With the “Hear, Here” series, we aim to facilitate conversations around new research in the humanities. Faculty fellows at the Institute for the Humanities will discuss a part of their current project in a short talk followed by a Q & A session.

About this talk:
This talk explores how risk was transformed from being understood as a property of groups to being understood as a property of individuals by examining the history of public and private insurance in the United States. Rather than seeing this change as the product of the "great risk shift" that occurred with the emergence of neoliberalism, my account suggests that the individualization of risk in recent decades is only the latest instantiation of a recurrent conflict between security and freedom that has marked the evolution of capitalism. Seen from this longer historical perspective, the "personal responsibility revolution" appears not as the handiwork of neoliberal policymakers, but rather as the unintended result of social movements that contested discriminatory practices in insurance markets.

About Greta Krippner:
Greta Krippner is a 2023-24 John Rich Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and associate professor, Sociology.