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

Abstract

In response to high levels of car theft, insurance companies in São 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 São 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.