Papers by Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
What kind of object is private life insurance? To discuss this question, this article examines ho... more What kind of object is private life insurance? To discuss this question, this article examines how life insurance is pictured, that is, explained and concretized with words and visual images, in the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and 2000. In principle, life insurance can only be used for assessing and securing the economic value of life. The empirical material shows, however, that life insurance, as an object, can only exist if economic value and other values constantly overflow into each other, and calculation and affect are made to intertwine. In order to objectify their potential customers' lives as economic potential, as commodities, insurance companies have indeed had to objectify life – yet not only in terms of monetary value, but simultaneously and as importantly, as something that is irreducible to monetary value. Hence the promotion of life insurance enacts a double stabilization of objects. On the one hand, advertisements and leaflets show how life insurance matters, what it is capable of, and thus stabilize the understanding of insurance itself as a tool. On the other hand, the promotional materials both stabilize and mobilize 'life' as an assemblage of heterogeneous practices and modes of valuation that is irreducible to economic potential.
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For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing climate change using wea... more For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing climate change using weather-and catastrophe-related instruments, and thus have been able to make money through climate change. Yet, at the same time, for reinsurance companies it is crucial that the likelihood of the events they underwrite is diminished as much as possible. Consequently, while profiting from the situation, these key actors of global capitalism also work to prevent climate change from taking place, and support the kinds of measures, on all political scales, that diminish the likelihood of severe climate change destruction. This article analyzes the materials that the reinsurance company Munich Re has distributed to stakeholders and asks how climate change is objectified by the reinsurance industry. How are weather-related catastrophes made into a financial risk and opportunity? The key conceptual tools for answering these questions are provided by Michel Serres' work on world-objects.
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This article explores the domestication of a financial instrument that is much used in contempora... more This article explores the domestication of a financial instrument that is much used in contemporary Finland, but that most of its users do not primarily think about in terms of being a financial instrument: the private health insurance for children. In Finland, all children are covered by social insurance and are entitled to free public health service. Yet, some 40% of families want to supplement this service with private products. Many fear that the popularity of the private health insurance for children contributes to a vicious circle that ends up weakening the legitimacy of, and the service given by, the public health sector; inequality in the face of health risks threatens to be aggravated, as well. Therefore, this financial instrument has become an object of political controversy. The main question of the article is: how do economic, political and moral valuations become intertwined in the domestication of insurance? The concept of 'domestication' is found helpful for analysing the pragmatics of valuation and for appreciating the dynamics and the heterogeneity of forces at play when financialisation influences everyday life. The study argues that when financial instruments are appropriated they are also transformed; thus, they should not be viewed as homogeneous tools that have similar effects in all contexts of use. Yet, emphasising the activity of the people involved in domesticating the products on
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In this article we examine the mode in which Bruno Latour engages in metaphysics in his social sc... more In this article we examine the mode in which Bruno Latour engages in metaphysics in his social scientific and philosophical project. In contrast to Graham Harman's recent reading of his work, we take seriously how adamant Latour is about not creating a metaphysical system, and how he is thus essentially sharing the anti-metaphysical tenor of much of the twentieth-century philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not shun making bold claims concerning the way in which the world is. Therefore, we need to ask: what are, then, the purposes for which Latour evokes metaphysics? We recognize two main answers to the question. The first purpose is the creation of a makeshift, pragmatic, methodological ontology. His concepts such as trial, event, proposition, collective, and mode are not meant to describe ‘the furniture of the world’ in the style of classical metaphysics. Rather, they form a kind of ‘minimum-wage metaphysics’, an ‘experimental’ or ‘empirical’ metaphysics that serves the purpose of opening the world anew, in conjunction with empirical research. The second purpose is Latour's elucidation of the metaphysics of modernity, in order to make our own preconceptions visible for ourselves. According to him, metaphysical assumptions are an unavoidable part of our relationship to our world, but we, the moderns, tend to give a distorted description of these assumptions. The ‘modes of existence’ of Latour's recent book are aimed at elucidating the complexity of moderns’ real metaphysics. Yet they do not constitute a list of what there essentially is, but provide a toolkit for understanding our ways of being and our practices.
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What makes insurance special among risk technologies is the particular way in which it links soli... more What makes insurance special among risk technologies is the particular way in which it links solidarity and technical rationality. On one hand, within insurance practices ‘risk’ is always defined in technical terms. It is related to monetary measurement of value and to statistical probability calculated for a limited population. On the other hand, and at the same time, insurance has an inherent connection to solidarity. When taking out an insurance, one participates in the risk pool within which each member is reciprocally responsible for others’ risks. The combination of technical controllability and solidarity has made insurance a successful tool for governing welfare societies during the twentieth century. From the point of view of business ethics, it is interesting that, as we argue in this article, the connection between insurance and solidarity is not limited to social welfare assemblages, but is evident in relation to private insurance as well. At the same time, however, it is important to understand that insurance does not advance all forms of solidarity. Hence, this theoretical article analyzes the specific conceptions of solidarity that the different forms of insurance practice produce. Particular emphasis is put on the distinction between ‘chance solidarity’ and ‘subsidizing solidarity’. The main questions of the article are: What kinds of conceptions of solidarity are built in the insurance technology? And how are the limits of solidarity defined and justified in different forms of insurance?
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Acta Sociologica, 2010
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Sapere aude! One could regard Bruno Latour as a follower of the Enlightenment's motto; he is an u... more Sapere aude! One could regard Bruno Latour as a follower of the Enlightenment's motto; he is an unusually audacious thinker, not afraid to explore ideas that take him far from the received ways of describing the world in which we live. While his earlier work has already shaken many conventions of social scientific thought, his Enquête sur les Modes d'Existence (translated into English in 2013 as An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence) takes the radicalism to another level. This is a most unconventional and daring book, not only bursting with ideas but also ripe with controversial formulations that will certainly occupy scholars for years to come. It has been claimed that Enquête is Latour's chef d'oeuvre. Indeed it does summarize much of his earlier work, but it also makes major displacements in relation to it. The book aims to create a conceptual toolkit that helps us to examine the way the world is and, simultaneously, to step back and reconsider many of the descriptions that we, the 'Moderns', use about ourselves and the world. Although Enquête's many insights are worth discussing in detail, in this short review I limit myself to a brief outline of the two central features of the book: the analysis of modes of existence and Latour's conception of the Moderns. Perhaps the most important novelty of Enquête in relation to Latour's earlier work is that actor-networks are revealed to be just one of many modes of existence. That is to say, instead of the world existing primarily in the manner of networks, or as a rhizome of rhizomes, Latour now claims it exists in a multiple yet limited number of ways. To be more precise, he asserts that it exists in fifteen different modes. From a purely rhetorical point of view, the number of modes of existence is astonishing. Can Latour be serious about the exact number fifteen? Or is this just Latour's means to épater la bourgeoisie scientifique? A couple of things are important to note in relation to the number of modes. First, it is not the number of substances or basic elements. Rather, it is truly a number of modes: manners in which things can exist in relation to each other. Latour's philosophy is very pragmatic, and he is constant in his unwillingness to depict anything akin to essences or
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This article examines the role of consumption, commodities and things in the contemporary Western... more This article examines the role of consumption, commodities and things in the contemporary Western way of life. The text has two starting points: first, the small book by Georges Perec called Things, and second, the idea of freedom that is often linked with practices of consumption. These themes are studied in relation to basic sociological questions: how are we together, what do we exclude while creating this togetherness, and who are we today, how is our contemporary way of life special? In contrast to previous research on things, commodities and consumption, the text lays special emphasis on the plurality of relevant scales. Changes in the collectivity with things and commodities can be analyzed in many temporary scales: as changes in the life span of one person’s social relations, differences between generations but also as differences on the level civilizational change as regards ways of life and their conditions. In addition, our contemporaneity is characterized by the plurality of spatial scales that are relevant for the consumer habits and forms of freedom that are expressed through it. It is peculiar to the Western way of life that people constantly and unreflected can move between multiple scales; their everyday action is based on the confidence they have on the networks of production and distribution that function world-wide, on the logistical and communicational infrastructures, and the global ability to utilize and distribute raw materials provided by the earth. The article has two main results. First, it shows that there is no point in talking about freedom in relation to commodities and things as being of only one form. Rather, there are at least five different forms in which the question of freedom is relevant for the contemporary consumer way of life. Second, the text emphasizes the significance of overflow or surplus in relation to consumption and, especially, to its necessary outcome, waste. Thus, the approach developed in the article is fundamentally different from the techno-economic thought which sees scarcity as the ultimate principle for social scientific analyses.
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This article examines the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and1990. Al... more This article examines the promotion of private life insurance in Finland between 1945 and1990. Although a full-fledged social insurance system was established during this period, private insurance did not become obsolete. How were people encouraged to engage in voluntary forms of insurance in the new situation? We study the ways in which insurance was marketed by justifying its usefulness in relation to the ‘goods’ that were presumed common to all potential customers. The key theoretical frameworks are given by the literature on ‘governmentality’, and Boltanski and Thévenot’s model of justifications. The first of these is used for discussing the general role of insurance as a multifaceted social technology, whereas the model of justifications is used for analyzing the core themes of promotion. The promotional materials reveal that private life insurance is not an attractive economic tool for potential customers without reference to at least some moral justifications. However, these justifications are heterogeneous and open for change. In addition, the question of which particular moral emphases seem most relevant, and when, is related to socioeconomic transformations. Especially important are the changes in the interplay between social and private forms of organizing insurance responsibility.
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"Over the past few decades, the work of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) has again become of interest. It... more "Over the past few decades, the work of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) has again become of interest. Its reception, however, has been fairly one-sided and selective, mostly because Simmel’s philosophy has been bypassed in favor of his sociological contributions. This article examines Simmel’s explicit reflections on the nature of philosophy. Simmel defines philosophy through three aspects which, according to him, are common to all philosophical schools. First, philosophical reasoning implies the effort to think without preconditions. Second, Simmel maintains that in contrast to other sciences, only philosophy is oriented toward constructing a general view of the world. Third, Simmel claims that philosophical work worthy of the name creates a sphere of a typical way of being in relation to world, a third sphere that is between the personal and the objective. According to Simmel, what has made philosophy’s eminent figures great is that they have advanced a type of thinking and developed it into a particularly interesting form, and this type can still correspond with the way we experience the world. It is significant that these three aspects through which Simmel defines philosophical activity emphasize the forms of questioning, not the contents or objects of thought. Still, he thinks that an interaction with concrete examples is always required in order to make philosophy a meaningful activity. This stance is reflected in the wide variety of topics studied by Simmel himself. In his last works Simmel began to emphasize another aspect of philosophy, its nature as a living movement of thought related to fundamental human limitedness: just as life itself ceaselessly reaches beyond its present form, so philosophy constantly strives to overcome the preconditions of thinking.
Keywords Georg Simmel - Conception of philosophy - Type of philosopher - Philosophy of life "
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In: 1900-luvun ranskalainen yhteiskuntateoria (eds. Pyykkönen & Kauppinen). Helsinki: Gaudeamus, pp. 237-256., 2015
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Res Publica, Mar 12, 2015
The article presents two main arguments. First, we claim that in contemporary societies, insuranc... more The article presents two main arguments. First, we claim that in contemporary societies, insurance enacts peculiar kinds of solidarities as well as inequality and exclusion. Especially important in this respect are life, health, disability and old age pension insurance, both in compulsory and voluntary forms. Second, the article maintains that the ideas of solidarity, inequality and exclusion are transformed by the machinery of insurance. In other words, the concrete ways in which insurance relations are practically arranged have an effect on the ways in which the related moral and political concepts are perceived. We elaborate on three different forms of insurance solidarity, which we call chance, risk and income solidarity. The existence of multiple forms of solidarity relevant to insurance is significant because practices of insurance require decisions concerning what kind of solidarity is emphasised, when it is emphasised, and on what grounds. Moreover, what is solidarity for some can entail exclusion and inequality for others. Showing these internal tensions within insurance practice underlines the inherently political and moral nature of insurance.
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Papers by Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
Keywords Georg Simmel - Conception of philosophy - Type of philosopher - Philosophy of life "
Keywords Georg Simmel - Conception of philosophy - Type of philosopher - Philosophy of life "