In this paper, I critically interrogate the expectation that insurance is becoming more present through the processes of financialisation and marketisation - as up-to-date policies and/or in the hearts and minds of consumers. I draw upon interviews about house and contents insurance, with householders in the flammable landscapes of south-eastern Tasmania, Australia. The participants identify these landscapes as resilient and permanent and thus ultimately unaffected by fire. In understanding bush-living as co-constituted with fire and not purely threatened by fire, they experience a strong sense of continuance in these places. In this context, the promise of insurance emerges as contingent, and even if an up-to-date policy is present, insurance moves in and out of focus, is present and becomes absent as various human and non-human actants exert agency. Drawing on critical landscape studies in exploring these spatial contingencies, I observe insuring as landscaping practice. As well as contributing to critical insurance studies and financialisation of everyday life research, I provide a signpost for rethinking the role of insurance in disaster management and climate adaptation.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	fire, financialisation, insurance, landscape, marketisation
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Human geography
Research Field:	Social geography
Objective Division:	Culture and Society
Objective Group:	Other culture and society
Objective Field:	Other culture and society not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Booth, K (Associate Professor Kate Booth)
ID Code:	138783
Year Published:	2020
Funding Support:	Australian Research Council (DP170100096)
Web of Science® Times Cited:	3
Deposited By:	Geography and Spatial Science
Deposited On:	2020-04-29
Last Modified:	2020-07-10
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