Insurance technopolitics: Car theft, recovery, and tracking systems in Sao Paulo

Author(s)

Fromm, Deborah

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: SECURITY DIALOGUE; v. 54, n. 1, p. 15-pg., 2023-01-27.

Abstract

In response to high levels of car theft, insurance companies in Sao Paulo have developed new systems and technologies for tracking and recovering stolen vehicles. These interventions are driven by an insurance rationality that seeks to manage risk and ensure these companies' profitability. However, this article draws on the notion of technopolitics to argue that the tracking devices and other technologies mobilized in this way also exercise their own agency. They help to mediate and reorganize the power dynamics and relations between diverse actors who operate within Sao Paulo's stolen car market and vehicle recovery processes, presenting both challenges and opportunities for each as they pursue their respective aims. The notion of 'insurance technopolitics' emphasizes this conjunction between risk governance and the contingent, technologically mediated relationships and conflicts to which it may give rise. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/24649-7 - A Safe Harbor in Chaos: marginalities, insurance and security in the Luz region in São Paulo
• Grantee: Deborah Rio Fromm Feltran
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• FAPESP's process: 20/07160-7 - Global cars: a transnational urban research on vehicle informal economies (Europe, Africa and South America)
• Grantee: Bianca Stella Pinheiro de Freire Medeiros
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants