The Bigger Pictures of L'État Providence

On François Ewald's Theorisation of the Insurantial Society

Bibliographic Data

ID5610002
AuthorsT K Lehtonen (0000-0002-6063-2056, Faculty of Social Sciences Tampere University Tampere Finland, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-04-05
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-4446.13204
PMID40186617
OpenAlexW4409191023
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited21

The research published in François Ewald's magisterial L'État providence (1986) has been a major source of inspiration for sociological work on insurance for nearly 40 decades. This is impressive given that only a tiny part of that research was known in the Anglophone world until recently, through a few separately translated articles. In this paper, I study how Ewald paints a bigger picture of the insurantial society in the book. First, I examine how L'État providence weaves together histories of responsibility, risk, solidarity and insurance that together made possible the emergence of the French welfare state at the dawn of the twentieth century; simultaneously, the book describes how the concept of the 'social' could become an effective element in the practices of law and government. Second, I enquire into how Ewald combines a philosophical interest with empirical work on the insurantial society. I look at four aspects of Ewald's approach: its site specificity, its reliance on empirical description, the way it does conceptual work and its manner of addressing ontological questions. The point is to explicate the theoretical sensibility that is immanent in Ewald's own scholarly ascesis and that has enabled him to paint the bigger picture provided by L'État providence

Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sensibility · Sociology · Solidarity · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Legal and Social Philosophy · Law · Philosophy

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