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Is climate change insurable? Can insurance, as a technology of risk and governance, organize an adequate social and economic response to the complexity and scale of this modern, global risk? The dissertation assesses the insurability of climate change risks through the lens of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the public insurance program that underwrites virtually all flood insurance for homes and small businesses in the U.S. The NFIP is under intense financial strain, struggling to pay claims from recent flooding events and $23 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Federal reforms to the NFIP in 2012 and 2014 revisited the question of financial responsibility for flood risk, bringing renewed scrutiny to risk classification, pricing, and distribution in the NFIP, and how these insurance processes should change with the expectation of rising sea levels and stronger storms. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, the dissertation traces these processes: the political contestation that shaped them and their social effects. I find that these processes serve as channels through which this particular climate change burden, of more frequent and severe flooding, is individualized. Specifically, updated official risk classifications, combined with changes to the calculation of insurance premiums, shifted more financial responsibility to individual policyholders, who had to find ways to mitigate the risk and its cost in the short term, and grapple with the price of flood risk as a "signal" of climate change in the long term. The dissertation uncovers the social and political challenges of using insurance to manage the risks associated with climate change, of using old programs to meet new threats.Much of the scholarly debate on the insurability of climate change has emphasized technical and epistemological problems related to risk knowledge. Based on the case of the NFIP, I argue instead that distinct and significant limits to insurability derive from contentious risk politics and the social uncertainties that enhanced risk assessments generate. I develop this argument with chapters on risk classification, about establishing boundaries, physical, social, and symbolic, that set categories of risk; on pricing, the use of practices and tools to calculate the cost of risk; and on distribution, the social and spatial allocation of risk and responsibility. Preceding these chapters, a historical chapter traces the origins of the NFIP, how it governs flood risk, and how it arrived at its crisis point. In addition to intervening in the insurability debate, Underwater also seeks to break new ground in the sociology of climate change. Sociologists have shown that the natural disasters—floods, storms, wildfires, heat waves, and so forth—we connect to climate change have fundamentally social sources, and the threats now facing individuals and communities intersect with social differences, such as gender, race/ethnicity, class, and age. However, it is not simply the social production and distribution of hazards themselves that are sociologically important. It is also the representation of those hazards as risk, their economization, and how they are used to govern societies and shape behavior. In other words, we can build our sociological understandings of climate change not solely from investigating the social production and effects of floods, but also from examining the policies and programs that govern them. These policies and programs both shape how our society adapts to the physical, economic, and political pressures of climate change and structure how individuals experience these pressures in their daily lives.

AbstractThe metaphor of the two-level game has been used to describe the process whereby political leaders find themselves negotiating simultaneously at the domestic and international tables when trying to reach international cooperative agreements. This article examines the role of domestic politics in the US debate over trade policy in recent years. Specifically, the article analyzes the bargaining between the Clinton administration and the US Congress over the appropriate role for labor (and environmental) issues in trade negotiations in the context of the debate over so-called ``fast-track'' negotiating authority. The article then goes on to analyze how the domestic politics of this issue could affect an international negotiation over worker rights in the World Trade Organization.

Preface -- Publisher's acknowledgements -- Introduction to accounting on a cash flow and accrual accounting basis -- Accounting and reporting on a cash flow basis -- Accounting and reporting on an accrual accounting basis -- Preparation of internal and published financial statements -- Preparation of financial statements of comprehensive income, changes in equity and financial position -- Annual report: additional financial disclosures -- Statements of cash flows -- Regulatory framework - an attempt to achieve uniformity -- Financial reporting - evolution of global standards -- Concepts : evolution of an international conceptual framework -- Ethical behaviour and implications for accountants -- Income and asset value measurement systems -- Income and asset value measurement : an economist's approach -- Accounting for price-level changes -- Revenue recognition -- Statement of financial position - equity, liability and asset measurement and disclosure -- Share capital, distributable profits and reduction of capital -- Liabilities -- Financial instruments -- Employee benefits -- Taxation in company accounts -- Property, plant and equipment (ppe) -- Leasing -- Intangible assets -- Inventories -- Construction contracts -- Consolidated accounts -- Accounting for groups at the date of acquisition -- Preparation of consolidated statements of financial position after the date of acquisition -- Preparation of consolidated statements of income, changes in equity and cash flows -- Accounting for associates and joint arrangements -- Introduction to accounting for exchange differences -- Interpretation -- Earnings per share -- Review of financial statements for management purposes -- Analysis of published financial statements -- An introduction to digital financial reporting -- Accountability -- Corporate governance -- Integrated reporting sustainability - environmental and social -- Index

Machine learning algorithms are widely presumed to herald a world in which the crippling burdens of anxiety can be left behind. The digital revolution promises a brave new world where individuals, communities and organizations can at last take control of the future - anticipating, designing and commanding the future, possibly even with mathematical exactitude. Yet, paradoxically, algorithms have unleashed widespread fears and forebodings about the impact of digital technologies. Whether its worries about unemployment, distress about social medias harmful effects on teenagers, or the fear of intrusive digital surveillance, we live in an age of turbo-charged anxiety where the prophecies of algorithms are increasingly enmeshed with fundamental disruption and anxieties about the future. In this book, Anthony Elliott examines how machine learning algorithms are not only transforming global institutions but also rewriting our personal lives. He tells this story through a wide-ranging analysis which takes in ChatGPT, Amazon, the Metaverse, Martin Ford, Netflix, Uber, Bernard Stiegler, Squid Game, Kate Crawford, LaMDA, Byung-Chul Han, autonomous drones, Jean Baudrillard and the automation of warfare. Questioning why people often assume that they need to adopt new technologies in order to lead fulfilling lives, Elliott argues that people may be as much entranced as inspired by their outsourcing of personal decision-making to smart machines

Introduction -- On Proudhon: Proto-Drive Theorist and Champion of "Possession" -- On Drive Theory: Physio-Somatic v. Socio-Centric -- On Drive Theory, Continued: Hendrick v. Marcuse -- On Fanon: Drives and Decolonization -- On Eco-Theory: The Environmental Implications of Bodily Drives -- Conclusion.