Thesis supervisors: Alexandre Mathieu-Fritz and Stève Bernardin
Environmental risks, terrorist risks, health risks, identity risks, food risks, school risks… the list of risks we are asked to take a stance on seems to grow a little longer every day. Some sociologists see this as the advent of a true "risk society," undermining all the major principles of wealth redistribution inherited from past centuries. The process began in France at the end of the 19th century with workplace accidents, which were gradually covered by laws authorizing compensation for many workers in exchange for the introduction of compulsory insurance for all. Since then, insurance coverage and risk prevention have become ubiquitous, even indispensable, in the daily lives of all individuals, for example when they want to travel or find housing. Our thesis project aims to understand how this evolution is embodied and continues today, at a time when digital tools, giving rise to new models, could lead to a rethinking of the definition of the risks that surround us. More specifically, we propose to study the characteristics of a particular social group, that of "actuaries," statisticians specializing in insurance work, whose practices aim to assess and define the risks to which a given population is exposed.
Year of enrollment: 2023
Doctoral School: Organizations, Markets, Institutions (OMI)