Life Writing

Haslam, Sara; Neale, Derek

doi:10.4324/9781003070887

Cited by 1 publication

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“…quantity of additional risk attaching." 131 To actuaries, the tropics were "necessarily a mere approximation." 132 As late as 1930, actuaries still routinely lamented the absence of any definitive data on mortality in tropical settings.…”

Section: Legal Contracts and The Failure Of Tropical Ratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Numberless Little Risks”: ‘Tropical Exposure’ in Globalizing Actuarial Discourse, 1852–1947

Aitken¹

2022

Enterp. Soc.

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I argue that life insurance and imperial meaning making are deeply implicated in each other. As life insurance expanded internationally in the nineteenth century, and as insurers became advocates of White settlement, they grappled with what actuarial science meant in the context of their orientalist conceptions of colonial populations. In particular, actuaries were concerned with tropical markets and the racialized/exceptionalized differences they perceived in those markets. To address these tensions, insurers attempted two strategies: (1) incorporating tropical rates as additional premiums designed to cover the “extra mortality” of tropical markets; and (2) advocating for social practices of “sanitary progress” related to public health and sanitation. These practices, framed in orientalist terms, were not adopted in any smooth manner but in fumbling and meandering ways as insurers tried to understand what kinds of lives tropical settlers might be and how those lives might be priced. They eventually liberalized life insurance rates for White settlers in tropical settings, but insurers then confronted questions on how newly socialized “native” lives might be rendered calculable. This story of tropical exposure in globalizing actuarial discourse reinforces the ways in which race and racialized/exceptionalized differences were at the core of life insurance and the calculative devices it assembled between 1852 and 1947.

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Section: Legal Contracts and The Failure Of Tropical Ratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Numberless Little Risks”: ‘Tropical Exposure’ in Globalizing Actuarial Discourse, 1852–1947

Aitken¹

2022

Enterp. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Life Writing

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

“Numberless Little Risks”: ‘Tropical Exposure’ in Globalizing Actuarial Discourse, 1852–1947

“Numberless Little Risks”: ‘Tropical Exposure’ in Globalizing Actuarial Discourse, 1852–1947

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