This paper explores possible responses to some of the main challenges associated with conducting ... more This paper explores possible responses to some of the main challenges associated with conducting elite and expert interviews as part of qualitative research in human geography. Drawing on the example of the dynamic fintech industry, the paper outlines some similarities and differences between elite and expert interviews and uses this to identify and discuss possible responses. Against this backdrop, the paper also reflects on advantages and disadvantages of using the professional social networking site LinkedIn as a research aid for sampling and contacting interviewees as well as for interview preparation. The paper is anticipated to be of interest to those conducting qualitative research involving limited subject sample sizes who are potentially difficult to find.
This article explores the changing infrastructural architecture of global finance through the len... more This article explores the changing infrastructural architecture of global finance through the lens of Global Production Networks (GPNs). Financial markets infrastructure (FMI) for international payments and securities trading form the backbone of global finance. However, this FMI is typically hidden from observation, debate, and analysis, partly because international payments have functioned in broadly the same way for almost 50 years, governed by large global banks and the co-operative Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). A global monopoly sensitive to geopolitical upheavals, SWIFT is increasingly influential in acting to the benefit of the world’s most powerful financial and political players. Thus, more than a mere passive facilitator of global economic activity, we argue in this paper that FMI forms a carefully crafted socio-economic system of geo-political relevance, whose core components ‘power’ and ‘embeddedness’ we seek to comprehend with the GPN framework. We introduce SWIFT as a key player in global FMI and establish a conceptual dialogue between the recently introduced notion of the GPNs of finance and the newly developed idea of the GPNs of financial infrastructure. Incorporating Allen’s (1997) power dimensions, we demonstrate their coexistence and complementarity in their carefully orchestrated, tightly intertwined global organizational arrangements. We show that SWIFT’s proneness to technological and organizational change threatens to reconfigure long-established actors, processes and relationships in and beyond finance, and argue that this makes an in-depth understanding of FMI vital.
The Japanese Post Office, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, was finally privatis... more The Japanese Post Office, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, was finally privatised in 2015, marking an appropriate time to examine financialisation in Japan. Literature on financialisation and changes in Japanese capitalism assumes convergence on Anglo-American capitalism with a diminishing of state power. The main argument of this paper is that financialisation is instead a more contingent process. This is put forth through an examination of how this process has been mediated by the Japanese state through the workings of the Japanese Post Office. The state has frequently shaped the direction of financialisation by intervening in the routing of household funds via the postal savings system in order to achieve its objectives in different circumstances, particularly evident in the protracted and contested nature of the post bank’s privatisation. Financialisation is thus not preordained; instead its path is hewn by crisis, catastrophe, demographics and the agency of domestic social actors.
This paper explores possible responses to some of the main challenges associated with conducting ... more This paper explores possible responses to some of the main challenges associated with conducting elite and expert interviews as part of qualitative research in human geography. Drawing on the example of the dynamic fintech industry, the paper outlines some similarities and differences between elite and expert interviews and uses this to identify and discuss possible responses. Against this backdrop, the paper also reflects on advantages and disadvantages of using the professional social networking site LinkedIn as a research aid for sampling and contacting interviewees as well as for interview preparation. The paper is anticipated to be of interest to those conducting qualitative research involving limited subject sample sizes who are potentially difficult to find.
This article explores the changing infrastructural architecture of global finance through the len... more This article explores the changing infrastructural architecture of global finance through the lens of Global Production Networks (GPNs). Financial markets infrastructure (FMI) for international payments and securities trading form the backbone of global finance. However, this FMI is typically hidden from observation, debate, and analysis, partly because international payments have functioned in broadly the same way for almost 50 years, governed by large global banks and the co-operative Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). A global monopoly sensitive to geopolitical upheavals, SWIFT is increasingly influential in acting to the benefit of the world’s most powerful financial and political players. Thus, more than a mere passive facilitator of global economic activity, we argue in this paper that FMI forms a carefully crafted socio-economic system of geo-political relevance, whose core components ‘power’ and ‘embeddedness’ we seek to comprehend with the GPN framework. We introduce SWIFT as a key player in global FMI and establish a conceptual dialogue between the recently introduced notion of the GPNs of finance and the newly developed idea of the GPNs of financial infrastructure. Incorporating Allen’s (1997) power dimensions, we demonstrate their coexistence and complementarity in their carefully orchestrated, tightly intertwined global organizational arrangements. We show that SWIFT’s proneness to technological and organizational change threatens to reconfigure long-established actors, processes and relationships in and beyond finance, and argue that this makes an in-depth understanding of FMI vital.
The Japanese Post Office, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, was finally privatis... more The Japanese Post Office, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, was finally privatised in 2015, marking an appropriate time to examine financialisation in Japan. Literature on financialisation and changes in Japanese capitalism assumes convergence on Anglo-American capitalism with a diminishing of state power. The main argument of this paper is that financialisation is instead a more contingent process. This is put forth through an examination of how this process has been mediated by the Japanese state through the workings of the Japanese Post Office. The state has frequently shaped the direction of financialisation by intervening in the routing of household funds via the postal savings system in order to achieve its objectives in different circumstances, particularly evident in the protracted and contested nature of the post bank’s privatisation. Financialisation is thus not preordained; instead its path is hewn by crisis, catastrophe, demographics and the agency of domestic social actors.
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