Gamekeepers and Gamekeeping: Assuring Bristol's Place within Life Underwriting

Abstract

In this paper I report on research which traces out the fields-of-learning of underwriters working in the life assurance industry in Bristol. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s, the financial services sector in Bristol, like that of many regional financial centres in the United Kingdom, grew significantly. Of particular note has been the local expansion, through relocation and new firm formation, of the life assurance industry. I argue that underwriting, concerned as it is with the management and production of risk, plays a central role in defining and distinguishing life assurance as a distinctive form of economic activity. By placing underwriting in Bristol within the wider configurations of the life underwriting community-of-practice I seek to determine the role of local actants in constituting insurantial practices. I argue that the city of Bristol is a significant space within the geography of life underwriting and, in turn, the manufacture of life assurance risk. However, in attempting to assess exactly how significant, some of the limitations of thinking about financial space in terms of regional and network topologies become apparent. In taking seriously the anthropology of financial communities-of-practice, institutions, and ‘network(ing)s’ I conclude that we may therefore need to think about financial centres and financial space in new ways.