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Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States
Auflage
1
Ort / Verlag
New York: Columbia University Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2021
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Communities around the United States face the threat of being
underwater. This is not only a matter of rising waters reaching the
doorstep. It is also the threat of being financially underwater,
owning assets worth less than the money borrowed to obtain them.
Many areas around the country may become economically uninhabitable
before they become physically unlivable. In Underwater ,
Rebecca Elliott explores how families, communities, and governments
confront problems of loss as the climate changes. She offers the
first in-depth account of the politics and social effects of the
U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which provides flood
insurance protection for virtually all homes and small businesses
that require it. In doing so, the NFIP turns the risk of flooding
into an immediate economic reality, shaping who lives on the
waterfront, on what terms, and at what cost. Drawing on archival,
interview, ethnographic, and other documentary data, Elliott
follows controversies over the NFIP from its establishment in the
1960s to the present, from local backlash over flood maps to
Congressional debates over insurance reform. Though flood insurance
is often portrayed as a rational solution for managing risk, it has
ignited recurring fights over what is fair and valuable, what needs
protecting and what should be let go, who deserves assistance and
on what terms, and whose expectations of future losses are used to
govern the present. An incisive and comprehensive consideration of
the fundamental dilemmas of moral economy underlying insurance,
Underwater sheds new light on how Americans cope with loss
as the water rises.