[A] high degree of scientific and technical uncertainty permeates the insurance industry — the very business that is charged with transforming uncertainty into risk. Scrutiny of how insurers face their own incapacities reveals that theirs is an uncertain business, and that we live not so much...

Recent sociological and historical work suggests that insurance risks often are not reliably calculable, except in hindsight. Insurance is "an uncertain business," characterized by competition for premiums that pushes insurers into the unknown. This essay takes some preliminary steps that extend...

For much of the twentieth century, industrialized nations addressed social problems, such as workers' compensation benefits and social welfare programs, in terms of spreading risk. But in recent years a new approach has emerged: using risk both as a way to conceive of and address social problems...