ABSTRACT
A crucial learning from this collection of insurance research is that we need to think about insurance in broader contexts, and expand our understanding beyond technocentric, or financial framings. The chapters in this book have shown that the logics of elemental insurance are pervasive and powerful: capable of reconfiguring land, water and airscapes, citizenship, sovereignty, homes, behaviours, personal relationships, and global networks. The ability of insurance to shape material and social realities can lead to transformative change in response to the climate crisis – but what appears adaptive in one context may be maladaptive in another. In the concluding chapter, we consider the capacities and limitations of insurance by examining some of the apparent dualisms of insurantial logics uncovered in this book. We explore, through the examples offered in the previous chapters, how insurance can be at once rational and emotional; technical and political; individual and collective.
