Call for Papers

Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference

London, 31st August-2nd September 2016

Session title: Financial elites, governance, and (connecting) financial spaces

Session convenors: Jonathan Beaverstock (University of Bristol, UK), Sabine Dörry (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Luxembourg), Sarah Hall (University of Nottingham, UK)

The rise of the financial capital over industrial capital since the late 1970s has established not only a new financial geo-economic order, but also a transformation in the globalization of capital accumulation and position of financial centres and elites in the world economy. The contemporary global financial system and spatialities of power and governance are shaped and characterised by much inter- and intra-financial system trading, the agency of financial elites and the consequential upsurge of the globally connected financial centre. Observers have studied, inter alia, the characteristics of crisis-prone financial capitalism, the emerging patterns of a shifting global financial architecture, their regulatory spaces, the peculiarities of new financial elites and, recently, the positioning of financial centres in global networks and hierarchies.

This session seeks to explore the complex role of financial agency at the nexus of financial elites, power relations, and their spatial and organisational manifestations in governing (global) finance within and between financial centres. Paper contributions may broadly focus on the following themes:

§  The role of competing ‘Western’ politico-financial agents in the processes of negotiating access to Chinese, other Asian and other key emerging market (like Brazil, India and Russian) financial markets;

§  Measures and means of financial and political agents to influence the institutional environment in financial centres;

§  The consequences of increasingly mobile professional networks as carriers of crucial knowledge intensifying the specialisation of financial centres;

§  Phenomena of the ‘revolving door’ mechanisms and the power struggle of supra-/national regulators to implement new rules;

§  The deepening of global finance through the expansion strategies of financial and advanced business services firms’ (FABS) profession systems;

§  The role of global financial elites in the (re)production of financialisation within FABS.

We welcome abstract submissions (max. 300 words) by 12th February 2016 to Jonathan Beaverstock ([log in to unmask]) and Sabine Dörry ([log in to unmask]). Please include author name(s), affiliation(s), contact email and paper title. We will notify all authors of whether their paper can be accommodated in the session by 16th February at the latest (this will allow the conference deadline of 19th February to be met).