Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that a focus on finance can be particularly productive in the study of racial capitalism. Finance is both a useful empirical angle and 'method' to approach variegated race-capital articulations. 'Raced finance' can help us rethink foundational claims about IPE and development.

Paper long abstract:

This article maps out existing arguments on what we term raced finance in International Political Economy (IPE), but also discusses the epistemological and methodological difficulties in theorizing the relationship between race and capitalism in IPE and beyond, including: (1) how to think together the role of contingency and history on the one hand, and abstraction and generalization on the other; (2) how to integrate perspectives and experiences that go beyond the usual focus on the Black Atlantic in studies of racial capitalism; (3) how to think together imperial, colonial, racial, and financial relations in the making and reproduction of racial capitalism. The article then develops the argument that a focus on finance can be particularly productive in the study of racial capitalism. Finance is not only a useful case or empirical angle from which to approach variegated race- capital articulations, it can also be conceived as ‘method.’ Following the money, studying the infrastructures, techniques, technologies, and practices of capitalist finance, analyzing power relations between financial actors and subjects and how finance transforms socio-spatial relations, and unpacking financial discourses, imaginaries, and other forms of knowledge, can help us understand how finance draws upon, remakes, and creates new processes of racialization and race-making across time and space. Based on these arguments, as well as on the findings of the various contributions to the special issue, the article reflects on the extent to which foundational claims on finance and IPE and economic development must be rethought, reformulated, or modified.