of the politics and social effects of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which provides flood insurance protection for virtually all homes and small businesses that require it. In doing so, the NFIP turns the risk of flooding into an immediate economic reality, shaping who lives on the waterfront, on what terms, and at what cost. Drawing on archival, interview, ethnographic, and other documentary data, Elliott follows controversies over the NFIP from its establishment in the 1960s to the present, from local backlash over flood maps to Congressional debates over insurance reform. Though flood insurance is often portrayed as a rational solution for managing risk, it has ignited recurring fights over what is fair and valuable, what needs protecting and what should be let go, who deserves assistance and on what terms, and whose expectations of future losses are used to govern the present. An incisive and comprehensive consideration of the fundamental dilemmas of moral economy underlying insurance, Underwater sheds new light on how Americans cope with loss as the water rises.

Revised edition of: Natural hazards: explanation and integration / Graham A. Tobin and Burrell E. Montz. c1997.