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The Ideological Effects of Actuarial Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Jonathan Simon
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Abstract

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Over the last century there has been significant growth within our society of practices that distribute costs and benefits to individuals based on statistical knowledge about the population. These actuarial practices like insurance premium setting and standardized testing in educational admissions are successful largely because they allow power to be exercised more effectively and at lower political cost. At the same time they generate ideological effects which have the potential to transform the way individuals understand themselves and their groups. In a 1977 case, Los Angeles Water and Power v. Manhart (435 U.S. 702), the United States Supreme Court considered a challenge to the actuarial use of gender in setting employee benefits. The case and the debates it generated illuminate the danger posed by the ideological effects of actuarial practices to our political culture in general, and to traditionally disempowered classes such as women in particular. At the same time it illustrates the limitation of traditional legal rights discourse as a means of resisting these dangers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Law and Ideology , 1988 , pp. 771 - 800
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

I wish to thank the members of the Amherst Seminar on Legal Ideology and Legal Process for their helpful substantive and editorial comments on my paper. Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey were particularly instrumental in drawing some coherence out of my original draft. The ideas presented here have been developed through conversations with many friends and teachers including: Marianne Constable, Francois Ewald, Sheldon Messinger, Robert Post, Paul Rabinow, and Kim Schepple. I owe a special debt to Susan Lehman who forced me to refine my ideas and contributed some of her own.

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