Political economies of security for some time to come

Abstract

First paragraph: Insurance is a very large industry and an important source of security. As an empirical site for investigating risk and security, insurance thus deserves the careful and scholarly attention that Luis Lobo-Guerrero has given to it in these two books. The first book, Insuring Security (2011), tells a story of how it becomes possible to render uncertainty into a tradable substance, thereby producing a source of political economies of security from which insurance instruments emerge. The second book, Insuring War (2012a), tells a story of how the relationship between these processes wraps up the commercial need for uninterrupted circulation together with the forcefulness of the state in insurance-related war partnerships. The understanding of risk itself ends up being transformed by these processes. Both books are part of the Interventions series which focuses on international politics, is published by Routledge and edited by Jenny Edkins and Nick Vaughan-Williams. Together with the third and forthcoming volume, Insuring Life, Lobo-Guerrero’s books promise to be a triptych that allows us to appreciate how political economies of security take shape for some time to come.