‘Latent’ surplus populations and colonial histories of drought, groundnuts, and finance in Senegal

Bernards, Nick

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.10.007

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The derivative character of index insurance instruments leaves borrowers subject to so-called 'basis risk'the possibility that the cover provided fails to fully compensate for losses (Clarke, 2011;Johnson, 2013). There are more fundamental questions that some authors have raised about the value of index insurance based on narrowly technical conceptions of, say, weather risk that ignore the broader patterns of social and ecological relations through which the very uneven exposure of agrarian populations to such risks are produced (see Isakson, 2015;Taylor, 2016;da Costa, 2013;Johnson, 2013;Bernards, 2021).…”

Section: Index Insurance and Satellite Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Waiting for the market? Microinsurance and development as anticipatory marketization

Bernards

2022

Environ Plan A

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This article traces experiments aimed at promoting wider adoption of ‘microinsurance’ – small, simplified insurance policies targeting the poorest. Microinsurance is a central element of a wider turn towards the promotion of ‘resilience’ in global development. The development of commercial markets for microinsurance, however, has failed to meet the expectations of promoters. This article traces the ways that the diverse donor agencies, professional organizations and philanthropic organizations involved in the promotion of microinsurance have responded to these failures, primarily by seeking to articulate basic data infrastructures that might make possible profitable insurance operations. These activities are described as a kind of ‘anticipatory marketization’ – experiments seeking to prepare the ground for the emergence of markets for risk management, thus far without much success. Where microinsurance has often been described in terms of ‘financialization’, this article suggests that there are important political dynamics at play that have been overlooked. Efforts to develop markets for microinsurance, and the persistent focus on troubleshooting and re-engineering those markets in the face of failure, are not driven directly by finance capital. Rather, they reflect fraught efforts to articulate modes of social protection not requiring substantial redistribution.

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Section: Index Insurance and Satellite Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Waiting for the market? Microinsurance and development as anticipatory marketization

Bernards

2022

Environ Plan A

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“…The damaging effects of financial inclusion build upon, reiterate and expand longer standing forms of violence including colonialism, racism and gender inequality (e.g. de Goede 2005; Mitter 2014; Kish and Leroy 2015;Park 2016;Bourne et al 2018;Bernards forthcoming). While there is scope for more empirical work in this area, I have argued that the concept of global assemblage can account for the intersection of ongoing historical legacies with more recent dynamics, since assemblages are understood to be dynamic and always in process.…”

Section: Financial Inclusion As Future Promisementioning

confidence: 99%

The promise of financial inclusion: finance as future in Palestine

Harker

2021

Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography

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Existing conceptualisations of financial inclusion must account for the promise of a better future that is an integral part of such processes. This argument is drawn from an analysis of elite-led financial inclusion processes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Financial inclusion names processes through which poorer people become enfolded in financial technologies, practices and markets. Such processes circulate globally, taking on different forms in different contexts. In the Palestinian context, financial inclusion must be understood in relation to ongoing Israeli settler-colonialism. In this context, elite-led financial inclusion processes only make sense if understood as acts through which institutions promise particular futures. The promises of financial inclusion supersede a number of other promises, particularly those tied to the Oslo Accords. Part of the power of the promissory stems from the fact that the institutions making them cannot be held accountable in the present for what is promised in the future. This paper stresses the importance of promissory not in relation to its future realisation, but rather as an illocutionary act that makes certain things possible in the present. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this is the endurance of financial institutions outside a statehood framing.

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“…As such, index insurance promises to contribute to climate change adaptation by redrawing the global boundaries of insurability beyond industrial countries and by covering environmental risks that were previously considered as non-insurable. Senegal is a good example of the challenges of such expansion, as it has a long history of climate risk exposure, rural indebtedness, a vulnerable agricultural labor force, and fragile state response schemes when crises strike (Bernards 2019). Senegal is not a welfare state, and insurance is not the technology of collective risk management there.…”

Section: International Aid and Market Construction In Senegalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The emergence of index insurance converges with changes in the modes of governing rural development, particularly the withdrawal of structural adjustment policies in the 1980s and the 1990s, which caused significant damage in Senegal (Faye 2005, Bernards 2019. By the early 2000s, the failure of these neoliberal policies was commonly acknowledged, a shift enacted by the Law for Agro-Sylvo Pastoral Orientation that placed agriculture at the center of Senegal's economic growth project and established the principles of a welfare regime for the social protection of farmers.…”

Section: International Aid and Market Construction In Senegalmentioning

confidence: 99%

A market infrastructure for environmental intangibles: the materiality and challenges of index insurance for agriculture in Senegal

Aguiton

2020

Journal of Cultural Economy

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In Senegal, various development pilot projects experimented with agricultural index insurance to make drought insurable. These interventions produced 'rainfall deficit' as an environmental problem suited for such market-based solutions. Investigating the materiality of this index insurance scheme, I explore the environmental market infrastructure, which produces risk conventions, articulates governance and market requirements, and fuels the promise of cheap, efficient, and automated environmental risk management in the Global South. I show that the production of such risk requires both a selective reduction of the physical reality of drought and the substantial reordering of material activities that organize many actors around rainfall deficit. Meteorological data produced by rain gauges placed in Senegalese fields were a central element in the initial infrastructure of index insurance. However, as reductionist technologies are often prone to failure, this index insurance scheme met many challenges. After documenting the design of this insurance scheme and the obstacles encountered, the paper depicts how actors in charge of its implementation made a shift in the insurance infrastructure from field rain gauges to remote sensing-in order to re-energize index insurance's expectations.

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‘Latent’ surplus populations and colonial histories of drought, groundnuts, and finance in Senegal

Abstract: How to cite:Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.

Cited by 23 publications

References 45 publications

Waiting for the market? Microinsurance and development as anticipatory marketization

Waiting for the market? Microinsurance and development as anticipatory marketization

The promise of financial inclusion: finance as future in Palestine

A market infrastructure for environmental intangibles: the materiality and challenges of index insurance for agriculture in Senegal

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