Failed probabilistic forecasting drove farmers toward collective risk mutualization.

Evidence

But the specter of uncertainty continued to engulf the rural hinterlands and, as a result, such determinist worldviews never fully took root. In steering financial and weather volatility, the growing agricultural risks were to be borne by individual farmers, who ultimately found little solace in forecasters’ promise of probabilistic certainty. The new “actuarial theology” delivered no more often than not and, in the end, the commodified risk that underpinned it left farmers exposed to the whims of financiers. In response, collective practices of risk mutualization began to emerge: fraternities, cooperative associations, and the first coordinated agrarian movements offered much-needed social insurance against the violent swings of speculative markets. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 119

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts the individualizing logic of speculation with a counter-tradition of mutualization — relevant to assessing whether the counter-speculations chapter reclaims a left alternative.