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Paper short abstract

After the 2025 LA Fires, the commodification of personal narratives for insurance claims transformed a natural disaster into a social/political one, complicating personal trauma with the moral injury of state abandonment. The “Smart City” conspiracy offers a vernacular theory of structural violence.

Paper long abstract

In the wake of the devastating LA fires, homeowners are rebuilding one story at a time. Before they can afford to repair and replace their homes and possessions, they must file insurance claims and recount their losses. In written accounts and over recorded phone calls with adjusters, they explain what happened, and their narratives of property damage become data points in obscure and specialized corporate decision-making. This project will draw on qualitative ethnographic research with communities impacted by the Palisades and Eaton fires, comparing personal narratives about the experience of the fires to interactions with insurance companies. What role do the verbal accounts of property damage provided by the insured play in the claims process? How are these texts quantified, what strategies for storytelling are successful, and how do the details preferred by insurance companies compare to the structure of personal narratives told in noninstitutional contexts? Fraught interactions between property owners and insurance companies, and the commodification of personal narratives they necessarily entail, transform a natural disaster into a social and political one. They complicate experiences of personal trauma with the moral injury of abandonment by the state. The viral “Smart City” conspiracy theory, blaming the January 2025 fires on government infrastructure plans for improved technological monitoring of traffic patterns, air quality, and crime in advance of the 2028 Olympic Games, offers a vernacular theory of structural violence: where is the line between a state that cannot help its people, and a state that will actively attack them?