Making climate risks work: Governmentality and “foreign residence” in British life assurance, 1840–1940,Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

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Making climate risks work: Governmentality and “foreign residence” in British life assurance, 1840–1940
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers ( IF 3.3 ) Pub Date : 2020-03-23 , DOI: 10.1111/tran.12385
James Kneale ₁ , Samuel Randalls ₁

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Genealogies of life assurance have tended to focus on the governmental possibilities of actuarial calculations of mortality, but the case of foreign residence assurance draws attention to other ways in which British companies calculated climate risk between 1840 and 1940. Drawing on archival research, this paper demonstrates that the extra charges imposed on life assurance policies for foreign residence invited conversations about the risks of climate and mortality in countries beyond Britain, drawing on both contemporary climate science and other arguments about climate pathology. Climate risks, however, had to be made to work for both life assurers and policyholders through far‐reaching social‐material networks, and firms frequently tinkered with arrangements of people, ideas, and artefacts in ways that enabled a mapping and governing of such risks. Whether ideas of climate circulating in life assurance were believed or not, they had effects and policyholders submitted to them. Drawing on archival material from several British life assurance companies, including some detailed cases of assured migrant lives, the paper explores how companies made risk calculations in ways that had consequences for ordinary decisions and practices. In so doing, the paper contributes to debates about life assurance and governmentality, showing that foreign residence policies enabled businesses to secure their risks in an era of imperial expansion. But this is no simple story of power and imperialism. Businesses constantly tinkered with their policies, drawing on climate science and medical understandings, but only as part of an always messy, changing assemblage.

中文翻译：

使气候风险发挥作用：1840-1940年英国人寿保障中的政府性和“外国居住地”

生命保障的家谱往往侧重于政府对死亡率进行精算的可能性，但外国居民保障的案例提请人们注意英国公司在1840年至1940年之间计算气候风险的其他方式。本文通过档案研究表明，对外国居民的生活保证政策征收的额外费用邀请了英国以外的国家就气候和死亡风险进行讨论，同时借鉴了当代气候科学和其他有关气候病理学的论点。但是，必须通过广泛的社会物质网络使气候风险对人寿保险人和保单持有人都起作用，而且公司经常会在人员，想法，和伪影，以能够绘制和控制此类风险。不管人们是否相信生命保证中的气候循环的想法，它们都会产生影响，投保人也要提交给他们。本文借鉴了英国多家人寿保险公司的档案资料，包括一些详细的移民生活保障案例，探讨了公司如何以对普通决策和惯例有影响的方式进行风险计算。通过这样做，本文为有关人寿保障和政府性的辩论做出了贡献，表明外国居留政策使企业能够在帝国扩张时代确保自己的风险。但这不是权力和帝国主义的简单故事。借助气候科学和医学知识，企业不断修改政策，

更新日期：2020-03-23

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