British Journal of Sociology最新文献

In this research note, we map the power elite in Greenland, amidst the current geopolitical interest in the nation. Using social network analysis, we identify a power elite of 123 individuals as the central circle in an extensive affiliation network data on 3412 positions held by a total 2052 individuals in 456 affiliations. We find an integrated and cohesive power elite dominated by actors from politics and public and private enterprises. When comparing this central circle to the previous studies of power elites in the former colonial power and current sovereign, Denmark, the political sector and the state are stronger in Greenland at the expense of the private sector. However, while the elite is integrated, we also identify potentials of fracturing. Thus we find a division between politicians—who are more likely to have childhood and educational ties to Greenland—and other elite groups—in particular private business—who are more likely to have academic degrees, be male and live in the Capital, Nuuk. The network of the elite is also clearly clustered around the strength of affiliation with Greenlandic society. We conclude by discussing how the potential fracturing of the Greenlandic elite along ethnic division lines may lead to a lack of cohesion and legitimacy entering the current geopolitical tensions surrounding the world's largest island.

This article contributes to sociological scholarship on climate change by examining the development of the voluntary carbon offset market in Finland. While intended to address the collective challenge of climate change, voluntary carbon offsetting has faced criticism for commodifying emissions and shifting responsibility to specific actors. Enabled by voluntary carbon markets, emissions and climate impacts are attributed to companies and individuals, reflecting the idea that each entity possesses its ‘own’ emissions that they can choose to offset. However, this attribution does not happen on its own. The present study thus examines how the collective problem of acting on climate change is coordinated through particular moral engagements. We focus on the socio-legal formatting of the voluntary carbon offset market in the context of Finland, a Nordic welfare state. We trace the trajectory of Compensate, a key Finnish offset provider whose activities sparked public controversy and led to criminal charges for violating the country's Money Collection Act as well as a legislative reform aimed at formalising voluntary offsets. The controversy centred on the nature of voluntary offsets and whether to consider them to be generally beneficial climate actions or self-interested activities. Based on the theory of the sociology of engagements, our analysis shows how actors engage in moral and political coordination in order to foster and sustain engagements with climate change. More broadly, our case demonstrates that producing and facilitating engagement with climate change through a voluntary market is not merely a matter of implementing effective instruments and arrangements—leading ultimately to the individualisation of climate action—but a result of complex moral and socio-legal formations. We conclude that the formatting of particularised climate engagements is a collectively produced process that necessitates an analysis of the shared moral coordination involved.

This paper suggests that catastrophe insurance schemes should be considered within the framework of public goods and commons, and as a form of polycentric organization whose success depends on collective action. The first section situates catastrophe insurance within the "state withdrawal hypothesis:" while neoliberalism is usually understood as promoting a shift from social and solidary insurance programs to private, market-oriented ones, this does not apply to catastrophe insurance. The second section shows that one of the reasons for the persistence of public intervention in catastrophe insurance is its public good dimension: market best practice would indeed promote risk-based premiums leading to unaffordability issues and the disappearance of the good. Such insurance gaps are perceived as a "public bad." Catastrophe insurance is thus a hybrid public good: it benefits from a large number of users and is threatened by their exclusion. The final section highlights the polycentricity of insurance systems and the challenge this poses to collective action for the sake of prevention.

Over the past 20 years, the insurance industry has been experimenting with technological innovations that deeply affect its business model and social function. This article explores the use of digital technologies to monitor policyholders' behaviour and personalise their insurance coverage. Information extracted from behavioural data can be used to produce individualised predictions and design proactive insurance policies, which aim to prompt policyholders to act on the possibility of future damages before they happen. This innovation could bring many benefits in terms of efficiency (improving loss ratio) and foresight (improving risk assessment), but also a renewed focus on individual responsibility for losses. As a consequence, we argue, the collective management of future uncertainty could be undermined, jeopardising the insurance solidarity that makes mutual protection viable.

Trust is both a prerequisite and a product of insurance, as insurance contracts are built on and create trust relations that enable a risk-averse perspective towards the future. At the same time, insurer-policyholder relationships are characterised by a persistent distrust, rooted in insurance economics and industry reputation. In this article, we discuss these dynamics through a Luhmannian understanding of (dis)trust as a complexity-reducing functional fiction resulting from social action. Beyond traditional insurance, we examine how trust relations are reconfigured by the introduction of digital technologies and data, developments that could enable new ways to calculate, price and manage risks. We critically assess the claim that these techniques make the future knowable and mitigate-or even eliminate-'the unreliable human factor', ultimately replacing trust relations with a principle of transparency. Drawing on sociology of insurance, critical data studies, and our own case-based research on digital insurance products marketed to individuals, we argue that these technologies do not eliminate uncertainties and vulnerabilities as expected in insurance discourse. Instead, they introduce new insecurities and complexities by increasing the trust relations required for insurance arrangements. Consequently, the principle of transparency offers a narrow, techno-solutionist substitute for trust, ignoring the affective aspects of insurer-policyholder relationships and potentially undermining the social contract and solidarity associated with insurance.

Afropessimism is a critical framework that is often used to analyse anti-Black violence and its deep entrenchment within systems and structures that perpetuate Black subjugation. By conceptualising Black life as ‘non-life’, afropessimism examines how anti-Black violence shapes health disparities, influencing who is deemed worthy of care and underscoring the systemic nature of this (d)evaluation. This framework holds significant potential for anti-racist efforts that aim to address Black health disparities by exposing their root causes. However, afropessimism's central claim—that Black people are not only excluded from the category of the ‘human’ but are also positioned as its antithesis—poses challenges for anti-racist strategies focussed on affirming recognitions of Black humanity to achieve health equity. This paper critically investigates the role of afropessimism in anti-racist health promotion by examining divergent perspectives within its schools of thought. While all scholars who use afropessimist frameworks critically interrogate the systemic inequities that harm Black populations, they differ in their views on the potential for Black life within and beyond current anti-Black systems and structures. These differences lead to varying implications for advancing anti-racist health initiatives and promoting health justice through afropessimism. By analysing how afropessimism may inform anti-racist health frameworks, this paper explores how its distinct theoretical perspectives can enrich, challenge, and constrain efforts to dismantle racial health inequities.