Insuring Terrorism, Assuring Subjects, Ensuring Normality: The Politics of Risk after 9/11

Abstract

Security has been located either in the political spectacle of public discourses or within the specialised field of security professionals, experts in the management of unease. This article takes issue with these analyses and argues that security practices are also formulated in more heterogeneous locations. Through a governmental analysis of risk, this article locates security practices in the 'shadows' of the insurance industry. Since the early days of the 'war on terror', the insurance industry has had an instrumental role and 'underwriting terrorism' has become part of the global governmentality of terrorism. We explore the political implications of the classificatory practices that insurance presupposes and argue that the technologies of insurance foster subjects who are consistent with the logic of capitalism and entrench a vision of the social where antagonisms have been displaced or are suspended by an overwhelming concern with the continuity of social and economic processes. These effects of insurance will be discussed as the 'temporality', 'subjectivity' and 'alterity' effects.

“Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared”

“…8 Resilience stems from the idea of a system, which gives a certain scientific weight to ideas such as ''preparedness'' and ''prevention'' and, as Claudia Aradau and Rens van Munster point out, ''smoothly combines meanings derived from physiology (the capacity of material to return to a previous state), psychology (the capacity of an individual to return to normal after a traumatic event), ecology (the capacity of systems to continue functioning and renew themselves after a disruptive event) and informatics (the capacity of a system to keep on functioning despite anomalies and design flaws).'' 9 The official documentation on the term, of which there is now an enormous amount, plays on this: a 2008 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) document on state-building, styled ''from fragility to resilience,'' defines the latter as ''the ability to cope with changes in capacity, effectiveness or legitimacy. These changes can be driven by shocks .…”

Concepts of politics in securitization studies

“…A second position in this conversation consists of scholars associated with and inspired by critical security studies (Aradau and Van Munster, 2008;Booth, 1991;Wyn Jones, 1999). Similar to the post-structuralists, these scholars are concerned with marginalized subjects.…”

“…A third group of scholars focuses on how the security speech and practices of state elites combine to erase the distinction 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Articles ISA papers between 'the exception' and 'the normal' (Huysmans, 2006: 124-6;Williams, 2003). The main argument is that securitization theory is unable to grasp the everyday formation and development of new security issues and politics expressed in the practices of bureaucracies (Aradau, 2006;Aradau and Van Munster, 2008;Bigo, 2000;Kaliber, 2005;McDonald, 2008;Neal, 2006). Related to this is the wider critique of how the theory remains blind to developments beyond a particular modern form of governance that is functionally linked to the nation-state (Huysmans, 2006;Petersen, 2008;Rasmussen, 2006).…”

Back Home, Safe and Sound: The Public and Private Production of Insecurity1

“…This is not to say that the interests of the state and private corporations are identical; private and public corporations do often come into conflict, but private corporations often act in the spaces created by state‐based institutions; thus, their concerns and activities support the imperatives of the state (Lupton 1995:9). For instance, Lowenheim identifies how insurance corporations engage in the state’s efforts to responsibilize travelers by denying coverage (2007:217) while Claudia Aradau and Rens van Munster demonstrate how insurance companies support the state’s efforts to order a future of precariousness, threat, and uncertainty (2008:192).…”