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Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States
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.
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.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 5, 2021
7 people are currently reading
139 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Elliott
212 books299 followersRebecca Elliott is the author and illustrator of the best-selling Owl Diaries series (Scholastic US) & over 20 picture books including Just Because, Sometimes, Naked Trevor and Zoo Girl, for which she was nominated for the 2012 Kate Greenaway Medal.
Her new series The Unicorn Diaries (Scholastic US) & her first YA novel 'Pretty Funny ' (Penguin Random House) are out now.
Her new series The Unicorn Diaries (Scholastic US) & her first YA novel 'Pretty Funny ' (Penguin Random House) are out now.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 13, 2021
Born out of the financial fallout from Superstorm Sandy, Underwater is an in-depth exploration of the National Flood Insurance Program — its history, its shortcomings, and the shaky reality of its future. It is at times a social critique — the political and moral dilemmas that flooding causes— and at other times an extended history — one in which flood insurance is transformed from a public issue to a personal one, and one that is increasingly at risk in a future of climate change-induced losses.
Elliot focuses on how the rational calculus at the center of flood insurance generates tremendous social and political uncertainty, and all that makes the issue so complicated: the operational challenges, the individual biases, the American Dream of property ownership, the exclusionary practices that protect this dream, the role and responsibility of federal government, the real estate interests and the politics that encourage bad planning, and the moral muddiness of determining what deserves to be protected from floods.
Above all, Underwater is about the moral economy of flood insurance and the difficult decisions that come with all that insurance is connected to: who should pay what, who has an obligation and a duty to reimburse homeowners, what do we protect and how do we protect it, what homeowners are reimbursed? As well as the moral argument as to whether claims to losses or justified or deserved. IT also discusses how flood insurance created moral economy dilemmas, such as who should pay for climate change, and how and when the costs of climate change would be distributed.
Such future approaches are summed up by Elliot in the conclusion: especially, if we want to understand how climate change impacts people, we need to understand insurance institution — or how prices and relief are distributed and programs are paid for. At stake is not just ported, but a sense of home, as people are priced out of neighborhoods and inidivudal adaptation measures are too expensive.
Insurance can work — in that we can reduce flood risk and deliver adaptation measures —so long as we can “assess, map, and price risk accurately and get the incentives right.” That involves treating flood insurance as more than an environmental policy, but rather one that recognizes the interconnected political and economic arrangements that makes climate change losses an individual problem.
My low rating here isn’t one necessarily of content, but how that content is communicated. This book is written by an academic and it shows. It is dragged down by dense philosophical arguments of moral economies and heavy on jargon. Though perhaps born out of the human experience of flooding and flood insurance, it is by no means grounded in these human experiences. A journalistic eye would have done more to tell these stories, but Elliot is more concerned with the academic arguments — the relationship between economy, morality, and politics — at play.
Elliot focuses on how the rational calculus at the center of flood insurance generates tremendous social and political uncertainty, and all that makes the issue so complicated: the operational challenges, the individual biases, the American Dream of property ownership, the exclusionary practices that protect this dream, the role and responsibility of federal government, the real estate interests and the politics that encourage bad planning, and the moral muddiness of determining what deserves to be protected from floods.
Above all, Underwater is about the moral economy of flood insurance and the difficult decisions that come with all that insurance is connected to: who should pay what, who has an obligation and a duty to reimburse homeowners, what do we protect and how do we protect it, what homeowners are reimbursed? As well as the moral argument as to whether claims to losses or justified or deserved. IT also discusses how flood insurance created moral economy dilemmas, such as who should pay for climate change, and how and when the costs of climate change would be distributed.
Such future approaches are summed up by Elliot in the conclusion: especially, if we want to understand how climate change impacts people, we need to understand insurance institution — or how prices and relief are distributed and programs are paid for. At stake is not just ported, but a sense of home, as people are priced out of neighborhoods and inidivudal adaptation measures are too expensive.
Insurance can work — in that we can reduce flood risk and deliver adaptation measures —so long as we can “assess, map, and price risk accurately and get the incentives right.” That involves treating flood insurance as more than an environmental policy, but rather one that recognizes the interconnected political and economic arrangements that makes climate change losses an individual problem.
My low rating here isn’t one necessarily of content, but how that content is communicated. This book is written by an academic and it shows. It is dragged down by dense philosophical arguments of moral economies and heavy on jargon. Though perhaps born out of the human experience of flooding and flood insurance, it is by no means grounded in these human experiences. A journalistic eye would have done more to tell these stories, but Elliot is more concerned with the academic arguments — the relationship between economy, morality, and politics — at play.
March 14, 2022
Great example of qualitative work on a topic that I am interested in.
July 6, 2022
Brilliant book on a timely topic
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews