THE JANUS FACE OF INSURANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA: FROM COSTS TO RISK, FROM NETWORKS TO BUREAUCRACIES
THE JANUS FACE OF INSURANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA: FROM COSTS TO RISK, FROM NETWORKS TO BUREAUCRACIES
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DOI：
10.1017/s0001972011000787
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发表时间：
2012-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
1.2
通讯作者：
Bahre, Erik
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bahre, Erik
本研究探讨了南非穷人保险迅速且史无前例地扩大的后果。在过去的十年里，南非保险公司制定了无数的保单，以便将以前被排除在外的穷人（主要是非洲人）和中下阶层纳入其中。虽然贫困、暴力和艾滋病给国家机构和社会关系带来压力，但保险使人们能够以迄今为止难以想象的方式管理风险。本文以罗马开闭之神雅努斯 (Janus) 头的形式探讨了这种新风险制度的发展。获得保险的核心问题是由于将风险“翻译”为看似中性的成本概念以及经纪人和中介组织无法成功驾驭这些翻译而造成的不一致。这里获得保险的定义不是拥有保险单，而是在面临保险风险时成功索赔——充满了复杂的高科技官僚机构和穷人的社交网络的矛盾。
This study examines the consequences of the rapid and unprecedented expansion of insurances for the poor in South Africa. Over the last ten years, South African insurance companies established a myriad of policies in order to incorporate the previously excluded, mostly African, poor and lower middle classes. While poverty, violence and AIDS put state institutions and social relations under pressure, insurances enable people to manage risks in hitherto unthinkable ways. The article examines the development of this new regime of risk as a Janus head, after the Roman god of opening and closing. At the heart of access to insurance were the incongruencies that were caused by the 'translation' of risk into the seemingly neutral concept of costs and the inability of brokers and intermediary organizations to navigate these translations successfully. Access to insurance here not defined as having an insurance policy but as making a successful claim when confronted with the insured risk - was fraught with the contradictions of complex high-tech bureaucracies and the poor's social networks.