Studies from St. John’s University Yield New Data on Agricultural Insurance (State of Nature Risk, Responsibility, and the Moral Economies of Agricultural Insurance In Nineteenth-century France): Agriculture – Agricultural Insurance

2023 NOV 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Researchers detail new data in Agriculture - Agricultural Insurance. According to news reporting from New York City, New York, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “Scholars have argued for the impor tance of indus trial acci dents and urban pre-carity in lay ing the ground work for the Euro pean wel fare state in nineteenth-cen tury France.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from St. John’s University, “Given the cen tral role that farm ing played in French eco nomic, polit i cal, and cul tural life, how ever, agri cul tural insur ance was among the first and most fre quently debated aspects of nineteenth-cen tury attempts to apply insur ance to the ‘social ques tion.’ This arti cle explores what Francois Ewald has termed the ‘insurantial imag i nary’ of agri cul tural insur ance by exam in ing debates about which threats could or should be insured and who should insure them. Despite wide spread con sen sus on the vir tues of expanding insur ance into the coun try side, there remained huge areas of dis agree ment: What counted as an insur able risk in agri cul ture? How should that risk be assessed? And whose respon si bil ity was it to insure such risks-that of pri-vate indi vid u als or the French state? This arti cle argues that the repeated fail ures of the var i ous pro pos als designed to pro tect peas ants against the vaga ries of nature had as much to do with prac ti cal imped i ments as they did with ideas about the ‘nat u ral ness’ of cer tain dan gers.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “This per cep tion of the ‘nat u ral’ would inform the con struc tion of the French wel fare state.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: State of Nature Risk, Responsibility, and the Moral Economies of Agricultural Insurance In Nineteenth-century France. Agricultural History, 2023;97(3):351-382. Agricultural History can be contacted at: Duke Univ Press, 905 W Main St, Ste 18-B, Durham, NC 27701, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Erika Vause, St. John’s University Queens, Modern European Hist, New York, NY 11432, United States.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-10474417. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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